Bill Burr Rips Sweatshops and A.I. ‘Slave Labor’ Amid Trade Wars
Bringing factories back to America won’t do any good for the American people if we don’t bring back strong unions. I’d like to see A.I. try to generate a steel mill strike.
So far, 2025 has been the year in which stand-up superstar Bill Burr takes up the cause of attacking exploitative, soulless billionaires like Elon Musk who engineer inhumane outcomes for the rest of the world and financial windfalls for themselves while pretending to be patriots fighting for working people. After ruffling feathers across conservative media for defending accused CEO shooter Luigi Mangione and proclaiming that “rabid dog” billionaires need to be “put down,” Burr has moved on to exposing the downstream effects of robber barons gaming international economics and politics, pointing to the American labor movement of the late 19th century to explain why President Trump’s tariffs scheme isn’t going to bringing back stable industrial jobs as much as it enriches his billionaire buddies.
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During yesterday’s episode of Burr’s Monday Morning Podcast, the comedian educated his listeners on what actually happened to all those factories we used to have while taking swipes at the “fucking idiot nerds” who want to replace human workers with robots and who pretend that A.I. can have all the human emotions that the “fucking sociopaths” themselves are missing.
Possibly set off by the recent news story about Disney Research claiming that they have made a robot that can “mimic human emotions and behaviors in real time,” Burr began yesterday’s Monday Morning Podcast episode by roasting the A.I. evangelists who believe that such imitative technology is tantamount to actual emotional experience. “If I hear one more of these fucking idiot nerds that are building these fucking robots for these fucking sociopaths — that’s gonna basically wipe all human beings out so they can have their ultimate slave labor — tell me that these robots feel all emotions. They don’t feel emotions! They’re a fucking robot! It’s an algorithm!” Burr ranted.
“They don't feel fucking emotions. They want them to, they want ‘em to feel emotions. You know why?” Burr asked before answering darkly, “Because when we are gone and it’s just the robots, what’s the fun of ruling something if it’s not sad about it?”
Later in the show, Burr touched on another topical issue that has listeners across the country worried, bringing up President Trump’s ever-changing tariff policy and his flimsy excuses for manipulating international trade to his benefit. “This whole idea that other countries stole our jobs, like our factory jobs and all that, as far as I remember, that’s not the case,” Burr argued, adding, “Here’s a little quick history from someone who doesn’t read a lot. In the 1800s, during — what was that period called? — the Industrial Revolution, they had like kids working in factories, like fucking 12-, 14-hour days, four, five-year-old kids in dangerous situations. And people weren’t making any money. And the one guy who owned the factory was keeping all the money, these robber barons.”
“Anyway, so the working man finally has enough. They start organizing unions, the robber barons hire police, the army, all of these people to come in and kill these people in riots, crack their skulls, do unbelievable sorts of damage to them to try and force them to go back to work for sweatshop wages,” Burr continued. “These people died, they were maimed, catastrophic fucking injuries so that we could have a decent wage in this country. And they had unions and all of that. So then there was like a 40-, 50-year period where being a middle class person — middle class white person — was the dream, you know?”
“And then what happened was eventually these corporations just got sick of dealing with these unions and their hard-nosed negotiating and all that,” Burr explained. “And then they just said, ‘Well, fuck you, then. Keep your union, keep your factory. We’re leaving.’ And they took their factories outside of the U.S. and went back to 1800s wages in Mexico, China, wherever the hell they’re building them.”
Burr summarized, “So all of this talk that, you know, ‘Mexico stole our jobs, China stole our jobs’ — they didn’t steal the jobs. They were exploited by the super rich cunts that are not patriots in this country. They’re pieces of shit. So that’s what the fuck happened.”
But, as Burr pointed out, while the anger about jobs shipping overseas should be on the robber barons, that’s not where billionaires like Trump place the blame. “What do they do? They divide us,” Burr explained of the current tactics of the ruling class. “They have the American worker who’s getting fucked, mad at the whatever other worker around the world who’s also getting fucked, actually getting fucked worse, getting sweatshop slave wages.”
While Burr claims that he isn’t well-read, doesn’t follow the news and isn’t a particularly political person, before 2025 is over, we’re going to hear Ol’ Billy Redface calling for a worldwide workers’ revolution.
