90% of code will be AI-generated — so why are developers still paying $20/month for the tools?

There's a post making rounds on Dev.to right now: 90% of code will be AI-generated . The comments are a mix of existential dread and dark humor. Developers are asking: if AI writes most of our code, what do we actually do? But there's a question nobody's asking out loud: If AI is writing 90% of your code, why are you paying $20/month for the AI tool doing it? The math nobody does Let's say AI writes 90% of your code. That means an AI assistant is doing the majority of your work output. And you're paying: $20/month for ChatGPT $10/month for Copilot $15/month for Cursor That's $45/month in AI subscriptions on top of everything else. For a developer in San Francisco making $150k/year, that's 0.036% of income. Barely noticeable. For a developer in Lagos making the average Nigerian tech salary of around $8,400/year, that's 6.4% of annual income . Just in AI subscriptions. Same tools. Same AI. Same code output. 180x heavier burden. The disruption isn't equal Here's what the "90% AI-generated