This was a good discussion but somehow I feel it entirely missed the point. This is takeover and destruction of the U.S. Government. It's a criminal matter. There needs to be a look at the unspeakable.
This is a criminal takeover but as Greg Sargent has pointed out the GOP is still acting like it has to be responsive to electoral influences. Trump cares about his electoral standing and so should we.
Paul, why aren’t people talking about the large portion of national debt related to unfunded wars initiated by Republican presidents and by mostly unfunded natural disaster relief? Medicare and Medicaid are in the budget. Off budget items are a huge reason we have deficits and debt. Am I wrong?
I agree. We are way down the road of what he is doing. This discussion reminds me of people bewildered by Trumps strong and ruthless statements during his campaign. Here we are with him now acting out his words. The chaos is part of their plan. They are dismantling our system of governing and alienating our allies while belittling the American people accusing us of fraud against the government. A bunch of free loaders when in fact the money they have their eyes on are our own tax dollars. This is a complete take over. They are gaslighting us along as they remove our Achilles heel so we have no way of mobilizing. When it gets to that point Elon Musk will dismantle communications and we will be a Russian twin country with our own dictator and Europe will be at war because greedy Putin wants to control all of Europe. This is why Trump is signaling about Canada being the 51st state and wanting to buy greed land. And the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the gulf of America. It's treason. Call it what it is. We have tip toed around this man's bluster long enough
This is a COUP! There is nothing systematic about coups. I know because I lived through one. I do not expect 2026 midterm elections, and if they happen, Muskrat will fix it. It'll be a repeat of the 2024 election. None of these goons is acting in a way as if they're concerned about voter backlash, and that speaks louder than words. Voters are irrelevant in a dictatorship. As for Nate's comment "if we lose respect for the rule of law"....OMG, it's already happened! There's no "if" here.
America is on the edge but court cases are still happening and Musk/Trump are still acting like the courts matter. That might change in the future but don't make it happen by being nihilistic like Musk/Trump.
Let’s not do this. Silver tried to turn politics into sports ball betting. His models only work in hindsight, if sports ball results (or election results) were predictable there wouldn’t be any betting at all. Let Silver go back to sports, he isn’t worth listening to about politics.
I have heard that Trump only believes in a "I win, you lose" model of interaction. That precludes all "win-win" scenarios. Trump would actively try to kill such options if the assertion is correct. This seems consistent with recent behavior.
I'm not sure why they don't use the correct model of Trump which is that he is a malignant narcissist and all his interactions with others (countries included) are based on desperate need for adjulation, and power and revenge.
There's nothing at all mentioned or no analysis of this aspect of him and it's actually running the whole show.
Great conversation. You have been doing so many excellent live discussions with an interesting variety of people and I am enjoying all of them. Thank you, Dr Krugman.
Biden left Trump a “just right” economy fast growth, low unemployment, low inflation, strong dollar. Trump first month has been a disaster, ending with falling stock markets, falling market confidence, flip flops on important policies, big unresolved constitutional issues, rogue decision makers, sadisti
I have been enjoying Paul Krugman's writing for years, especially since he has been predicting the GOP turning into a fascist movement. And yet, he is surprised by the speed and the chaos of the destruction. I cannot comprehend this reaction for the life of me - this is precisely what fascism is, random, violent, fast, chaotic destruction of democracy. It's high time to react properly to this (for now )a non violent coup, but a coup nonetheless. It cannot be that even the best minds in the US ignore the historic lessons of fascism. The situation is grave, almost at the point of no return.
Because there’s no historical precedence for the speed of this paradigm shift absent a shooting war. Iraq comes to mind when the Baath party and all members were banned by the us provisional authority
I don't know enough about your that, to appreciate better your point. The historical precedents to me are fascism in Italy under Mussolini, nazism in Germany under Hitler, fascism in Spain under Franco, fascism (nazism?) in Yugoslavia before the destruction of the country etc. While the levels of destruction vary, the patterns of the speed of chaos and confusion are similar - so why in the world is Krugman surprised by it? Being surprised is mind boggling to me, I have been expecting it totally prepared - I already won number of bets with my friends who were claiming/expecting a slow process of deterioration. Exactly the same way friends were feeling in Yugoslavia when it all started, in Italy under Berlsuconi, in Hungary under Orban, now in Italy under under Meloni, ...Always the same tragic story when people need to keep pretending it's not happening then and thre. To so many fascisim belongs to the past or to others, never to us, and never when it starts taking place. This to is me far more dangerous than fascism itself. I have been watching for years now how even the best of journalists and opinion writers in the US kept ignoring the gravity of situation.
The de Baathification was done by decree, dismissing any party member in the Iraqi government overnight. That was the speed I referred to. I agree with all your examples and remarks
Making federal services like Social Security fail, due to staff cuts & underfunding, will give Trump/Musk the opportunistic excuse to PRIVATIZE them & channel public funds & assets to themselves & their wealthy oligarch pals.
The reason current AIs are so poor on visual processing is that they are designed to analyze textual information. To process visual information, you have to build specialized subsystems that impose obvious constraints like translation, rotation and magnification invariance and common distortions like parallax (shearing). Then you have to build a huge repository of standard items like edges of various shapes (again invariant under the appropriate symmetry groups). That massively reduces the rank of the linear algebra equations that the model solves. Since solving such problems scales worse than linear with most algorithms, the reduced rank massively speeds up solution and reduces power consumption. ...sorry for the long answer, but I did this with an OCR project back in the 1990s while working on my master's degree.
This was a good discussion but somehow I feel it entirely missed the point. This is takeover and destruction of the U.S. Government. It's a criminal matter. There needs to be a look at the unspeakable.
This is a criminal takeover but as Greg Sargent has pointed out the GOP is still acting like it has to be responsive to electoral influences. Trump cares about his electoral standing and so should we.
Why, trump told his followers that they wouldn’t have to ‘vote again’?!?!
So a felon convicted 34 times for fraud might not be telling the truth? He might be engaging in wishful thinking?
Paul, why aren’t people talking about the large portion of national debt related to unfunded wars initiated by Republican presidents and by mostly unfunded natural disaster relief? Medicare and Medicaid are in the budget. Off budget items are a huge reason we have deficits and debt. Am I wrong?
I don't see it. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/27/republicans-trump-threats?utm_term=67c061d1ee118bb63143f34aa95bc50b&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUS_email
1. https://bsky.app/profile/gregsargent.bsky.social/post/3liue3l4oe22j
2. https://bsky.app/profile/gregsargent.bsky.social/post/3litu62b6l22g
3. https://bsky.app/profile/gregsargent.bsky.social/post/3lirpf6txoc2o
4. https://bsky.app/profile/gregsargent.bsky.social/post/3lirfego76226
5. https://bsky.app/profile/gregsargent.bsky.social/post/3lirfaaqse226
I could go on.
it seems they kind of shifted gears to avoid a pit of despair.
I agree. We are way down the road of what he is doing. This discussion reminds me of people bewildered by Trumps strong and ruthless statements during his campaign. Here we are with him now acting out his words. The chaos is part of their plan. They are dismantling our system of governing and alienating our allies while belittling the American people accusing us of fraud against the government. A bunch of free loaders when in fact the money they have their eyes on are our own tax dollars. This is a complete take over. They are gaslighting us along as they remove our Achilles heel so we have no way of mobilizing. When it gets to that point Elon Musk will dismantle communications and we will be a Russian twin country with our own dictator and Europe will be at war because greedy Putin wants to control all of Europe. This is why Trump is signaling about Canada being the 51st state and wanting to buy greed land. And the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the gulf of America. It's treason. Call it what it is. We have tip toed around this man's bluster long enough
This is a COUP! There is nothing systematic about coups. I know because I lived through one. I do not expect 2026 midterm elections, and if they happen, Muskrat will fix it. It'll be a repeat of the 2024 election. None of these goons is acting in a way as if they're concerned about voter backlash, and that speaks louder than words. Voters are irrelevant in a dictatorship. As for Nate's comment "if we lose respect for the rule of law"....OMG, it's already happened! There's no "if" here.
America is on the edge but court cases are still happening and Musk/Trump are still acting like the courts matter. That might change in the future but don't make it happen by being nihilistic like Musk/Trump.
Let’s not do this. Silver tried to turn politics into sports ball betting. His models only work in hindsight, if sports ball results (or election results) were predictable there wouldn’t be any betting at all. Let Silver go back to sports, he isn’t worth listening to about politics.
Even Krugman talks as if things are normal; that the centre is holding. It isn't. We're living a catastrophe.
I have heard that Trump only believes in a "I win, you lose" model of interaction. That precludes all "win-win" scenarios. Trump would actively try to kill such options if the assertion is correct. This seems consistent with recent behavior.
I'm not sure why they don't use the correct model of Trump which is that he is a malignant narcissist and all his interactions with others (countries included) are based on desperate need for adjulation, and power and revenge.
There's nothing at all mentioned or no analysis of this aspect of him and it's actually running the whole show.
So many Billionaires, so many cowards, still on playground getting beat up by the bully....
Great conversation. You have been doing so many excellent live discussions with an interesting variety of people and I am enjoying all of them. Thank you, Dr Krugman.
You aren’t seeing the point. Trump doesn’t expect to ever leave the office of the presidency. He doesn’t give a shit what Elon is doing.
Biden left Trump a “just right” economy fast growth, low unemployment, low inflation, strong dollar. Trump first month has been a disaster, ending with falling stock markets, falling market confidence, flip flops on important policies, big unresolved constitutional issues, rogue decision makers, sadisti
I have been enjoying Paul Krugman's writing for years, especially since he has been predicting the GOP turning into a fascist movement. And yet, he is surprised by the speed and the chaos of the destruction. I cannot comprehend this reaction for the life of me - this is precisely what fascism is, random, violent, fast, chaotic destruction of democracy. It's high time to react properly to this (for now )a non violent coup, but a coup nonetheless. It cannot be that even the best minds in the US ignore the historic lessons of fascism. The situation is grave, almost at the point of no return.
Because there’s no historical precedence for the speed of this paradigm shift absent a shooting war. Iraq comes to mind when the Baath party and all members were banned by the us provisional authority
I don't know enough about your that, to appreciate better your point. The historical precedents to me are fascism in Italy under Mussolini, nazism in Germany under Hitler, fascism in Spain under Franco, fascism (nazism?) in Yugoslavia before the destruction of the country etc. While the levels of destruction vary, the patterns of the speed of chaos and confusion are similar - so why in the world is Krugman surprised by it? Being surprised is mind boggling to me, I have been expecting it totally prepared - I already won number of bets with my friends who were claiming/expecting a slow process of deterioration. Exactly the same way friends were feeling in Yugoslavia when it all started, in Italy under Berlsuconi, in Hungary under Orban, now in Italy under under Meloni, ...Always the same tragic story when people need to keep pretending it's not happening then and thre. To so many fascisim belongs to the past or to others, never to us, and never when it starts taking place. This to is me far more dangerous than fascism itself. I have been watching for years now how even the best of journalists and opinion writers in the US kept ignoring the gravity of situation.
The de Baathification was done by decree, dismissing any party member in the Iraqi government overnight. That was the speed I referred to. I agree with all your examples and remarks
I hope MAGA understands that the disabled, like a handicapped sibling, when your parents die, depends on Medicaid.
Making federal services like Social Security fail, due to staff cuts & underfunding, will give Trump/Musk the opportunistic excuse to PRIVATIZE them & channel public funds & assets to themselves & their wealthy oligarch pals.
The reason current AIs are so poor on visual processing is that they are designed to analyze textual information. To process visual information, you have to build specialized subsystems that impose obvious constraints like translation, rotation and magnification invariance and common distortions like parallax (shearing). Then you have to build a huge repository of standard items like edges of various shapes (again invariant under the appropriate symmetry groups). That massively reduces the rank of the linear algebra equations that the model solves. Since solving such problems scales worse than linear with most algorithms, the reduced rank massively speeds up solution and reduces power consumption. ...sorry for the long answer, but I did this with an OCR project back in the 1990s while working on my master's degree.
AI is not intelligent. Eventually people will figure that out.
It doesn’t need to be, they can filter and sort information, and push some content, and suppress others. Thats all it needs to do.
Ummm the plastic straw thing is for federal government offices Nate
We all got our beer goggles, Shaun.
don't slow now, Mr. Krugman, you're needed!