> For some reason, there is this unbelievably thick air of paranoia in America where everyone is just waiting for the day when their job will go away

That is not just an AI problem. AI is just worsening a problem in USA society.

For years in the USA losing your job was not that big of a deal, because there were lots of other jobs to do, and they paid well.

The paranoia comes from the fact that people are discovering they have not saved anything and the jobs they need to merely survive (not even prosper anymore) are less and more difficult to obtain.

Hence the perceived value of the job you have is greater, and losing it looks worse.

The American dream was Homer Simpson, a simpleton with a huge house to his name, supporting a family as the (mostly) single earner. Today Homer would not be able to buy his own house, nor support his family.

Being poor is expensive. You have to pay rent for a house that will never be yours, often replace cheap things that break more often than the more expensive ones.You need money to make money, and that reinforces how money is essentially a zero-sum game. For billionaires to make even more, someone else has to make less.

TL;DR: It's not just AI. Americans are getting poorer. Poor is scary. And they don't have any social net like more socialist countries.