Yale economist Pascual Restrepo's AGI paper just went viral on X again. Here's what you need to know. The paper is "We Won't be Missed: Work and Growth in the AGI World," a 2025 chapter on AGI, growth and labor markets. Its starkest finding is that labor's share of GDP converges to zero. A viral post from How To Prompt (@HowToPrompt__) says researchers "mathematically proved" AI will destroy the middle class. It has about 139K views, 1.7K likes and 374 reposts. The post's reading of the model is blunt. In the AGI era, human labor no longer drives growth. Wages get priced by the GPU compute needed to replicate your output. If an AI agent can do your daily tasks for $2 in compute and electricity, your labor value is capped at $2. The post also claims that if 50% of workers stopped working, GDP would not fall at all. This is a different angle from the Apollo report we covered on October 24. That one said AI has not paid off outside tech yet. This paper models what happens once AGI fully scales. The reactions split in two. Roko quoted the post's idea that humans are being priced out of their own economic system by silicon. David Shapiro said we are in the bootstrapping phase of intelligence, and that capital is what matters: energy, grid, chips, networks and data centers. Another user said the AI future only works if a critical majority of people agree it serves them. If it threatens livelihoods, people could tune out or go to war. A second thread is also trending. Venkatesh Rao's essay "Cognitive Mercantilism" says AI panic is a zero-sum, scarcity view of intelligence, like early fears about capitalism. It argues cheaper intelligence could unlock new demand. Pedro Domingos shared it, saying "This is what the AI future will really be like." The essay's line: "Capitalism emerged when people began discovering that wealth could be created rather than merely captured." It also drew 76 points on Hacker News, where critics pushed back. Key numbers: - Labor share of GDP converges to zero, per the paper - $2 of compute caps the value of a task, per the viral post - 50% of workers stopping would not dent GDP, per the post - 139K views on the viral post - 76 Hacker News points on the Rao essay So one paper is being read two ways: as a warning that labor income goes to zero, and as a case that cheap intelligence expands demand.