Open your feed this week and you'll find two competing panics: Today, its AI is about to take everyone's job and previously it was that companies suddenly need everyone back in the office. We had that second argument for three straight years before AI showed up. I want to set the headlines aside and look at this the way an economist would: what is a salary actually buying, and does AI change the answer. That's a more useful question than either panic, and it's the one that actually determines what happens to anyone's pay. You're Paying for Time, Outcomes, or Units. Pick One. Hourly pay is honest about what it is: you're buying a block of a person's time at a given skill level. There's no ambiguity to resolve when a tool makes that person faster. Fewer hours, less pay, full stop, assuming the work still gets done to standard. A salary is a different contract, whether anyone wrote it down this way or not. It's closer to fixed-price consultin...