WORKING NOTES · WORKING PAPER

Statutory Floors

11.8 million American workers stand behind explicit headcount floors. Automation meets them and stops · for a median of twenty years.

Working Notes · registry + precedent study · PDF · 6 pages · 608 KB

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11.8M

workers behind explicit floors

10.5M

where the floor binds today

100%

military floor · zero displacement

20 yrs

median settled contest

[ abstract ]

What it argues.

A registry of eleven occupations whose headcount is set by statute, regulation, contract or licensing rather than by output · teachers, nurses, police, pilots, air traffic control, the military · with the basis, the contestability, and whether the floor binds today. Four historical ratio contests show how such floors actually resolve: by attrition and the capital replacement cycle, on a decadal clock, never by argument. The loud mirror image of the AV paper's silent definitional exit.

[ figures ]

The evidence, drawn.

fig. 01 · where the floors are written

Who set the floor determines who can move it, and how fast. The extreme case is active-duty military: a 100% floor where automation produces task reallocation and zero displacement, by construction · no cost decline of any size moves it.

fig. 02 · how ratio contests actually end

Every settled case resolved by attrition or the capital replacement cycle · never by argument, and rarely by repeal. The loud, decades-long fight is the mirror image of the AV paper's silent definitional exit: the same category failure, in the other direction.