with all due respect this cannot be further from the truth. americans are taught from young age that to make it in life they must increase their earnings. america needs modern day slaves working in cubicles 9-10 hours per day (even if you are at FAANG making high six figures you still a slave…).
but economics which america would not dream teach their young is that you can also cut expenses :) this is the quiet life part that you missed in the post… how much money do you think you need to make to have an insane level-of-comfort life in say Hope, Arkansas…?
I think this is a very entitled approach, I bet you need very little to live in a small rural area, but the crazy thing is that not everyone can do that since by definition if would get more expensive for everyone to do that. We can't all live off the grid away from people, modern infrastructure just cannot support that.
I think if the approach was, be happy with less, then sure we can get on board. There is a massive difference in being able to afford more and choosing less, than being forced to have less.
Also, AI will let you write terrible code. This is important to note as the code that AI generates will be reflective of the developer working with it. Garbage in, garbage out is not solved by AI yet.