Comment by sweezyjeezy

Broadly I agree with this, but I was refuting the statement "there has never been a better time to be a mathematician". You are changing the question to something different here, and using it to say my argument is bad.

I think math is a microcosm for "thought-work" in general. We have been in a symbiotic relationship with capitalism for decades now, where the hope of a well-paid white collar career encourages people to spend time and money to enrich themselves through education. The proliferation of AI cheating at college already signals that employment is the primary goal over intellectual growth, so one imagines this governs what happens next if labor demand disappears.

It's hard to say where this all leads, but I have very low optimism for higher-level math understanding being something that humans value in the same way in the coming decades.