The Parable of the Ghost Bistro

The Simple & Unexpected: The Economy is Firing its Best Customer

For decades, the economic “Hero” was the high-skilled professional - the analyst, the coder, the strategist. We assumed that making them more productive was the ultimate win. But the Citrini Research report presents an unexpected plot twist: By using AI to automate the “Intelligence Class,” we aren’t just cutting costs; we are deleting the consumer base that keeps the entire engine running.

Imagine a bustling bistro in a tech hub. It’s packed with $200k-a-year software architects buying $20 lunches. This is the “Velocity of Money” in action. Now, imagine those architects are replaced by an AI agent that lives in a server rack. The company’s profits soar. On paper, GDP remains stable. But the bistro is empty. The AI doesn’t eat lunch.

The Concrete & Credible: The Math of the “Silicon Sink”

To make this credible, we look at the “Silicon Sink” effect. When income moves from a human to a corporation, it hits a mathematical wall. Humans have a high Marginal Propensity to Consume (MPC). In the “Intelligence Class,” for every dollar earned, roughly **$0.80** is cycled back into the economy ($MPC \approx 0.8$) through real estate, travel, and services.

An AI agent has an MPC of 0.0.

The data is stark: Citrini highlights that the top 10% of earners drive over 50% of all discretionary spending in the US. If AI displaces even 20% of this group’s income, we aren’t just losing “jobs”; we are removing the Aggregate Demand that supports the other 90% of the economy. The math of the “Intelligence Repricing” spiral shows that while corporate margins expand, the “circulatory system” of the economy atrophies.

The Emotional Story: The Rise of “Ghost GDP”

This is the emotional core of the report: the haunting rise of Ghost GDP. It is a world where “The Economy” (the spreadsheets) looks phenomenal, but “The People” (the customers) are invisible.

We see this in the junior analyst at a private equity firm who used to be a “prime mover” for the housing market and the auto industry. When their role is automated, that “Intelligence Premium” (their salary) is sucked out of the local community and locked in a “Silicon Sink” - corporate cash reserves or stock buybacks.

The formula for this tragedy is rooted in the Equation of Exchange:

$$M \\cdot V = P \\cdot Y$$

While the Money Supply ($M$) and GDP ($Y$) might stay high due to AI productivity, the Velocity of Money ($V$) - the speed at which a dollar changes hands - is headed for a secular collapse. Wealth is being sequestered in silicon, leaving the physical world starved for transactions.

The Fatal Feedback Loop: Efficiency as a Revenue Destroyer

The mathematical reality derived from this analysis is a terrifying irony: AI is too good at its job. By optimizing for maximum efficiency, corporations are inadvertently destroying the very consumer base required to buy their optimized products.

Markets are currently pricing the Savings from the layoffs, but they have completely failed to price the Loss of the Customer. You cannot sustain a 21st-century consumer economy when your most productive “workers” have a consumption rate of zero. The “Ghost GDP” isn’t growth; it’s the sound of an engine running out of fuel.