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My understanding is that was less wasting wealth, more a jobs program to give laborers income during the agricultural off-season. Like unemployment insurance, it spread money around so people wouldn't starve.
Whereas all this "AI investment" is channeling more and more money into fewer and fewer hands.
I think a lot of people are hoping that getting decent people in power again will be the first step, making it possible to cut out the cancer and cauterize the wound.
But the last time we had an internal cancer this bad (slavery and Civil War), we lacked the will to excise and cauterize thoroughly enough. The effects are still a problem 160 years later.