Yes. It's another example of the incompetence that permeates this Administration. It's not just the Cabinet members and other senior staff who are so frequently in the news. At the lower levels of staffing--and the chart was probably prepared there--they've hired people with no experience or expertise. And, BTW, if Moore's data is so consistently incorrect, maybe he's more than merely incompetent, maybe--and Mr. Krugman may be too polite to write it--just maybe Moore is a pathological liar.
They belong to the same school, i.e. "you tell them and they believe you, they just do." So they tell it like is isn't. Reject reality so it fits their ignorance and prejudices. That is why the truth and facts are accused of having a liberal bias.
Eisenhower was on balance ok. He got a lot of points for finally seeing the light in his farewell address warning us of a danger that was ignored after 1964's election of Johnson. GOP evils in those days were Lodge and the Dulles boys.
Eisenhower’s Federal-aid Highway Act of ‘56 was a major accomplishment in interstate travel. Can’t imagine a Republican doing anything like that today. But it is offset by Mosaddegh’s ouster in ‘53 for some inexplicable reason….might possibly have had something to do with oil
I'd agree except the term "incompetence" is off the mark. Trump's team are very good at what they are doing. So far it's working. Evil is a much more accurate term. Good old fashioned uncomplicated evil.
There's probably a confusion here also with hara-kiri, which I believe means gut-cutting, a vulgar term for seppuku. BTW I think kamikaze ultimately refers to a flight of supernatural beings that miraculously saved a badly outnumbered Japanese fleet. But we really need a real Japanese expert here.
I think it was intentional; they knew they were spouting lies so they made up a new word — like he always does — hoping the public wouldn’t notice. He really does think Americans are stupid.
No, they aren't spouting lies, since they've lost touch with reality and no longer know or care what's real. Everything is whole-cloth Joe Isuzu flim-flam and BS. They don't lie so much as spin utter flim-flam whether it's economic razzle-dazzle or psychopathic dogwhistles about crime in DC. Confuse and disorient, it's all about what N.B. Forrest called "Keeping up the scare"
He's the Heritage Society, aka: Project 2025's, favorite economist. That tells us that everything they believe, say and are doing is based in a snarled knot of stupid lies.
And they are the ones really running things. Until Trump gets an inkling of a clue ,and purges them, too. I can't wait.
Yes. Ever read the little book by Harry Frankfurt, an academic and philosopher, entitled "On Bullshit"? Bullshit's way more dangerous than lies because at least the liar knows what is true. Bullshitters don't, it's a borderline personality trait and can lead to nothing good.
See the quotes? I'm quoting what others say, and it is, as we both agree, wrong. I lost count of how many MAGA talking heads used the word "systematic" to lie with a straight face, that there is no systemic racism.
Getting back to hillBilly Long from Missouri being the former IRS commissioner spending the shortest amount of time in a senate approved seat since 1862? I think I just read in AP....now that the "US Govt" is going to get a 15% cut of Nvidia's & is it AMD? semi-conductor chips sold to China, does that mean Billy is getting the short end of the stick? After all, Scott Bessent will now be IRS commissioner, as well as head of the US Treasury, so that's just one gatekeeper with access to the vault, as well as receipts--rather than two--grifters with whom Trump will have to share his "tariff revenue." Why ambassador to Iceland? Reading up a little more on Ghislaine Maxwell, apparently, she married another Missouri boy--a Scott Borgerson.....you can read up on him in BBNTimes.com and wonder if that's what the two Missouri farm boys' connection to Iceland may be. There's a hedge funder & a Google exec behind Mr. Coast Guard military man-turned-tech-mogul.
Well, to be sure, Americans do tend to be stupid en masse. But Trump appears to be far too stupid to judge such things, and if he himself put the misspelling in, it was because President Hamberder didn't know the difference or give a shit about it.
it kind of reminds me of the thing where Trump's bizarre fixation on Hannibal Lecter in various speeches may have been because he thought "political asylum" and "asylum seekers" had something to do with insane asylums.
Or perhaps they really meant 'average', which is of course heavily skewed by the ultra-high incomes. In fact, with that definition the numbers might be right, since the wealth disparity has increased under Trump.
"Though we commonly use the word average in everyday life when discussing the number that’s the most “typical” or that’s “in the middle” of a group of values, more precise terms are used in math and statistics. Namely, the words mean, median, and mode each represent a different calculation or interpretation of which value in a data set is the most common or most representative of the set as a whole."
Median - The middle number in a set of values when those values are arranged from smallest to largest.
Mode - The most frequently repeated value in a set of values.
Mean - The number you get by dividing the sum of a set of values by the number of values in the set.
As you're using average, you are using "mean" - which, as you identify, would skew high. In this case, with someone who claims to be an economist, I would expect them to use the mathematically precise word for what they are describing. None of which are "medium" - so well done to Paul for calling him out. Rare insight.
I am aware of these distinctions, and was using 'average' in the numerical sense where it is equivalent to 'mean'. (Just like 'energy' has a clear definition in a science context, but is used for many things commonly.) The interesting point is that his graph might be right for the average (or mean), while certainly wrong for the median.
I seriously doubt that they "really" meant anything. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing except the burning desire to mislead the public.
That being said, the table on the photograph bears the character sequence "(50% percentile)" which is a pretty strong indicator that they indeed confused "medium" with "median", c.f. https://www.google.com/search?q=50th+percentile
The "average" is always mean to the "median" occurrence in Econ.
Zero is a hard floor for most "real world" phenomena. You can only have a negative direction of volume or number of something Newtonian. You can't have negative fish caught or tons of steel smelted, only trends among otherwise positive values.
So, in most measurements of productive economic activity, "long tails" pull the mean above the median.
It’s the mistake of someone who does not read, and therefore does not understand as much as they think, a description that applies both to Trump and many of his chosen aides. This is not the first example.
Dunning-Kruger's good on this. Laurence Peter's thesis in his book "The Peter Principle" outlining how in a hierarchy employees ascend until they reach their level of incompetence, stagnate there, and become conservatives. Thus dooming the organization to incompetence. Heritage Foundation, for starters.
"Medium" is probably the correct usage here. But I'm not sure whether the numbers came from Moore's crystal ball, the lines on his palm, or a Tarot deck. Possibly what he read off his toilet paper.
"Medium" is probably the correct usage here, but has nothing to do with occultism. It means halfway between Biden's work ("well done") and having a decent job ("rare").
From my observations, its a weird mix of indifference ("Don't bore me with politics! They're all corrupt!") and the solid conviction that the other side, we democrats, liberals, intellectuals etc. are dangerous monsters that only the right wing, WHEN led by Trump (see: his superhero cards) can protect them from.
Those who will even acknowledge Trump&CO have faults, still believe he is our "Churchill", the bulldog hero* ("warts and all!") protecting us from the horrors of ??? who knows? Socialism? Atheism? Equality for All?
*See his stupid photo of him scowling into the camera. Just like Churchill! /s
The other day ran into a piece in a usually sober source (the Financial Times, I think) that spoke of the rationale for some Administration stuff, leading me to construct a new verse for the Irrationale which ended "The international Idiocracy shall be the human race!" This verse is in the public domain.
On the other hand, the fact that the Trump Administration is staffed with incompetent jerks, might just save American democracy. It would be worse if they were actually good at what they try to do.
I'm afraid it was already good enough to undermine and destroy all democratic institutions and checks and balances in the US, including the corrupt Supreme Court, and to manipulate, deceive, and dupe the majority of fact-free, angry, uneducated US citizens for the self-interest of him and his willing, anti-democratic, incompetent, unscrupulous, racist helpers. Says a lot about the actual state of US society as a whole. Totally fucked up and on the straight way to become fascist, already actively helping other dictators like Putin and Kim, his "dear friends". I'm shivering.
I would suggest that a good share of Trump voters im 2016 and 2024 are educated White people earning over $100k per year who simply hate to pay taxes. They vote taxes. That's it. Period. They're usually White, have a mortgage on a McMansion, Judeo-Christian, and anti-trans. We need to stop blaming it on only the unwashed uneducated. Those are the voters that might be convinced to vote against Republican Trumpers. You will never convince a no-tax, hate-filled, greed monster who has plenty but wants more, and to hell with people who need government services, person to vote against a Republican.
I agree with you. The list of characteristics of Trump voters wasn't intended to be exhaustive ;-)
But when you talk about "educated" people, I have doubts about education in the US in general: Education has/should be about facts and the ability to distinguish between untruths and proven facts and the ability of factfinding. If someone can't do that, I don't consider them truly educated, regardless of their degrees and income. Thats just my personal view of that matter, others can disagree, np.
Historical US economic data shows that, in general, Democratic governments have led to significantly more prosperity in the US than Republican ones. But what Republicans are really good at is making the rich even richer. The old lie about Reagan's "trickle-down" economy comes to mind; it has long been factually refuted as a lie and its still active. I was back then working in the US and I remember that time well.
Trump's economic performance in his first term was lower than Biden's. I actually expect truly educated people to know this (and vote accordingly). The richest 1% couldn't care less because they have always profited and skimmed off far more from the growth of the US economy than 99% of the rest of the country's citizens. The rich few always get the lion's share. The system is designed by and for them, thakns to political Lobbying.
It would be interesting to read an analysis by an economic historian to finally dispel this widespread old myth. And to stop Trump's lies. People who fall for such blunt lies are certainly not educated in the classical sense and not smart either. But they may be white, greedy and antisocial. Of course, that fits Trump's appeal perfectly.
Educated doesn't mean informed. These people are mis-and un-informed. Whatever their education, wherever they got it, they are not trained to rely upon facts, to double-check, to ask questions.
Perhaps its part of the authoritarian-following personality? Follow orders, believe the leaders, don't ask questions.
I understand what you're saying and am with you in principle. But I guess I am more cynical than you. Round up your average 35 y.o. voter with a bachelor's degree (in any field except economics) who hold down jobs and are 'successful' in life and ask them, in general, what major economic events have happened since 2000, and what presidential policies have made them worse or better. I bet you'd have a 70% fail rate. But they could all earn 100% in a quiz of celebrity news, and at least 30% of them could repeat verbatim RFKJr's antivax creed.
Wait until their mother's social security checks stop coming. At the Federal level, benefits are skewed toward the relatively well off. Much of what the MAGA right calls welfare are actually industrial subsidies. Sure, pull the plug on food stamps, medicare, and medicaid, and watch whole sections of the US economy collapse.
"Good at what they do" suggests competence. In the first Trump admin. competence by some cabinet members is what saved us. Loyalty without competence is precisely why we are losing our democracy---these people do whatever the idiot tells them to do. There is only one person running the show--that's a BIG problem.
I completely agree with you. This "fact-free, narcissistic, lying, self-promoting fake reality TV show" is not an administration, not a government; he's just a ruthless, self-enriching would-be dictator and a gangster one-man show operating unhindered. He will trample on every American value that has ever existed and replace them with his own brutal greed for money and absolute power.
Yes, that's really a BIG problem. And the end of US democracy.
It is best to assume the worst here. Yes, Moore says nonsensical things, as does Trump. But they are executing on lower taxes and monies to the rich. Russell Vought is a jerk but he is competently running rings around the opposition. Meanwhile the putatively competent are back on their heels, not resisting, disorganized and lost two out the last three elections to these guys.
Vought, Vance and Thiel are the ones you really have to worry about. When Trump steps down billions richer, Vance will be the tool of the oligarchy and the Project 2025-ers.
"...he is competently running rings around the opposition".
That's true, but only because there isn't much opposition. The SCOTUS "gang of six" isn't opposition - even though it's supposed to be. Republicans in both chambers aren't opposition - even though they're supposed to be. And so on and so forth.
And with only a few exceptions, the Democratic opposition is largely accustomed to rolling over on their backs and tucking their tails firmly between their legs for their big donor overlords.
Amen! One of the major differences between Trump 1 and Trump 2 is that in Trump 1 there were a certain number of competent and intelligent people in the Executive Branch, and they wouldn’t let Trump do what he wanted to do. A major feature of Trump 2 is that there’s nobody in a position of power or influence who is smarter or more competent than Trump himself. And Trump isn’t very bright or at all competent, which is a recipe for Extremely Weird and Mostly Illegal stuff happening. The fact that the Trump Administration, taken as a whole, could fuck up a two-car funeral may be the salvation of American Democracy.
I think however that is the point of the book Krugman referenced. All totalitarians insert complete hacks. So the hackiness is a feature of successful totalitarianism, not a bug that you can count on to save democracy.
Anne Applebaum has made a similar observation about recent right-wing regimes in Poland and Hungary: that they were staffed by incompetents resentful of smarter people. She sees this as a kind of successor to pre-WW II anti-semitism. In the relative absence of Jews to discriminate against, dumb, ignorant Gentiles can exclude smart, well-educated Gentiles belonging to their own ethnic group (Polish or Hungarian) from well-paid or powerful positions. For instance, the Polish foreign ministry stopped accepting foreign language skills as a qualification that counted towards promotion in that part of the Polish government.
Mao also sent smart/educated people (including anyone who wore glasses!) to live in the caves. In 2005, in China, I met a man whose parents were sent to the caves.
"Incompetents resentful of smarter people" is pretty much the modern far-right wave in a nutshell; it's even stronger than racism, sexism, or any of the more classic phobias. Even if they could forgive black people for being black or immigrants for being immigrants, they can never forgive the smartypants for having been right about everything.
Yuval Noah Harari stated in one of his books that only priests could read the holy book, hence how they lorded it over the masses and it apparently carried over into Christianity until the Gutenberg printing press helped Martin Luther in his endeavors.
Check out last Thursday’s Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell where he interviews David Blight, a Yale historian. Blight makes a remarkable case explaining how this administration is trying to wipe out societies’ advances since the ENLIGHTENMENT. Mind blowing.
Yeah, the "Three Stooges": Larry, Joe, Hurley and Shemp. You only ever saw three at a time (in fact, the Wikipedia page for the act counts 6 stooges over the time the act was famous, with Larry and Moe the only constants
He actually graduated Summa Cum Laude from Ohio State. He graduated from Yale with a Juris Doctor degree.
There is no question that he got an education there. Yale, however, put him rubbing shoulders with "the elites", who left him with an inferiority complex. No telling where that will lead.
I was aware of is biography. But there is more to "education" than the mastery of the facts and procedutes of one'field. The lack of social empathy and self-awareness is appalling, the more so in someone who professes the law. The only evidence we have of social conscience or concern is that Vance was a Trump critic before he abased himself. Or debased himself, if you will.
Vance is a sharp guy, but utterly amoral and hypocritical. It would not surprise me at all to see him replace his wife and kids with something blonder and Christian.
It would surprise me a bit. Not that I think he's particularly moral, but he did convert to Catholicism some time back, and the Church tends to disapprove of "serial monogamy." He would want to carefully balance the pros and cons.
Trump and Moore know that can “get away with it.” They can do so with at least 30% of the population for the simple reason that the media (the entire media and not just Fox “News”) will fail to make it a headline that, for example, “Trump and Bizarre Economist Present Misleading Numbers in Briefing.” Until the media widely makes it a headline when an official lies about facts, a large portion of the population will lazily let themselves be mislead. The media’s unethical reporting “of both sides” even when one side claims that the sun goes around the Earth is destroying our nation. It seems that the media cares as little about fact as Trump.
It isn't just authoritarians. Years ago in West Virginia, a very small church had a very smart, skilled minister whom they shared with the denomination because they could not afford his salary on their own. When he left, they informed the denomination that they wanted their next minister to have "a lot less skills." Why? I assume because they could control a less skilled person, jerk him around. But it was astonishing that people would admit that they wanted someone less competent.
The retiring minister was deeply hurt, but at least they admitted he was extremely competent.
The competent cannot be controlled as easily if at all. They are not going to be manipulated. Trump has always hired mediocre people for the Trump Organization. They could not easily leave and get better jobs, and they knew it.
One of Trump's former lackeys, Michael Cohen, has seen the light and is fighting back tooth and nail. He's a great writer and his sub stack is entertaining and informative. I hope readers will check it out.
Stephen Moore is almost a cartoon of dishonesty. Then, so is Trump. He has now shown business by his "deal" with Nvidia that the path for any approval is by bribe to the dictator. Want to sell or merge? Nat'l security or monopoly a problem? 15% should do it. The money goes to the US, but unilateral power in all things accretes to Trump. He becomes the sole path for all things.
Arendt's writings a must read.
“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.” - Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
“The Origins of Totalitarianism,” Hannah Arendt noted how “Mass Propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.”
Yes, exactly. Every time I’ve seen him appear as a commentator on a show over the years, he has that used-car salesman smirk as he rattles off lies that he knows are lies and that he knows you know are lies. I don’t get why he keeps getting airtime on reality-based outlets.
Today your insight/research piece, provided a audible chuckle from me. I needed that (hapen). Now, back to the resistance. Thanks Professor once again for your work.
The book by Paul Collier, Left Behind and Austerity by Mark Blyth have given me the clearest understanding of the problem. States provide security and public goods in exchange for taxes. People need to feel they are getting fair return for their taxes. Rich people always fear the state will get greedy and take too much of their wealth, so they constantly work to weaken the state. We are operating in a period when the wealthy have been extremely successful in weakening the state through attacks on its institutions and by confusing the public through outlets like Fox News but there’s lots of others these days. We have all made that bargain with the state though and most average people dutifully pay their taxes, while many / most rich people avoid taxes. I don’t think rich people or businesses are evil. There are great businesses, but rich people and businesses need to be constrained, or they become mobsters. Ordinary people need their own institutional actors to balance the power of business and the wealthy. Your work helps tremendously to empower people, so thank you. The coda doesn’t work in Canada, but we’ll live. The forces operating in the US also operate here and pose the same challenges.
Two things that would make a huge difference is getting the money out of your politics, seriously limit the admissible amount for donations and strictly police the inevitable efforts to get around the rules. Pack your court if you have to; do whatever it takes. Change the way electoral districts are assigned. Create an independent body and process people can trust to do this. If you can do that and restaff and restructure if necessary the institutions Trump has torn apart you will be a long way back to health. Then, there as in Canada and many other countries, as outlined in a recent FT article on left behind, often agricultural (but not solely) regions, find a way to bring these areas back to life, preferably led by local initiatives but with support from governments.
Republicans have certainly used some pretty nefarious tactics to achieve a partisan majority who don’t care about checks and balances. I guess you would need solid majorities in the house and senate to fix that, but I remember thinking, when Obama won after the tragedy of 9/11 and the Iraq debacle, I will never underestimate America’s ability to reinvent itself. I still think that.
Loved starting my week with 1 2 3 4 music video! The pace suits me to a tee this morning.
Loved your rant on Steven Moore, a symbol of deliberate ignorance to advance duplicity and crooks. You have the best rants--uncoiled brilliance sprung like a rat trap.
Hate totalitarians who rely on the stupid to prop up their socio-pathological insecurities. Hannah Arendt rocks.
Like Bondi, Patel, Nutlick, Noem, the lot of them - the only requisite job qualification is pathological lying ability. This is the require feature, not a bug.
Oh, how the Mighty Have...well, not fallen so much as ceded the field of play to the worst bunch of mooks, knuckleheads, lowlifes, reason-manglers and charlatans gathered together in one place since god was a pup.
I blame the parents for failing to give the Mighty a proper fetchins up.
I don’t think you can blame parents for the ungodly things done by their adult children. Lately our once-great Nation has glorified greed and cheating - and simultaneously rid us of the regulators and independent bodies who police that kind of behavior. So the greediest have run amok. It’s systemic not parental …. And God can’t correct us. We have to do it ourselves.
I've read that DonnyJon's daddy tried hard to do this. He decided that he couldn't do it himself, and sent DonnyJon to military school (this was the preferred "solution" for problem boys back then). The school was also incapable of doing the job, and DonnyJon basically became the boss there. For example, at one point, he tried to toss another boy out of a high window. The proper solution probably would've been electroshock therapy back then, but I've read that even that is not as effective as was hoped.
I personally believe things like this are not mistakes, but a celebration of ignorance. A deep part of the MAGA ethos is a postmodern sneer at people who care about things like spelling or facts. We keep thinking they will lose credibility with these mistakes, because we would: it's what we care about. But they never do. I think they delight in the upset they cause, and the gnashing of teeth among Trump's opponents is a validation of why they voted for him.
Lately, I am often reminded of the Woody Allen movie, Bananas, where the newly installed dictator decrees the following, 'From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. Silence! In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now... 16 years old!' Maybe he should have said the medium age is now 16...
A couple questions: Do you think Harvard should have caved to the felon trump?
And, as I was shopping for an replacement office chair, I noticed what I called'junkification and junkflation.' The replacement options were of much lesser quality at similar prices to my older chair. I thought the chairs were designed by a physical therapist organization looking for extra work from people sitting in the poorly constructed and designed chairs.
I do not think that junkification/junkflation are part of the overall inflation numbers, or are they included?. Could it be similar to the inflation data that refers to the option of eating chicken instead of beef, therefore, inflation impacts are lessened. Similar, yet different. Maybe more akin to shrinkflation where people receive less for the same price?
Trump and his DOJ cronies are now demanding a billion dollars from UCLA, which is essentially an attack on the entire UC system of which UCLA is a part. He hopes to crush research entirely. The UCLA story is not being widely reported because the corporate billionaire media now considers it normal for this administration to go after universities, even a public university.
Thank you for pointing that out. I had heard a little about UCLA's trump shakedown but it hasn't received the attention of the IVYs. trump is destroying America's future one power grab at a time. He is a menace to all that is good.
What was the Baskin-Robbins motto? "There is hardly anything that someone cannot make more poorly and cheaply." Well, these guys got the poorly part down.
"medium" for "median" is not a misspelling. It is ignorance of the word "median."
Yes. It's another example of the incompetence that permeates this Administration. It's not just the Cabinet members and other senior staff who are so frequently in the news. At the lower levels of staffing--and the chart was probably prepared there--they've hired people with no experience or expertise. And, BTW, if Moore's data is so consistently incorrect, maybe he's more than merely incompetent, maybe--and Mr. Krugman may be too polite to write it--just maybe Moore is a pathological liar.
They belong to the same school, i.e. "you tell them and they believe you, they just do." So they tell it like is isn't. Reject reality so it fits their ignorance and prejudices. That is why the truth and facts are accused of having a liberal bias.
"...and the chart was probably prepared there..."
Probably, but also most likely based on a chart that Trumpkopf himself drew with a sharpie.
And how many millions of voters believed it ?
Edward R Murrow said that a nation of sheep begets a government of wolves.
And the GOP keeps proving it, since 1953.
Eisenhower was on balance ok. He got a lot of points for finally seeing the light in his farewell address warning us of a danger that was ignored after 1964's election of Johnson. GOP evils in those days were Lodge and the Dulles boys.
Eisenhower’s Federal-aid Highway Act of ‘56 was a major accomplishment in interstate travel. Can’t imagine a Republican doing anything like that today. But it is offset by Mosaddegh’s ouster in ‘53 for some inexplicable reason….might possibly have had something to do with oil
Yeah, Ike was ok. Sen. Joe McCarthy and Tricky Dickie on the other hand...
I'd agree except the term "incompetence" is off the mark. Trump's team are very good at what they are doing. So far it's working. Evil is a much more accurate term. Good old fashioned uncomplicated evil.
Actually, I think the word you want is "seppuku", or "self-disembowelment", a hideous way to die.
A kamikaze attacks an enemy. MAGA's are helping all of ours.
There's probably a confusion here also with hara-kiri, which I believe means gut-cutting, a vulgar term for seppuku. BTW I think kamikaze ultimately refers to a flight of supernatural beings that miraculously saved a badly outnumbered Japanese fleet. But we really need a real Japanese expert here.
I think it was intentional; they knew they were spouting lies so they made up a new word — like he always does — hoping the public wouldn’t notice. He really does think Americans are stupid.
77 million voters proved it.
A "heart" is not the proper emoji as a response here. I'd like to use Munch's Scream instead.
That's a great suggestion - all copyright issues aside
77 million idiots and white supremacy Nazis
No, they aren't spouting lies, since they've lost touch with reality and no longer know or care what's real. Everything is whole-cloth Joe Isuzu flim-flam and BS. They don't lie so much as spin utter flim-flam whether it's economic razzle-dazzle or psychopathic dogwhistles about crime in DC. Confuse and disorient, it's all about what N.B. Forrest called "Keeping up the scare"
He's the Heritage Society, aka: Project 2025's, favorite economist. That tells us that everything they believe, say and are doing is based in a snarled knot of stupid lies.
And they are the ones really running things. Until Trump gets an inkling of a clue ,and purges them, too. I can't wait.
Joe Isuzu! I haven't heard that name in decades!
Well, you have a whole side of the political spectrum, the Wrong, doing that shtick. The Divine Right of the Wrong.
Yes. Ever read the little book by Harry Frankfurt, an academic and philosopher, entitled "On Bullshit"? Bullshit's way more dangerous than lies because at least the liar knows what is true. Bullshitters don't, it's a borderline personality trait and can lead to nothing good.
sdean: "No, they aren't spouting lies, since they've lost touch with reality and no longer know or care what's real."
Oh, they have to care very much what is real and what the truth is. How else can they expect to be able to avoid the truth at all costs?
See also: conflating "systematic" with "systemic", as in "There is NO systematic racism!"
Disagree….it’s both
See the quotes? I'm quoting what others say, and it is, as we both agree, wrong. I lost count of how many MAGA talking heads used the word "systematic" to lie with a straight face, that there is no systemic racism.
He really does think Americans are stupid. Pure projection. Didn't he say he loves the uneducated?
Meaning himself?
A sufficiently large number of Americans WERE stupid enough to ensure Trump’s reelection.
Getting back to hillBilly Long from Missouri being the former IRS commissioner spending the shortest amount of time in a senate approved seat since 1862? I think I just read in AP....now that the "US Govt" is going to get a 15% cut of Nvidia's & is it AMD? semi-conductor chips sold to China, does that mean Billy is getting the short end of the stick? After all, Scott Bessent will now be IRS commissioner, as well as head of the US Treasury, so that's just one gatekeeper with access to the vault, as well as receipts--rather than two--grifters with whom Trump will have to share his "tariff revenue." Why ambassador to Iceland? Reading up a little more on Ghislaine Maxwell, apparently, she married another Missouri boy--a Scott Borgerson.....you can read up on him in BBNTimes.com and wonder if that's what the two Missouri farm boys' connection to Iceland may be. There's a hedge funder & a Google exec behind Mr. Coast Guard military man-turned-tech-mogul.
Well, as far as the Americans who support him are concerned, he's right - they "are" stupid.
Well, to be sure, Americans do tend to be stupid en masse. But Trump appears to be far too stupid to judge such things, and if he himself put the misspelling in, it was because President Hamberder didn't know the difference or give a shit about it.
50% of the population are below average. Can we get a stats maven to verify?
This. I can easily imagine there being conversations in the White House about the medium income.
Mediums do well, but it's largely psychic income.
It fits well with virtual pay raises.
The Laura Loomer crowd
it kind of reminds me of the thing where Trump's bizarre fixation on Hannibal Lecter in various speeches may have been because he thought "political asylum" and "asylum seekers" had something to do with insane asylums.
Or perhaps they really meant 'average', which is of course heavily skewed by the ultra-high incomes. In fact, with that definition the numbers might be right, since the wealth disparity has increased under Trump.
Except "Median" IS average. So is "mode" and "mean".
From https://www.dictionary.com/e/average-vs-mean-vs-median-vs-mode/
"Though we commonly use the word average in everyday life when discussing the number that’s the most “typical” or that’s “in the middle” of a group of values, more precise terms are used in math and statistics. Namely, the words mean, median, and mode each represent a different calculation or interpretation of which value in a data set is the most common or most representative of the set as a whole."
Median - The middle number in a set of values when those values are arranged from smallest to largest.
Mode - The most frequently repeated value in a set of values.
Mean - The number you get by dividing the sum of a set of values by the number of values in the set.
As you're using average, you are using "mean" - which, as you identify, would skew high. In this case, with someone who claims to be an economist, I would expect them to use the mathematically precise word for what they are describing. None of which are "medium" - so well done to Paul for calling him out. Rare insight.
I am aware of these distinctions, and was using 'average' in the numerical sense where it is equivalent to 'mean'. (Just like 'energy' has a clear definition in a science context, but is used for many things commonly.) The interesting point is that his graph might be right for the average (or mean), while certainly wrong for the median.
Mean = average.
If you have the same amount of money and the same number of incomes, the mean will not change, even when that money is divided up differently.
What you say is true by definition. But where on that graph did it say there was the same amount of money, or same number of incomes?
Median is not average; it simply means half are higher and half are lower. Oligarchs don’t influence median but they would affect average/mean.
Your first two sentences are factually incorrect
"Or perhaps they really meant 'average'"
I seriously doubt that they "really" meant anything. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing except the burning desire to mislead the public.
That being said, the table on the photograph bears the character sequence "(50% percentile)" which is a pretty strong indicator that they indeed confused "medium" with "median", c.f. https://www.google.com/search?q=50th+percentile
You got it, I think. What an absurd exercise, trying to make sense out of gobbledygook.
The "average" is always mean to the "median" occurrence in Econ.
Zero is a hard floor for most "real world" phenomena. You can only have a negative direction of volume or number of something Newtonian. You can't have negative fish caught or tons of steel smelted, only trends among otherwise positive values.
So, in most measurements of productive economic activity, "long tails" pull the mean above the median.
I like my stakes median rear.
Well, this chart is certainly a rare one; i.e. not well done.
Trump's chart may very well have came out from the rear end of a cow.
It’s the mistake of someone who does not read, and therefore does not understand as much as they think, a description that applies both to Trump and many of his chosen aides. This is not the first example.
Dunning-Kruger effect. Except Moore is supposedly a qualified economist.
'supposedly' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here....
Indeed!
Dunning-Kruger's good on this. Laurence Peter's thesis in his book "The Peter Principle" outlining how in a hierarchy employees ascend until they reach their level of incompetence, stagnate there, and become conservatives. Thus dooming the organization to incompetence. Heritage Foundation, for starters.
For all intensive purposes, yes. :)
LOL
It's a symptom of total ignorance.
"Medium" is probably the correct usage here. But I'm not sure whether the numbers came from Moore's crystal ball, the lines on his palm, or a Tarot deck. Possibly what he read off his toilet paper.
"Medium" is probably the correct usage here, but has nothing to do with occultism. It means halfway between Biden's work ("well done") and having a decent job ("rare").
It could also be a distraction strategy.
He can run but he can't hide. It will follow him wherever he goes till he goes into the ground. Epstein! Epstein! Epstein!
Chaos, fear, confusion, and distraction, are Trump's favorite means of dominating those around him.
As far as a considerable swath of this country is concerned Trump is correct about their stupidity.
From my observations, its a weird mix of indifference ("Don't bore me with politics! They're all corrupt!") and the solid conviction that the other side, we democrats, liberals, intellectuals etc. are dangerous monsters that only the right wing, WHEN led by Trump (see: his superhero cards) can protect them from.
Those who will even acknowledge Trump&CO have faults, still believe he is our "Churchill", the bulldog hero* ("warts and all!") protecting us from the horrors of ??? who knows? Socialism? Atheism? Equality for All?
*See his stupid photo of him scowling into the camera. Just like Churchill! /s
Inconceivable!
This. Idiocracy has arrived 500 years early!
The other day ran into a piece in a usually sober source (the Financial Times, I think) that spoke of the rationale for some Administration stuff, leading me to construct a new verse for the Irrationale which ended "The international Idiocracy shall be the human race!" This verse is in the public domain.
Moore live-auditioning for Fed Chair Jay Powell's job? He obviously has both tRump's ear and heart, so yeah.
Heart? He don’t need no stinkin’ heart!
Scary
The median is the message
Maybe S. Moore contacted Zoran the Magnificent to ask the spirits
to deliver the numbers to him .
That’s a “ medium “ well understood .
On the other hand, the fact that the Trump Administration is staffed with incompetent jerks, might just save American democracy. It would be worse if they were actually good at what they try to do.
I'm afraid it was already good enough to undermine and destroy all democratic institutions and checks and balances in the US, including the corrupt Supreme Court, and to manipulate, deceive, and dupe the majority of fact-free, angry, uneducated US citizens for the self-interest of him and his willing, anti-democratic, incompetent, unscrupulous, racist helpers. Says a lot about the actual state of US society as a whole. Totally fucked up and on the straight way to become fascist, already actively helping other dictators like Putin and Kim, his "dear friends". I'm shivering.
I would suggest that a good share of Trump voters im 2016 and 2024 are educated White people earning over $100k per year who simply hate to pay taxes. They vote taxes. That's it. Period. They're usually White, have a mortgage on a McMansion, Judeo-Christian, and anti-trans. We need to stop blaming it on only the unwashed uneducated. Those are the voters that might be convinced to vote against Republican Trumpers. You will never convince a no-tax, hate-filled, greed monster who has plenty but wants more, and to hell with people who need government services, person to vote against a Republican.
I agree with you. The list of characteristics of Trump voters wasn't intended to be exhaustive ;-)
But when you talk about "educated" people, I have doubts about education in the US in general: Education has/should be about facts and the ability to distinguish between untruths and proven facts and the ability of factfinding. If someone can't do that, I don't consider them truly educated, regardless of their degrees and income. Thats just my personal view of that matter, others can disagree, np.
Historical US economic data shows that, in general, Democratic governments have led to significantly more prosperity in the US than Republican ones. But what Republicans are really good at is making the rich even richer. The old lie about Reagan's "trickle-down" economy comes to mind; it has long been factually refuted as a lie and its still active. I was back then working in the US and I remember that time well.
Trump's economic performance in his first term was lower than Biden's. I actually expect truly educated people to know this (and vote accordingly). The richest 1% couldn't care less because they have always profited and skimmed off far more from the growth of the US economy than 99% of the rest of the country's citizens. The rich few always get the lion's share. The system is designed by and for them, thakns to political Lobbying.
It would be interesting to read an analysis by an economic historian to finally dispel this widespread old myth. And to stop Trump's lies. People who fall for such blunt lies are certainly not educated in the classical sense and not smart either. But they may be white, greedy and antisocial. Of course, that fits Trump's appeal perfectly.
Educated doesn't mean informed. These people are mis-and un-informed. Whatever their education, wherever they got it, they are not trained to rely upon facts, to double-check, to ask questions.
Perhaps its part of the authoritarian-following personality? Follow orders, believe the leaders, don't ask questions.
I understand what you're saying and am with you in principle. But I guess I am more cynical than you. Round up your average 35 y.o. voter with a bachelor's degree (in any field except economics) who hold down jobs and are 'successful' in life and ask them, in general, what major economic events have happened since 2000, and what presidential policies have made them worse or better. I bet you'd have a 70% fail rate. But they could all earn 100% in a quiz of celebrity news, and at least 30% of them could repeat verbatim RFKJr's antivax creed.
Absolutely. Rich people who voted for tax cuts.
Tariffs are a 400 Billion tax we didn't have before Trump.
Wait until their mother's social security checks stop coming. At the Federal level, benefits are skewed toward the relatively well off. Much of what the MAGA right calls welfare are actually industrial subsidies. Sure, pull the plug on food stamps, medicare, and medicaid, and watch whole sections of the US economy collapse.
Exactly
"Good at what they do" suggests competence. In the first Trump admin. competence by some cabinet members is what saved us. Loyalty without competence is precisely why we are losing our democracy---these people do whatever the idiot tells them to do. There is only one person running the show--that's a BIG problem.
I completely agree with you. This "fact-free, narcissistic, lying, self-promoting fake reality TV show" is not an administration, not a government; he's just a ruthless, self-enriching would-be dictator and a gangster one-man show operating unhindered. He will trample on every American value that has ever existed and replace them with his own brutal greed for money and absolute power.
Yes, that's really a BIG problem. And the end of US democracy.
Spot on.
It is best to assume the worst here. Yes, Moore says nonsensical things, as does Trump. But they are executing on lower taxes and monies to the rich. Russell Vought is a jerk but he is competently running rings around the opposition. Meanwhile the putatively competent are back on their heels, not resisting, disorganized and lost two out the last three elections to these guys.
Vought, Vance and Thiel are the ones you really have to worry about. When Trump steps down billions richer, Vance will be the tool of the oligarchy and the Project 2025-ers.
That's the plan. I think it's going to backfire spectacularly.
Couchfuck will never get the cult.
Yes, but the cult is expendable. It was only used to gain power. They will suffer along with all of us who are not tech-bros or oligarchs.
💯🎯
He will be & all of the above of what you stated.
"...he is competently running rings around the opposition".
That's true, but only because there isn't much opposition. The SCOTUS "gang of six" isn't opposition - even though it's supposed to be. Republicans in both chambers aren't opposition - even though they're supposed to be. And so on and so forth.
And with only a few exceptions, the Democratic opposition is largely accustomed to rolling over on their backs and tucking their tails firmly between their legs for their big donor overlords.
I wish. As Sam Rayburn said, any ass can kick down a barn. And the trump administration has no lack of asses eager to do just that.
Hope springs eternal...
Amen! One of the major differences between Trump 1 and Trump 2 is that in Trump 1 there were a certain number of competent and intelligent people in the Executive Branch, and they wouldn’t let Trump do what he wanted to do. A major feature of Trump 2 is that there’s nobody in a position of power or influence who is smarter or more competent than Trump himself. And Trump isn’t very bright or at all competent, which is a recipe for Extremely Weird and Mostly Illegal stuff happening. The fact that the Trump Administration, taken as a whole, could fuck up a two-car funeral may be the salvation of American Democracy.
Stephen Miller seems scarily good at what he does, aided by Thiel.
I think however that is the point of the book Krugman referenced. All totalitarians insert complete hacks. So the hackiness is a feature of successful totalitarianism, not a bug that you can count on to save democracy.
You’d think. I have only one name as response: “Trofim Lysenko.”
In Moore's case, his lies do not equate with incompetence.
Good point.
Absolutely !
Jay
Because the leader hasn’t a clue.
Anne Applebaum has made a similar observation about recent right-wing regimes in Poland and Hungary: that they were staffed by incompetents resentful of smarter people. She sees this as a kind of successor to pre-WW II anti-semitism. In the relative absence of Jews to discriminate against, dumb, ignorant Gentiles can exclude smart, well-educated Gentiles belonging to their own ethnic group (Polish or Hungarian) from well-paid or powerful positions. For instance, the Polish foreign ministry stopped accepting foreign language skills as a qualification that counted towards promotion in that part of the Polish government.
Remember Pol Pot’s (Khmer Rouge in Cambodia) “Killing Fields” where the educated were systematically killed? I do.
Mao sent the intellectuals to work in the fields during his 'Cultural Revolution'.
I thought of that when it was said scientists and doctors let go from the NIH etc. were encouraged to work in factories and fields.
Mao also sent smart/educated people (including anyone who wore glasses!) to live in the caves. In 2005, in China, I met a man whose parents were sent to the caves.
Ugh. Didn’t know this. Thanks for educating us.
Wearing glasses = death penalty
"Incompetents resentful of smarter people" is pretty much the modern far-right wave in a nutshell; it's even stronger than racism, sexism, or any of the more classic phobias. Even if they could forgive black people for being black or immigrants for being immigrants, they can never forgive the smartypants for having been right about everything.
A lot of the Nazi leadership weren't exactly the brightest bulbs.
Yuval Noah Harari stated in one of his books that only priests could read the holy book, hence how they lorded it over the masses and it apparently carried over into Christianity until the Gutenberg printing press helped Martin Luther in his endeavors.
Check out last Thursday’s Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell where he interviews David Blight, a Yale historian. Blight makes a remarkable case explaining how this administration is trying to wipe out societies’ advances since the ENLIGHTENMENT. Mind blowing.
😢
Stephen Moore, Art Laffer and Larry Kudlow: The Three Stooges of Economic Ass-essment.
Aaah! You forget the ultimate douche -- Peter (I wasn't stealing that Remington sculpture, REALLY!) Navarro.
Yeah, you're right. But there weren't FOUR stooges, so I had to make a hard decision. :-)
Yeah, the "Three Stooges": Larry, Joe, Hurley and Shemp. You only ever saw three at a time (in fact, the Wikipedia page for the act counts 6 stooges over the time the act was famous, with Larry and Moe the only constants
Sorry, "Curley", not "Hurley". Maybe autocorrect did it?
You could have gone with "Horsemen of the Apocalypse", but death, plague, etc were competent in their own way, so I understand the dilemma.
Larry Kudlow and I have something in common: neither one of us has a degree in economics.
It makes you wonder how the hell they got their degrees?
Usually money. However, Vance seems to have actually earned his.
Ummm ... Vance attended fine institutions. It is less clear that he received an education there.
He actually graduated Summa Cum Laude from Ohio State. He graduated from Yale with a Juris Doctor degree.
There is no question that he got an education there. Yale, however, put him rubbing shoulders with "the elites", who left him with an inferiority complex. No telling where that will lead.
I was aware of is biography. But there is more to "education" than the mastery of the facts and procedutes of one'field. The lack of social empathy and self-awareness is appalling, the more so in someone who professes the law. The only evidence we have of social conscience or concern is that Vance was a Trump critic before he abased himself. Or debased himself, if you will.
Vance is a sharp guy, but utterly amoral and hypocritical. It would not surprise me at all to see him replace his wife and kids with something blonder and Christian.
It would surprise me a bit. Not that I think he's particularly moral, but he did convert to Catholicism some time back, and the Church tends to disapprove of "serial monogamy." He would want to carefully balance the pros and cons.
Now that Miran is going to the Fed I guess it’s Moore or Kudlow to chair the CEA…ngl, can’t wait for the minutes of Miran’s first fed meeting though:)
Trump and Moore know that can “get away with it.” They can do so with at least 30% of the population for the simple reason that the media (the entire media and not just Fox “News”) will fail to make it a headline that, for example, “Trump and Bizarre Economist Present Misleading Numbers in Briefing.” Until the media widely makes it a headline when an official lies about facts, a large portion of the population will lazily let themselves be mislead. The media’s unethical reporting “of both sides” even when one side claims that the sun goes around the Earth is destroying our nation. It seems that the media cares as little about fact as Trump.
It isn't just authoritarians. Years ago in West Virginia, a very small church had a very smart, skilled minister whom they shared with the denomination because they could not afford his salary on their own. When he left, they informed the denomination that they wanted their next minister to have "a lot less skills." Why? I assume because they could control a less skilled person, jerk him around. But it was astonishing that people would admit that they wanted someone less competent.
The retiring minister was deeply hurt, but at least they admitted he was extremely competent.
The competent cannot be controlled as easily if at all. They are not going to be manipulated. Trump has always hired mediocre people for the Trump Organization. They could not easily leave and get better jobs, and they knew it.
Not all were incompetent, Barbara Res, for example. But she was a woman in a male dominated field, so she couldn't easily leave, either.
He probably regretted hiring her. Competent people push back.
One of Trump's former lackeys, Michael Cohen, has seen the light and is fighting back tooth and nail. He's a great writer and his sub stack is entertaining and informative. I hope readers will check it out.
Great story! Could we have the source please?
Stephen Moore is almost a cartoon of dishonesty. Then, so is Trump. He has now shown business by his "deal" with Nvidia that the path for any approval is by bribe to the dictator. Want to sell or merge? Nat'l security or monopoly a problem? 15% should do it. The money goes to the US, but unilateral power in all things accretes to Trump. He becomes the sole path for all things.
Arendt's writings a must read.
“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.” - Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
“The Origins of Totalitarianism,” Hannah Arendt noted how “Mass Propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.”
Yes, exactly. Every time I’ve seen him appear as a commentator on a show over the years, he has that used-car salesman smirk as he rattles off lies that he knows are lies and that he knows you know are lies. I don’t get why he keeps getting airtime on reality-based outlets.
Today your insight/research piece, provided a audible chuckle from me. I needed that (hapen). Now, back to the resistance. Thanks Professor once again for your work.
The book by Paul Collier, Left Behind and Austerity by Mark Blyth have given me the clearest understanding of the problem. States provide security and public goods in exchange for taxes. People need to feel they are getting fair return for their taxes. Rich people always fear the state will get greedy and take too much of their wealth, so they constantly work to weaken the state. We are operating in a period when the wealthy have been extremely successful in weakening the state through attacks on its institutions and by confusing the public through outlets like Fox News but there’s lots of others these days. We have all made that bargain with the state though and most average people dutifully pay their taxes, while many / most rich people avoid taxes. I don’t think rich people or businesses are evil. There are great businesses, but rich people and businesses need to be constrained, or they become mobsters. Ordinary people need their own institutional actors to balance the power of business and the wealthy. Your work helps tremendously to empower people, so thank you. The coda doesn’t work in Canada, but we’ll live. The forces operating in the US also operate here and pose the same challenges.
Two things that would make a huge difference is getting the money out of your politics, seriously limit the admissible amount for donations and strictly police the inevitable efforts to get around the rules. Pack your court if you have to; do whatever it takes. Change the way electoral districts are assigned. Create an independent body and process people can trust to do this. If you can do that and restaff and restructure if necessary the institutions Trump has torn apart you will be a long way back to health. Then, there as in Canada and many other countries, as outlined in a recent FT article on left behind, often agricultural (but not solely) regions, find a way to bring these areas back to life, preferably led by local initiatives but with support from governments.
Unfortunately it will be difficult to "pack our courts" at this point, since the Supreme Court of the United States has already been packed.
Republicans have certainly used some pretty nefarious tactics to achieve a partisan majority who don’t care about checks and balances. I guess you would need solid majorities in the house and senate to fix that, but I remember thinking, when Obama won after the tragedy of 9/11 and the Iraq debacle, I will never underestimate America’s ability to reinvent itself. I still think that.
This is how Canada does districting and no one ever complains, but I’m sure there are other good systems
https://open.substack.com/pub/michaelrushton/p/worthwhile-canadian-initiative?r=zsk0&utm_medium=ios
Outlaw donating to candidates unless you live in the district, state.
Loved starting my week with 1 2 3 4 music video! The pace suits me to a tee this morning.
Loved your rant on Steven Moore, a symbol of deliberate ignorance to advance duplicity and crooks. You have the best rants--uncoiled brilliance sprung like a rat trap.
Hate totalitarians who rely on the stupid to prop up their socio-pathological insecurities. Hannah Arendt rocks.
Like Bondi, Patel, Nutlick, Noem, the lot of them - the only requisite job qualification is pathological lying ability. This is the require feature, not a bug.
Oh, how the Mighty Have...well, not fallen so much as ceded the field of play to the worst bunch of mooks, knuckleheads, lowlifes, reason-manglers and charlatans gathered together in one place since god was a pup.
I blame the parents for failing to give the Mighty a proper fetchins up.
I don’t think you can blame parents for the ungodly things done by their adult children. Lately our once-great Nation has glorified greed and cheating - and simultaneously rid us of the regulators and independent bodies who police that kind of behavior. So the greediest have run amok. It’s systemic not parental …. And God can’t correct us. We have to do it ourselves.
You might consider him an adult. I think of him as a broken, overgrown child.
I've read that DonnyJon's daddy tried hard to do this. He decided that he couldn't do it himself, and sent DonnyJon to military school (this was the preferred "solution" for problem boys back then). The school was also incapable of doing the job, and DonnyJon basically became the boss there. For example, at one point, he tried to toss another boy out of a high window. The proper solution probably would've been electroshock therapy back then, but I've read that even that is not as effective as was hoped.
Sociopathy can’t be fixed, by drugs or electroshock. He’s a bad seed.
I personally believe things like this are not mistakes, but a celebration of ignorance. A deep part of the MAGA ethos is a postmodern sneer at people who care about things like spelling or facts. We keep thinking they will lose credibility with these mistakes, because we would: it's what we care about. But they never do. I think they delight in the upset they cause, and the gnashing of teeth among Trump's opponents is a validation of why they voted for him.
"OK, speling misteaks hapen." Luv it!
I hope Dr. Krugman was being deliberate!
I would bet on it!
Lately, I am often reminded of the Woody Allen movie, Bananas, where the newly installed dictator decrees the following, 'From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. Silence! In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now... 16 years old!' Maybe he should have said the medium age is now 16...
A couple questions: Do you think Harvard should have caved to the felon trump?
And, as I was shopping for an replacement office chair, I noticed what I called'junkification and junkflation.' The replacement options were of much lesser quality at similar prices to my older chair. I thought the chairs were designed by a physical therapist organization looking for extra work from people sitting in the poorly constructed and designed chairs.
I do not think that junkification/junkflation are part of the overall inflation numbers, or are they included?. Could it be similar to the inflation data that refers to the option of eating chicken instead of beef, therefore, inflation impacts are lessened. Similar, yet different. Maybe more akin to shrinkflation where people receive less for the same price?
Trump and his DOJ cronies are now demanding a billion dollars from UCLA, which is essentially an attack on the entire UC system of which UCLA is a part. He hopes to crush research entirely. The UCLA story is not being widely reported because the corporate billionaire media now considers it normal for this administration to go after universities, even a public university.
My post about this attack:
https://marlissdesens.substack.com/p/trump-demands-a-billion-dollars-from
Thank you for pointing that out. I had heard a little about UCLA's trump shakedown but it hasn't received the attention of the IVYs. trump is destroying America's future one power grab at a time. He is a menace to all that is good.
What was the Baskin-Robbins motto? "There is hardly anything that someone cannot make more poorly and cheaply." Well, these guys got the poorly part down.
That the truth!
The only non incompetent ppl in the regime are evil Miller and Vought.
yea the two Nazi's