I'm terribly confused, frankly. Trump has done just about everything he could possibly do to undermine the U.S. economy. And we've been hearing predictions since February that the disastrous effects of Trump's policies are just around the corner. Yet . . .
. . . Yet, I don't see any actual pain registering at the local level. Some foods (beef in particular) have gotten more expensive, but people seem to be adjusting to that just fine. Imported goods prices are creeping up slowly, and people seem to be adjusting to that just fine as well. Perhaps it's like boiling a frog, but I'm not seeing dramatic economic impacts of Trump's mishandling of the economy.
My fear is that, absent dramatic impacts, Joe and Jane Sixpack will just muddle along, entertaining themselves to death while Trump et al. cement control over their lives.
You have just described my frustration. When Biden was president, everyone was up in arms about the price of groceries. Now Trump is in, and suddenly everyone is 'adjusting' to the higher prices. What gives?
It's called FOX News. Which ran endless segments about how the "Biden economy" was already in recession, and about how horrible US inflation was.
Despite US inflation under Biden BEING THE LOWEST IN THE WORLD. If Trump had won in 2020, FOX would've been instead running endless segments on how much worse inflation was in Germany, Japan, UK, Italy, China, France, etc. Having a glossy 24/7 propaganda arm in their corner is perhaps the greatest strength of our GOP rulers.
Just the passage of time, I think. The longer we live with the higher prices, the more we perceive them as "normal" and the less we are enraged as opposed to just pessimistic.
It's been 𝙇𝙀𝙎𝙎 𝙏𝙃𝘼𝙉 𝙏𝙀𝙉 𝙈𝙊𝙉𝙏𝙃𝙎 since he took office. The mortgage bubble that begat the Great Recession of 2008 took over a decade to reach the point it popped. The tariffs have been so haphazardly set, reset and enforced that they haven't really bitten yet, thanks to TACO.
The economy was propped up by companies rushing to build stock and supplies in the early part of the year, cushioning prices from their effect. And now it's pretty much the AI bubble that it the only thing propping up the markets.
The US Economy doesn't turn on a dime, and there was enormous inertia from the Biden economy.
By the time the electorate really starts suffering, it will be much worse, and MUCH harder to turn around, since the current pathway is the oligarchic strip-mining of US assets, like the fall of the USSR.
I was struck by the difference in public sentiment between now and 1999. We had a younger, vigorous, optimistic, forward-looking (remember "Don't Stop"?) president who, for all of his human shortcomings, made a lot of us, from center-right to solidly progressive, feel like we were going forward, together.
Now we have a delusional, grouchy, vindictive, destructive, easily manipulated, obese, incoherent, demented, greedy, dishonest narcissist trying to alienate just about everyone who doesn't irrationally worship him. He's backed by the most atrocious cabinet in history and advisors who sound disturbingly like their counterparts in 1930s Germany or characters in a dystopian fantasy.
An economy as large as ours is like a huge ship at sea. Inertia controls everything in the short run, so the probable impending disaster hasn't hit yet. Once the ship changes direction, a new inertia can set in and eventually make it really hard to regain forward progress. Throw in the arrogant shortsightedness of the billionaire tech bros vying for hegemony, and it's a pretty putrid stew.
IMHO, AI is doubly dangerous. It's already sucking vast amounts of electricity out of the grid, exactly when the senile moron is doing everything he can to kill the renewables boom. And it's spinning a rosy scenario of effortless wisdom and liberation from a lot of routine drudgery, even while it appears to have the mental capacity of a bright 10-year-old who gets some things right but still has so much to learn. It's being used to cheat in school, create deceptive deep fakes, and even cite non-existent legal precedents in court documents. And that's just so far.
The government is shut down, the Speaker refuses to seat newly elected representatives, and tens of millions are facing catastrophic, prohibitive spikes in their health insurance premiums. Oh, and the orange tyrant is trying to occupy our cities with military force and rule by edict.
i think perhaps we underestimate the effects of the rising stock market. my sister just spent $10,000 upgrading her back yard. where did she get the money? stock market gains
Meanwhile unemployment among the young is at a nine year high* and climbing fast. I mean, if we're going to base our economic expectations on how well our mutual funds are doing, it's no wonder our children hate us.
Krugman said, "People have been predicting mass unemployment caused by automation since the 1930s, and it keeps not happening."
Not happening directly, but leaving many people behind in increasingly low-level jobs. Gone are the days when an auto worker could afford to buy a car, a house, and raise a family. AI will make this much worse. A high school diploma isn't a sufficient credential for most knowledge-work jobs, leaving traditional food service and retail sales openings, as well as some low-level construction jobs. Even traditional tradesman roles, e.g., auto mechanic, plumber, electrician, require education well beyond high school, and AI is infiltrating those.
As a former financial consultant, I consider my portfolio more than adequate but not in the "wealthy" range. I've been very surprised to see how much it has risen YTD. The interest and capital gains are more than my Social Security lately. I reinvest, but I expect the market to tank again soon. I was wrong about the timing before, but will I be wrong again?
'Passage of time' makes sense.... I guess it still seems a little odd that attitudes changed so quickly once Trump was elected. Seems a bit too coincidental. Too many people have been brainwashed to hate 'Democrats' and see them as the cause of anything and everything that goes wrong.
"Everyone was up in arms" during Biden's presidency vs. "everyone is adjusting" are media narratives and have jack shit all to do with reality, except in how they influence perception, not reflect it. The media just fucked Biden every single fucking day after he took away their war coverage toy, and eventually the cowardly-ass party started fucking him too.
You are 100% correct. It's all about the vibes and the MSM is primed to make sure that the vibes under Chump are much better than under any Dem. For example, Chump's idiocies are minimized or simply ignored, while any Dem's are magnified and shouted from the rooftops, every hour of every day. E.g. Chump's obvious mental issues ignored while "Biden's old" was front page news, every single day.
And they always will. Because nothing else really matters to them except "owning the libs".
They will willingly pay $10 for a pound of ground beef, lose their business because their workers have been deported and kids die of measles than have a Democrat as POTUS.
Spineless and fearful, the GOP is minions and legacy media is scared. And we are seeing the drugification of media—the amazing garbage on AM radio persists. Yet it’s in every car for free and it’s horrible!!! If you haven’t heard it you have no idea.…adds the rise of radical Christian nationalism.
Once addicted it’s almost impossible to get back…you can’t make these Faux folks get treatment…they don’t even want measles shots!
Now I see that the Supine court might make professional speech free speech…that will be weird, no more ability to sue. Why have a law license? What about medical malpractice!?
Hi Ryan, can you say more about the idea of making 'professional speech free speech'? If it ends one's ability to sue regardless of the circumstances, it sounds worrisome. If you have a source I can look up, I'd really appreciate it!
No references because like a lot of the court they are inventing as they go! Their money as speech comes to mind here. So here's the fear--if a professional counselor, assuming a licensed caregiver, can tell you anything, true or not, in so-called conversation therapy, as part of their professional speech, this is malpractice open wide! No legal consequences.
Where would it end? Your doctor might no longer be limited too...of course they take an oath but these are becoming less popular too!
The research, science, licensing sort of goes out the window...if something is unproven and unsafe we should be able to limit its practice. Now defining so-called conversation therapy is an issue for sure...are they using shock treatments yet? Some countries allow this...just thinking...
Thank you Ryan... now I get it, and the context. I have to say -- as a retired licensed psychologist, my jaw dropped when I read about this supposed 'counselor' who felt her free speech rights were being affected by the ban on conversion therapy. Good Lord! There are very specific rules of ethics that therapists are supposed to follow, and one of them is that you do not push your own personal religious or political views on your clients!! If a therapist wants to advertise as a 'strictly Bible based' counselor, that's one thing... at least the clients they get will be forewarned. But I cannot believe that CACREP or other governing bodies wouldn't be all over this, if she is trying to push negative views of homosexuality on gay clients. That is just not ethical.
CLS, thanks for the professional insight! good reminder…
Yes, we can ‘regulate’ in the marketplace at the very least for safety, honesty would be a reach…it’s a bit like birthing center who won’t teach about birth control as they hide their radical religious foundations--about choice, sex, and women. A good friend told me about ‘conversion therapies’ she got as a teen in South Africa which included giving her electric shocks…related to looking at pictures of women while collecting data, with something somewhat like a lie detector, didn’t work, by the way.
Many in the House GOP are pretty much there I’m sure…yet still at the moment ‘bad optics.’ Grabbing American off the street and handcuffs, that’s okay as long they wear masks.
Inflation in 2021-23 was a new phenomenon for people under the age of 50, who had never experienced such price rises (except perhaps hearing mom and dad complain about gas and food in 1979-80). Now they are somewhat inured to higher prices. Apparently not that many people actually believed that the Donald could wave his magic wand and make eggs cheaper on Day 1. Biden's border policy and his apparent decrepitude also contributed to his unpopularity. But I expect Trump will also be hugely unpopular in a year or two.
But the issue is that for the Faux druggified they don’t know he’s tanking…and FB fear corners are the worst! I saw a post of a picture of French farmers spreading manure along the highway passed off as Antifa in the US.
We a great show called “The Truth Tellers” that points out the failures and foibles of all kinds, and certainly the completely false Fuax is prime suspect Number One! Their failures are criminal! But RFK, The Gnome, and the King of the lies, Oresisident Phony Man, is Truth Social! Strident lies!
Ain’t propaganda great!?! The Fox News demographic is drinking regime cool aid. As always, some people don’t/can’t pay attention at all. The worries I have, may be confined mostly to my blue bubble, and aren’t covered much by most major mainstream media outlets. It feels like we’re all just waiting. I keep thinking about the Amritsar Massacre of 1919 - the British massacre of Indian protesters. Revulsion against it set off the strongest, most cohesive, final support for India’s Independence from Britain. I fear something like that is what trump insiders are pushing towards, with their lust for violence, and ignorance of history.
Cravenness. You might complain and even threaten the person you know has a moral line he will not cross. But when faced with a real thug, you know what’s at stake and quietly adjust and self-censor and pretend you’re not really upset and therefore has no reason to complain.
Hi Barry, I agree... those are both true. What I'm wondering about is specifically why people seem to be less concerned about grocery prices per se. If they were up in arms about prices, why would it matter that someone else is now president? Wouldn't they expect Trump to 'fix' the prices?
So old they ran literally hundreds, of above-the-fold stories that he was so old. But crickets on the mad man at the helm now, that I expect to start telling us how much he loves molesting little girls, since he gets a pass on everything.
In the early years of the Third Reich, the German people saw their lot improve under NSDAP, ignoring the massive assaults on civil liberties occurring in plain sight...and even when retrenchment began to bite in the civilian economy due to the massive relocation of assets and resources in order to feed Hitler's war machine, there were some mutterings of discontent amongst the population. However, German industry was enjoying burgeoning profits, and bankers, industrialists and other favored elements of German society were entirely fine with Naziism. And the massive surveillance state built by the Gestapo and SS discouraged public discontent.
America in 2024-2025 is missing one of the key elements that helped propel Hitler and the Nazis to power: The Great Depression. In Germany in particular, economic conditions through the 1920s and into the 1930s were profoundly terrible. People were desperate, and Hitler's massive investments in infrastructure put men to work who were otherwise simply shiftless and desperate.
America in 2024 was incredibly prosperous with stabilized prices and rising wages. Americans were in no way desperate for economic change. Indeed, their choices were to stay the course with Harris or vote for Trump who ran on promises to destroy the economy.
And here we are. Trump is working very VERY hard to destroy the economy, though I'm not seeing the effects yet.
from my view from Canada, America has always been a brutal culture ... what I see is cruel health policy, people working several jobs, little child care or any help that many people need - no sense of sharing: you're on your own, great disparity (so many yachts and mansions while so many others live on the streets and are treated like garbage ... so there is sense of desperation, I think, just not as cohesive or something as with official depressions
Racism is our original sin that we can't get away from.
White Southerners can't accept that minorities have the same rights as them, so they are willing to tear it all down instead of sharing society with those they feel are inferior. The brutality of immigrants are just the beginning. All minority groups will feel their brutality soon enough.
This is the country where they filled community pools with cement rather than let blacks swim in them. The MAGA fans who are not rich are soon going to find out that if they're not in the 1%, they're actually black. All people not in the 1% are about to find out that what "trickles down" on them isn't money.
"We’re the middle children of history, man: No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war; our Great Depression is our lives".
The current bubble will burst in a year or so, and the economy will tank. The GOP cultists will blame Biden. Fox news will run news clips about illegal workers secretly sabotaging AI data centers. The mainstream media will run articles about how nobody could have predicted the collapse and everyone will just have to tighten their belts. The failing banks banks will get huge taxpayer funded bailouts. Trump will claim the Dems want to send money to welfare queens. Nothing ever changes.
Because something like 40% of American voters couldn't be arsed to vote, and the grotesque distortion that the Electoral College has on our Presidential election masks the very narrow win by Trump.
I'm going to be very judgmental here, but the dim witted or younger, naive people are very easily manipulated, like a young Latin? Mid-eastern? affluent-appearing man at the gym sporting his t-shirt stating: Joe & the 'Ho Have Got to Go. Of course, life never seems to improve for those who toil by consistently voting for the "lesser evil"--usually a moderate that pacifies the financially and professionally comfortable--hence why many don't vote. People are going to have to experience grand devastation--including the selfish affluent 80-99%--before they wise up like prior generations.
As my European history teacher once said, uber wealthy Americans in the 1930s had the very recent specter of the Bolshevik revolution to sober them up and make them slightly more agreeable to the New Deal. By the late 1970s that fear had faded so they returned to their grotesque levels of narcissism.
By "the selfish affluent 80-99%" I presume you are talking about the uber wealthy, but they are not the uber wealthy. It is the 0.1% that are the problem. That is 34,000 Americans with an average net of over $680 million and a total net worth of over $23 trillion. The resrouces they control have increased by over 300% since the financial crisis. They have bought an oligarchy.
I don't "know" but I believe those who think their "protest" vote, e.g., "I won't vote for Biden because he's not doing enough for Gaza" or the single-issue voter "I'm against vaccines" tanked Harris. Then of course, she's a woman.
Seriously. Two brilliant, qualified women lost to TRUMP? BIDEN beat TRUMP? I get correlation isn't causation, but come on. Trump? Reailly?
Those (large proportion of the electorate) with Fox poisoning thought the economy was far worse than it was. The right flooded media with lies about the risks of transgendered people. Biden/Harris got no credit for slowing illegal immigration without the cruelty of Trump 1.0's children in cages. Biden's slow uptake in conversation, esp in the debate, was harped on by media who sanewashed Trump's demented ramblings (and childish insults and economic incoherence).
So 'the course' was way more worth staying than many people knew.
AND a ton of people stayed home rather than vote for a woman of color as president.
👆🎯I think the bots saying she wouldn't change anything from the way Biden ran things, helped screw her over. I called one out on Substack saying where did she say she would do exactly the same thing in Gaza? They never replied.
You all know what? We've all been through this repeatedly. We know it by heart. What in the world do you think you are accomplishing by repeating it yet again, and then echoing each other? Try getting out of your own heads and find out what you can do about it. Please. Because if you've got the time to sit around and go over this again and again, you are wasting your time. There are things you can do, or do more of, or learn more about so you can get your minds moving toward the future instead of constantly rehashing the past. Join those of us who are doing what we can, often while trying to cope with the impacts of what Trump & Co are doing to our lives. The lives, it seems, that are invisible to you.
Maybe you're just looking in the wrong places, or simply choosing to look only at what's closest to you. My family is seeing the impacts, because we have two people with serious health issues, things they had no hand in creating, and even with insurance, it is tight. My daughter's family faces the possibility of no insurance or insurance with premiums they can't afford. We also have an elder we are trying to keep comfortable and cared for as she slowly deteriorates. This is a heavy load both physically and emotionally.
I am surrounded by people whose livlihood is on the land, small family farms- and facing crop failures because of drought, without fiscal buffers because this is the third year. This year drought, last year floods and heavy rains during the pollination and growing season. We have lost most of our tourist business because of the drought and Trump's erratic non-policies. A couple of folks in my family work in a small specialty family-owned factory, and while their jobs are stable right now, they know that demand for the product that factory produces could tank as people prioritize rising food prices, heating fuel, and just maintaining.
America may have felt prosperous to you in 1924, but not to a lot of other people, who were just beginning to get on their feet again when Trump began pulling the rug out. I guess it all depends on what's in your perspective to begin with. Sometimes not feeling the effects is like having blinders on. It's happening, but you can't see it because you aren't seeing beyond your own current circumstances yet.
Moreover, the Nazis did improve the economic lot of “Aryan” Germans by offering them plundered goods - apartments seized from Jews or abandoned as they fled and material goods seized in Czechoslovakia and Poland - and many were just fine with getting their share of the plunder. Our fascists are not “national socialists” however. Our fascists are fine with letting the plunder keep goosing the stock market by sending everything to the top and cutting health care and food for our “Aryans”.
Pee wee German's plan was to condiscate stuff from people he deports and give it to MAGAts. Pretty disgusting for a Jew to have a plan to mimics The Third Reich.
The difference between Germany then and us now is that Germany had no democratic tradition at all. The people were used to kings and dukes. Weimar was the new thing to them, and it didn't seem to work well. Plus the Communists were there stirring the pot from the left, which is not comparable here.
I have confidence that our democratic tradition and culture will carry us through. The 250 year anniversary of independence will be a reminder of how we fought against a Mad King then. We can do it again, much to Trump's surprise.
I am afraid we might not enjoy the « no king celebration of the new republic » 250 birthday 🎂 the way we expect it. Trump and Co will probably turn it into a big celebration of « Caesar for life » enthronement… Where are the future Cassius, Brutus and Albinus who will deliver the Republic ?
The U.S. is doing more than muttering discontent. But it does seem that as long as people's retirement accounts are okay, the fascists can kill whomever they want (as long as it isn't me) and turn a blind eye. I guess in the end, even with all the knowledge we have, we're no better than the Germans who turned in Anne Frank and her family.
But weren't these retirement accounts okay under Biden too? And they, still, all turned against him. Didn't they? There is something else under the surface
The frog is boiling, we will soon begin to hear from farmers whose crops have not been sold. China took its soybean business to South America. Perhaps this will be the year of the harvest that wasn't ... crops bouldering in the fields while people starve.
There are already murmurs of farm subsidies. They did not plan for that in the Big Beautifil Billshit. Also a lot of social media memes about rebate checks ... DOGE refunds. Social Security bonus checks ... Really?
Is the regime trying to buy our complacency? Uncle Donald will save us?
I think the difference here is that compared to the years leading up to the tech boom, corporations have not taken on as much debt ... remember the years before tech boom were M&A maniac. Instead companies have plowed cash into equity buyback to benefit 'shareholder' value. Asset heavy organizations take longer to cut back and layoff than those under heavy debt ...
And I would also suggest that workforce are already very lean ... to the extent that many of us are covering what would have been two to three positions or workloads compared to our 2000 era peers.
Yes, Argentina sold it soybean to China after Trump gave them $20 billion. So they got 20 billion from us and 20 billion from China. Looks like Trump was had by Argentina!
Not really. It's more like "we" (meaning the MAGAnuts who voted for him) were had by Trumpkopf. He did it to support a fascist dictator - he expects something personal in return.
Read the most recent post on TheBigNewsletter.com by Matt Stoller: Monopoly Round Up Soy Boy America. In it, a link from an Argentinian media source that the $20 B bailout to Argentina was engineered by the treasury secretary at the behest of his hedge fund manager friend Rob Citrone. I bet Bessent would love to add to his $25 million? billion? worth of farm acreage investment, also at low bottom prices. As many have commented on here, the coming economic depression is to rob people of their assets, livelihoods, & retirement security. My brother says he doesn't make the rules, he just plays the game and has pivoted to investing much money & time into cattle to diversify from row crops. Climate and soil have a lot to do with what is possible to grow geographically and there isn't much demand for other appropriate alternatives, either. In fact, there is a global glut of just about every manufactured product and labor, as well. Every century, it seems, new generations get an attitude adjustment their forebears faced. It would be good to see the spoiled, privileged narcissist global leadership included, but that is rarely the case for the victors of war or conquest.
Among other South American countries, China's buying soy beans from Argentina - the country Trump is bailing out. So the US Government is harming US soy bean farmers and supporting Argentinian soy bean farmers. Think about it.
The effect of trump's economy depends on the community you're in. My area has a huge number of seniors, and there are regular discussions about what foods people no longer buy because they are priced out. So people aren't going hungry, but their feeling of well-being has diminished extensively. Seniors like to eat out a lot. They've stopped. I used to go out to lunch three, four times a week. Now it's twice a month. Then there are other prices crowding people out - electricity bills in our area are up by 50-60%, water bills are sky rocketing, and the prices of cars are devastating. I know multiple people who continue to drive their old cars because the cost of a new one is completely prohibitive. And rents for working people are insane. You might do okay if you have a middle income job ($50-100,000) but anyone is the $23,000 to 30,000 is working to pay the rent and that's it.
It takes a while to turn the ship around, but Trump has pointed it at the rocks. Since politics has become so tribal, we can expect some Sixpacks to blame Biden when the hull starts letting in water.
Joe and Jane Sixpack are busy entertaining themselves with Friday night lights high school football, SEC college football, and the NFL. Oh also they are busy being pissed about Bad Bunny being the Super Bowl halftime show.
A substantial number of investors believe that pain is catastrophic. To reinforce PK's point: even as stocks hit new highs, another segment of investors is buying gold. There are many reasons why people invest in gold, but some of the drive has always been "the end of the world is coming." Gold has broken through its all-time real highs of 1980, which I never thought it could do. By contrast, gold was close to an all-time real low in the prosperous Clinton years, when a record high percentage of Americans had salaried jobs and wages were rising.
When the tariffs were announced large companies that could afford to ordered lots of inventory immediately and stocked up before the tariffs went into effect. This gave the companies time to figure out what to do next, how to price items and negotiate with their suppliers to reduce the tariffs’ impacts on price. With time passing we will see more prices rise now. There has been a delay and the effects are different depending on the industry and the company and its ability to manage inventory and negotiate etc.
From my view, surrounded by a diverse working class community, I don't see the Sixpack family as muddling along. I see them as Joe and Jane Voiceless. Unless, of course, they are MAGA oriented. This is kind of the point to oppress and frighten people without resources from speaking up or showing up. People without a network to help them recover from malicious Trump driven hurdles stay quiet. People holding on to the threads of friendships in their community with sorta MAGA types are quiet. Plus when adults are all working two, three, or four minimum wage jobs to make ends meet it is hard to show up and be heard. When a family shifts from buying vegetables to growing them or bartering with the neighbor I am not sure that counts as muddling but maybe. My main point is the communication connection for the Voiceless-Sixpack is muted at best and going unrecorded.
I don't follow social media, but my wife does. She says there is a constant drumbeat of complaints about grocery prices. So I think pain is registering at the local level.
We don't have reliable data on the outcomes achieved by Mr. Trump and Crew. They have destroyed the agencies that might give a picture they don't want given.
I hope you are wrong, but history tells us you are dead on. However, history has told us also what goes up rapidly eventually leads to a collapse. There are a lot of people who remember the period of real, widespread prosperity. They will enlighten others what used to be. Political and economic instability will bring the regime down.
I'll take a contrarian view. I'd venture to say that the people who show up on Paul's Substack are at least solidly middle class, if not wealthy. The fact that we may have become inured to the (relatively) slow increase in prices is because we can absorb them. That does not mean there aren't large numbers of people for whom even small increases throw their budgets out the window. Couple that with the regime's reductions in food support, child care support, medical support and their situations are dire. Just because we aren't experiencing the pain doesn't mean it isn't out there.
One big difference was that during the 90s the internet and tech held the promise of making the world a better place for the common people. Create opportunities not imagined. Make everything more humane and equal.
Now off course we all know that didn't happen that way. And the feeling today is more of it's a society disrupting force that only benefits rich/powerful people
Yes, Andreas we were taken for a collective ride on the opiod dreams of cheerleaders like Steven Pinker that promised us a future of all of us coding websites or running artisnal cheese shops in magically revived downtowns, blah, blah blah…
Now as it turns out we are being made serfs in a Tech Feudalism 2.0
Other concerns about AI: the data centers are energy and water hogs, driving up costs of the former and draining supplies of the latter in multiple jurisdictions; fraud, e.g., fake videos of medical professionals selling quack remedies; oppression, as governments and businesses use AI to generate propaganda and control thought.
As Paul points out, this is a great economy for those with spare money to invest in the stock market, but it's a scary economy for those who are dependent upon their job continuing to exist. Therefore, I think the best economic promise that Democrats could make is universal free supported job training for every American citizen. For more info see:
It will still come down to the fact that people want the jobs to come to them - they do not want to move. I heard one man complaining that he got the re-education to be a programmer, but then couldn't find a job as one. He didn't realize when he started training that the jobs were somewhere else.
It is the AI job worries but part of the bubble is the invention of crypto which has trillions of dollars of notional value, mostly gleaned by a small band of bros, with the broad public either not participating or losing money on meme coins.
Crypto is certainly part of it - how to hold and launder money out of sight of “regulators” since our supine congress has given them a blank check. But in the meantime the AI bubble is destroying the planet with its insatiable energy demands (and preference for coal or gas over renewables). Two kinds of greed that are indifferent to actual hunger and illness in human beings.
As I read this on my smartphone, I’m loathe to denigrate technology. But AI generated “people” scare the bejesus out of me. The power of human touch is something to be preserved and enjoyed. Please keep sounding the alarm, Paul.
It doesn’t help that the tech bros who are promoting AI are a bunch of elitist, crackpot misanthropes who are convinced they will be immortal — Elon Musk, Bryan Johnson for example. Peter Theil has been giving talks to techies about the antichrist to tech groups, even speculating that Greta Thunberg could be the antichrist.
What really puzzles me is these egomaniacs tell us AI and robots will replace our jobs but they are also demanding women have more kids. They also think man, not robots, must do space exploration — at a far greater cost to us taxpayers who subsidize them — while they avoid paying taxes.
Exactly. What so-called AI can only do is repeat and remix what already exists. What it cannot do is, as an artist friend of mine said -- look at the world sideways. That type of vision produces new ideas.
Another important point is all of these current AI models train on the internet. The internet that is now slowly filling up with AI generated data. It’s a snake eating its own tail.
I'm sorry this article is behind a paywall, but it shows the ridiculous but scary ideas about AI becoming your new best "friend": https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/10/friend-ai-companion-ads/684451/ And the company marketing "Friend" has no really money or income, has few users, but still insists AI is going to change the world for the better. A relevant quote: "A microphone in a plastic disk on a necklace connected to a chatbot is not a god, but Altman and Amodei both have declared that they are racing to usher in a sort of superintelligence. In a way, Schiffmann [the marketer of "Friend"] has simply said aloud the truth of many AI leaders’ grand vision. Meanwhile, the people defacing Friend’s advertisements are expressing a much larger, inchoate rage at the broader AI industry, not just these plastic pendants that practically nobody owns."
The dotcom boom was so much fun. Y2K was the great unknown threat that might trip everything up. But it was a great non-event. The fault was to lay in ourselves in our self-inspired arrogance.
But at least we had a rule of law. At least armed goons were not prowling the streets of our capital. At least we had a bureau of statistics. At least there was an effort to police white collar crime and not a White House plundering the world for self-enrichment.
We are walking atop of a very tall skyscraper. It's just a question of time before we step off it and everything comes tumbling down.
Y2K was a 'great non-event' because tons of people who knew Cobol and Fortran came out of retirement and worked hard (with others not in retirement) to make sure that Y2K didn't happen. I sure wish people would remember that the 'nonevent' was a success story!
Absolutely. In my company, we even had to tackle the stuff coded in "C." Any program that used two-digit years had to be modified. The databases required the most work.
Remember standing by the emergency generators at the former Banker's Trust bldg at 130 Liberty St in Manhattan that night, it was all hands on deck. Once nothing untoward was reported from Russia, I figured we'd be fine, since so many Russian programmers were working here, because Cobol was still used there.
There is a difference between the tech boom of the 1990s and now. Those new machines replaced what we did with our hands. AI is replacing what we do with our brains.
But also raping the planet to reproduce itself. We are an embodied species and yet seem ok with letting our bodies be destroyed by the urge to create a disembodied simulacrum of intelligence.
AI=ecological nightmare. Energy hole. One more thing the tech bros have brought us. I'm sorry, but I know there is a minisule amt that creates some positive but as Jeff Goldberg said in Jurrasic Park, they could do it but didn't ask if they should(paraphase).
There are serious plans to build small scale nuclear reactors to power AI data centers.
I make a point of not using AI in my searches ( add -ai to your searches) because of the power ai wastes and the resulting environmental damage. Just ask the people in Memphis who live near Musk’s methane energy plant who are seeing higher rates of asthma and other respiratory problems. I have rarely found AI to add anything that I can’t get from a traditional search and AI searches answers are often worse than Wikipedia.
I am not opposed to the idea of AI but there is a huge cost to its use. We can all avoid using it for no good reason. In fact it should be an opt in feature at least until the insane energy demands are addressed.
True, if one knows how to ask the right question(s), then AI is hardly needed for online searches. Worse, the brain is like any other body part: use it or lose it. If one doesn't know anything about a topic, or the right questions to ask and relies on AI, one will end up believing AI hallucinations.
I think the plan is to deliver the Wall-E sippy cup future, but it naively fails to anticipate that the ones paying for the AI revolution aren’t doing it to simply turn over the profits to the betterment of all mankind. They expect to be paid back and are eying the world labor market as the source of funds. Because they will not share, we are going to get Ready Player One instead.
I am perturbed that every time I mention "tittytainment" from the book The Global Trap, based upon a conference 30 years ago predicting how the economically useless 80% will have to be distracted with scrolling screen crap, NYT never shows that comment, most recently to the article on Elon Musk's sexy anime chatbots.
A big difference from 1999 from a fiscal standpoint. Under Clinton, there was a budget surplus and he raised taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Under Trump, exploding deficits and large tax cuts for the wealthiest.
“By contrast, it’s hard to find people who aren’t worried about AI. It’s common to hear warnings that AI will eliminate large categories of jobs, and maybe even lead to mass unemployment. I take the first prospect seriously — past technological change has taken away most of the jobs in major occupations, from coal miners to longshoremen. As a card-carrying economist, I’m skeptical about the second: People have been predicting mass unemployment caused by automation since the 1930s, and it keeps not happening. But the point is that AI is creating widespread anxiety even as it boosts GDP in the short run.”
While we may have another tech bubble bust due to AI, I think the goal is to eliminate as many man held jobs as possible. We’re already seeing data that shows that 13% of entry level college jobs are going to AI systems, and this trend will continue.
Let’s not forgot, that just two years ago, AI was an infant compared to today. Its learning curve is faster than we could have predicted. And CEO’s goal will always be to streamline and become more efficient. Human jobs means benefits like healthcare which continues to increase costs exponentially.
Furthermore, how many CEO’s would hire people, half of whom have might decide to have children, which reduces effectiveness, when they can have AI which operates 24/7 and it’s only cost is the energy needed to supply its system, and data inputs to control the algorithms.
Bottom line: these AI investments are about the future of business which begs the question, “What happens to people as AI gobbles up all of the advancements people have contributed over history, and is no longer capable of learning from humans?”
Whatever is happening, I’m not sure the future of the workforce is going to be reliant on human capital. IMHO…:)
Wonder also if those of us longer of tooth, recall that the productivity gains did not trickle down, instead we picked up the relative workloads of the disappeared roles .... bye bye secretarial pool, administrative support. Still in the throes of completing a file room clean out, 20 to 30 years of stuff, reviewing scanning and storing documents which would have been handled by admins or analysts ... but they are gone or otherwise occupied and it is deemed beyond the ability of temp staff ...
The tech story is also a tariff story, because computer parts are exempted from tariffs. This has the effect of pushing more investment into the AI boom than there would be without the tariffs. That's happening even though computer parts and chips ARE a national security issue - if China takes Taiwan they could cut off the supply of high tech chips to the USA - while importing kitchen cabinets poses no national security risk.
He is going totally anti-Biden. Biden administration imposed high tariffs on technological imports from China, and cut Chinese off from the high tech supply chain of the chips manufacturing industry.
Trump is literally doing the opposite. His vision dubbs Kitchen cabinet imports as a national security threat, whereas the high tech transfer has no bearing on national security situation. What an idiot!
What the oligarchs want is modern feudalism: a few rich people and a vast sea of serfs, peasants, servants. We won't need college professors or lawyers and not so many doctors, insurance agents, school teachers, but you can't replace people who shovel snow, take care of babies, the sick and the old. Hollow out the middle class and just have servants and their masters. Perfect! AI will help with that project.
The rich have always loved being served but hated having people dependent on them and people who were so intimately involved in their lives that they knew all their secrets. History is the story of how to get people to serve you and at the same time keeping them "in their place." This is just the latest chapter. Misogyny is just another piece of it: get women to do the work but keep them in their place beneath men.
Professor Krugman: IT'S THE GREED! IT'S THE GREED!! in the 1990s, the greed was all we could see, and we ran madly towards it hoping we too could get our grubby hands on some of that coin. now, most people are afraid. they're afraid of the orange rapist's threats of violence, afraid the gestapo will visit their workplaces and disappear them, their families, their associates or their employees, afraid that the gestapo will burn down their houses, afraid they will not be able to afford healthcare, regardless of how much money they might get their greedy grabby hands on.
AI is the unrealized monster that is growing, strengthening, putting its tentacles into everything we do and care about. when this monster is finally unleashed onto the country, we all will find ourselves in a world of economic and political trouble, in a world of economic and political pain.
I have already gotten out of the stock market for the most part because I believe the bubble will burst fairly soon, not that I had much invested. But I'd rather have a house paid off than a bunch of stocks that rose in value and then plummeted. At least I can live in the house.
I'm terribly confused, frankly. Trump has done just about everything he could possibly do to undermine the U.S. economy. And we've been hearing predictions since February that the disastrous effects of Trump's policies are just around the corner. Yet . . .
. . . Yet, I don't see any actual pain registering at the local level. Some foods (beef in particular) have gotten more expensive, but people seem to be adjusting to that just fine. Imported goods prices are creeping up slowly, and people seem to be adjusting to that just fine as well. Perhaps it's like boiling a frog, but I'm not seeing dramatic economic impacts of Trump's mishandling of the economy.
My fear is that, absent dramatic impacts, Joe and Jane Sixpack will just muddle along, entertaining themselves to death while Trump et al. cement control over their lives.
You have just described my frustration. When Biden was president, everyone was up in arms about the price of groceries. Now Trump is in, and suddenly everyone is 'adjusting' to the higher prices. What gives?
Better PR?
When half the media is a PR firm for you it helps.
Nailed it!
It's called FOX News. Which ran endless segments about how the "Biden economy" was already in recession, and about how horrible US inflation was.
Despite US inflation under Biden BEING THE LOWEST IN THE WORLD. If Trump had won in 2020, FOX would've been instead running endless segments on how much worse inflation was in Germany, Japan, UK, Italy, China, France, etc. Having a glossy 24/7 propaganda arm in their corner is perhaps the greatest strength of our GOP rulers.
more entertaining or infuriating PR
Just the passage of time, I think. The longer we live with the higher prices, the more we perceive them as "normal" and the less we are enraged as opposed to just pessimistic.
It's been 𝙇𝙀𝙎𝙎 𝙏𝙃𝘼𝙉 𝙏𝙀𝙉 𝙈𝙊𝙉𝙏𝙃𝙎 since he took office. The mortgage bubble that begat the Great Recession of 2008 took over a decade to reach the point it popped. The tariffs have been so haphazardly set, reset and enforced that they haven't really bitten yet, thanks to TACO.
The economy was propped up by companies rushing to build stock and supplies in the early part of the year, cushioning prices from their effect. And now it's pretty much the AI bubble that it the only thing propping up the markets.
The US Economy doesn't turn on a dime, and there was enormous inertia from the Biden economy.
By the time the electorate really starts suffering, it will be much worse, and MUCH harder to turn around, since the current pathway is the oligarchic strip-mining of US assets, like the fall of the USSR.
I was struck by the difference in public sentiment between now and 1999. We had a younger, vigorous, optimistic, forward-looking (remember "Don't Stop"?) president who, for all of his human shortcomings, made a lot of us, from center-right to solidly progressive, feel like we were going forward, together.
Now we have a delusional, grouchy, vindictive, destructive, easily manipulated, obese, incoherent, demented, greedy, dishonest narcissist trying to alienate just about everyone who doesn't irrationally worship him. He's backed by the most atrocious cabinet in history and advisors who sound disturbingly like their counterparts in 1930s Germany or characters in a dystopian fantasy.
An economy as large as ours is like a huge ship at sea. Inertia controls everything in the short run, so the probable impending disaster hasn't hit yet. Once the ship changes direction, a new inertia can set in and eventually make it really hard to regain forward progress. Throw in the arrogant shortsightedness of the billionaire tech bros vying for hegemony, and it's a pretty putrid stew.
IMHO, AI is doubly dangerous. It's already sucking vast amounts of electricity out of the grid, exactly when the senile moron is doing everything he can to kill the renewables boom. And it's spinning a rosy scenario of effortless wisdom and liberation from a lot of routine drudgery, even while it appears to have the mental capacity of a bright 10-year-old who gets some things right but still has so much to learn. It's being used to cheat in school, create deceptive deep fakes, and even cite non-existent legal precedents in court documents. And that's just so far.
The government is shut down, the Speaker refuses to seat newly elected representatives, and tens of millions are facing catastrophic, prohibitive spikes in their health insurance premiums. Oh, and the orange tyrant is trying to occupy our cities with military force and rule by edict.
Who can find optimism in this situation?
No one sane, and living in reality.
i think perhaps we underestimate the effects of the rising stock market. my sister just spent $10,000 upgrading her back yard. where did she get the money? stock market gains
And the rising stock market is the Biden legacy…
Meanwhile unemployment among the young is at a nine year high* and climbing fast. I mean, if we're going to base our economic expectations on how well our mutual funds are doing, it's no wonder our children hate us.
* https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/03/job-market-new-grads-unemployment.html
Krugman said, "People have been predicting mass unemployment caused by automation since the 1930s, and it keeps not happening."
Not happening directly, but leaving many people behind in increasingly low-level jobs. Gone are the days when an auto worker could afford to buy a car, a house, and raise a family. AI will make this much worse. A high school diploma isn't a sufficient credential for most knowledge-work jobs, leaving traditional food service and retail sales openings, as well as some low-level construction jobs. Even traditional tradesman roles, e.g., auto mechanic, plumber, electrician, require education well beyond high school, and AI is infiltrating those.
As a former financial consultant, I consider my portfolio more than adequate but not in the "wealthy" range. I've been very surprised to see how much it has risen YTD. The interest and capital gains are more than my Social Security lately. I reinvest, but I expect the market to tank again soon. I was wrong about the timing before, but will I be wrong again?
Who did she thank rising stock market for?
'Passage of time' makes sense.... I guess it still seems a little odd that attitudes changed so quickly once Trump was elected. Seems a bit too coincidental. Too many people have been brainwashed to hate 'Democrats' and see them as the cause of anything and everything that goes wrong.
Attitudes: Faux Noise brainwashing 101 there.
Extreme Double standards for GOP-Dems for decades.
They are still blaming it on Biden. "Can't be Trump's fault...he's a genius..."
People are governed by their prejudices.
"Everyone was up in arms" during Biden's presidency vs. "everyone is adjusting" are media narratives and have jack shit all to do with reality, except in how they influence perception, not reflect it. The media just fucked Biden every single fucking day after he took away their war coverage toy, and eventually the cowardly-ass party started fucking him too.
You are 100% correct. It's all about the vibes and the MSM is primed to make sure that the vibes under Chump are much better than under any Dem. For example, Chump's idiocies are minimized or simply ignored, while any Dem's are magnified and shouted from the rooftops, every hour of every day. E.g. Chump's obvious mental issues ignored while "Biden's old" was front page news, every single day.
👆🎯Ever so much this!
With Trump, there’s many other things to worry about: authoritarian takeover, for example. Consumer prices aren’t at the top of the list.
Also, Chump's fan boys and girls believe him when he says (as he does continually) that inflation is down. I mean, would he lie to them?
Exactly. The MAGA remains loyal.
And they always will. Because nothing else really matters to them except "owning the libs".
They will willingly pay $10 for a pound of ground beef, lose their business because their workers have been deported and kids die of measles than have a Democrat as POTUS.
especially a black woman POTUS
except that daily personal living occupies our minds and all that other stuff doesn't affect us.......until it does
Spineless and fearful, the GOP is minions and legacy media is scared. And we are seeing the drugification of media—the amazing garbage on AM radio persists. Yet it’s in every car for free and it’s horrible!!! If you haven’t heard it you have no idea.…adds the rise of radical Christian nationalism.
Once addicted it’s almost impossible to get back…you can’t make these Faux folks get treatment…they don’t even want measles shots!
Now I see that the Supine court might make professional speech free speech…that will be weird, no more ability to sue. Why have a law license? What about medical malpractice!?
Hi Ryan, can you say more about the idea of making 'professional speech free speech'? If it ends one's ability to sue regardless of the circumstances, it sounds worrisome. If you have a source I can look up, I'd really appreciate it!
No references because like a lot of the court they are inventing as they go! Their money as speech comes to mind here. So here's the fear--if a professional counselor, assuming a licensed caregiver, can tell you anything, true or not, in so-called conversation therapy, as part of their professional speech, this is malpractice open wide! No legal consequences.
Where would it end? Your doctor might no longer be limited too...of course they take an oath but these are becoming less popular too!
The research, science, licensing sort of goes out the window...if something is unproven and unsafe we should be able to limit its practice. Now defining so-called conversation therapy is an issue for sure...are they using shock treatments yet? Some countries allow this...just thinking...
Thank you Ryan... now I get it, and the context. I have to say -- as a retired licensed psychologist, my jaw dropped when I read about this supposed 'counselor' who felt her free speech rights were being affected by the ban on conversion therapy. Good Lord! There are very specific rules of ethics that therapists are supposed to follow, and one of them is that you do not push your own personal religious or political views on your clients!! If a therapist wants to advertise as a 'strictly Bible based' counselor, that's one thing... at least the clients they get will be forewarned. But I cannot believe that CACREP or other governing bodies wouldn't be all over this, if she is trying to push negative views of homosexuality on gay clients. That is just not ethical.
CLS, thanks for the professional insight! good reminder…
Yes, we can ‘regulate’ in the marketplace at the very least for safety, honesty would be a reach…it’s a bit like birthing center who won’t teach about birth control as they hide their radical religious foundations--about choice, sex, and women. A good friend told me about ‘conversion therapies’ she got as a teen in South Africa which included giving her electric shocks…related to looking at pictures of women while collecting data, with something somewhat like a lie detector, didn’t work, by the way.
Many in the House GOP are pretty much there I’m sure…yet still at the moment ‘bad optics.’ Grabbing American off the street and handcuffs, that’s okay as long they wear masks.
Inflation in 2021-23 was a new phenomenon for people under the age of 50, who had never experienced such price rises (except perhaps hearing mom and dad complain about gas and food in 1979-80). Now they are somewhat inured to higher prices. Apparently not that many people actually believed that the Donald could wave his magic wand and make eggs cheaper on Day 1. Biden's border policy and his apparent decrepitude also contributed to his unpopularity. But I expect Trump will also be hugely unpopular in a year or two.
He is hugely unpopular now. He is setting records for unpopularity!
But the issue is that for the Faux druggified they don’t know he’s tanking…and FB fear corners are the worst! I saw a post of a picture of French farmers spreading manure along the highway passed off as Antifa in the US.
Really! Lots of likes, yikes!
Fox propaganda channel needs sued (again) for showing protests from five years ago and claiming it was current events in Portland.
We a great show called “The Truth Tellers” that points out the failures and foibles of all kinds, and certainly the completely false Fuax is prime suspect Number One! Their failures are criminal! But RFK, The Gnome, and the King of the lies, Oresisident Phony Man, is Truth Social! Strident lies!
Unpopularity the likes of which we've never seen...
Big, strong unpopularity, with tears in it's eyes...
More than likely, the Stockholm syndrome will take over.
Ain’t propaganda great!?! The Fox News demographic is drinking regime cool aid. As always, some people don’t/can’t pay attention at all. The worries I have, may be confined mostly to my blue bubble, and aren’t covered much by most major mainstream media outlets. It feels like we’re all just waiting. I keep thinking about the Amritsar Massacre of 1919 - the British massacre of Indian protesters. Revulsion against it set off the strongest, most cohesive, final support for India’s Independence from Britain. I fear something like that is what trump insiders are pushing towards, with their lust for violence, and ignorance of history.
Cravenness. You might complain and even threaten the person you know has a moral line he will not cross. But when faced with a real thug, you know what’s at stake and quietly adjust and self-censor and pretend you’re not really upset and therefore has no reason to complain.
The press was against Biden. Did you know that he was also, deliberately, premeditatedly, old?
Hi Barry, I agree... those are both true. What I'm wondering about is specifically why people seem to be less concerned about grocery prices per se. If they were up in arms about prices, why would it matter that someone else is now president? Wouldn't they expect Trump to 'fix' the prices?
Trump gives them many other things to worry about other than food prices! 🔱
Plus priorities: “what price hath freedom … from say, someone using the ‘wrong’ bathroom?” 😱
Trump is a pro at catching their attention ‘by the gonads’ - his specialty.
— this saves them all from the frustrating labor of having to think things through!
So old they ran literally hundreds, of above-the-fold stories that he was so old. But crickets on the mad man at the helm now, that I expect to start telling us how much he loves molesting little girls, since he gets a pass on everything.
I’m not adjusting at all! 😡like Paul suggested the pain of the tariffs are being offset by investment in AI in terms of the GDP
I'm not adjusting
In the early years of the Third Reich, the German people saw their lot improve under NSDAP, ignoring the massive assaults on civil liberties occurring in plain sight...and even when retrenchment began to bite in the civilian economy due to the massive relocation of assets and resources in order to feed Hitler's war machine, there were some mutterings of discontent amongst the population. However, German industry was enjoying burgeoning profits, and bankers, industrialists and other favored elements of German society were entirely fine with Naziism. And the massive surveillance state built by the Gestapo and SS discouraged public discontent.
Any of this sound familiar in America, 2025?
America in 2024-2025 is missing one of the key elements that helped propel Hitler and the Nazis to power: The Great Depression. In Germany in particular, economic conditions through the 1920s and into the 1930s were profoundly terrible. People were desperate, and Hitler's massive investments in infrastructure put men to work who were otherwise simply shiftless and desperate.
America in 2024 was incredibly prosperous with stabilized prices and rising wages. Americans were in no way desperate for economic change. Indeed, their choices were to stay the course with Harris or vote for Trump who ran on promises to destroy the economy.
And here we are. Trump is working very VERY hard to destroy the economy, though I'm not seeing the effects yet.
from my view from Canada, America has always been a brutal culture ... what I see is cruel health policy, people working several jobs, little child care or any help that many people need - no sense of sharing: you're on your own, great disparity (so many yachts and mansions while so many others live on the streets and are treated like garbage ... so there is sense of desperation, I think, just not as cohesive or something as with official depressions
That is how we have always viewed the US from Canada.
Even the Democratic party would be centre-right in Canada.
Why does the US vote against the govt acting for the interests of the population, as a whole ?
Racism is our original sin that we can't get away from.
White Southerners can't accept that minorities have the same rights as them, so they are willing to tear it all down instead of sharing society with those they feel are inferior. The brutality of immigrants are just the beginning. All minority groups will feel their brutality soon enough.
This is the country where they filled community pools with cement rather than let blacks swim in them. The MAGA fans who are not rich are soon going to find out that if they're not in the 1%, they're actually black. All people not in the 1% are about to find out that what "trickles down" on them isn't money.
Covid was our Great Depression, and Vaccines our Great War.
Showing that 'muricans are deeply spoiled and incredibly ignorant.
"We’re the middle children of history, man: No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war; our Great Depression is our lives".
The current bubble will burst in a year or so, and the economy will tank. The GOP cultists will blame Biden. Fox news will run news clips about illegal workers secretly sabotaging AI data centers. The mainstream media will run articles about how nobody could have predicted the collapse and everyone will just have to tighten their belts. The failing banks banks will get huge taxpayer funded bailouts. Trump will claim the Dems want to send money to welfare queens. Nothing ever changes.
If Americans in 2024 were not desperate for economic change, why wouldn't they have chosen to stay the course?
Because something like 40% of American voters couldn't be arsed to vote, and the grotesque distortion that the Electoral College has on our Presidential election masks the very narrow win by Trump.
I think one factor was because of Biden’s support of Israel as well as his age, and not giving Harris enough time to campaign properly.
I'm going to be very judgmental here, but the dim witted or younger, naive people are very easily manipulated, like a young Latin? Mid-eastern? affluent-appearing man at the gym sporting his t-shirt stating: Joe & the 'Ho Have Got to Go. Of course, life never seems to improve for those who toil by consistently voting for the "lesser evil"--usually a moderate that pacifies the financially and professionally comfortable--hence why many don't vote. People are going to have to experience grand devastation--including the selfish affluent 80-99%--before they wise up like prior generations.
“…including the selfish affluent 80-99%…”
As my European history teacher once said, uber wealthy Americans in the 1930s had the very recent specter of the Bolshevik revolution to sober them up and make them slightly more agreeable to the New Deal. By the late 1970s that fear had faded so they returned to their grotesque levels of narcissism.
By "the selfish affluent 80-99%" I presume you are talking about the uber wealthy, but they are not the uber wealthy. It is the 0.1% that are the problem. That is 34,000 Americans with an average net of over $680 million and a total net worth of over $23 trillion. The resrouces they control have increased by over 300% since the financial crisis. They have bought an oligarchy.
You tell me. Then we'll both know.
I don't "know" but I believe those who think their "protest" vote, e.g., "I won't vote for Biden because he's not doing enough for Gaza" or the single-issue voter "I'm against vaccines" tanked Harris. Then of course, she's a woman.
Seriously. Two brilliant, qualified women lost to TRUMP? BIDEN beat TRUMP? I get correlation isn't causation, but come on. Trump? Reailly?
Agreed the people that didn't get out and vote for a woman let Trump in. Shame on them, sure paying for it now.
agreed
Misogyny, both women were well qualified whereas Caligulump was not.
Those (large proportion of the electorate) with Fox poisoning thought the economy was far worse than it was. The right flooded media with lies about the risks of transgendered people. Biden/Harris got no credit for slowing illegal immigration without the cruelty of Trump 1.0's children in cages. Biden's slow uptake in conversation, esp in the debate, was harped on by media who sanewashed Trump's demented ramblings (and childish insults and economic incoherence).
So 'the course' was way more worth staying than many people knew.
AND a ton of people stayed home rather than vote for a woman of color as president.
👆🎯I think the bots saying she wouldn't change anything from the way Biden ran things, helped screw her over. I called one out on Substack saying where did she say she would do exactly the same thing in Gaza? They never replied.
You all know what? We've all been through this repeatedly. We know it by heart. What in the world do you think you are accomplishing by repeating it yet again, and then echoing each other? Try getting out of your own heads and find out what you can do about it. Please. Because if you've got the time to sit around and go over this again and again, you are wasting your time. There are things you can do, or do more of, or learn more about so you can get your minds moving toward the future instead of constantly rehashing the past. Join those of us who are doing what we can, often while trying to cope with the impacts of what Trump & Co are doing to our lives. The lives, it seems, that are invisible to you.
Trump won by a pretty slim margin.
Of those who voted, more voted for someone OTHER than Trump. The electoral college won for Trump. His margin next to Harris's was thin.
"America in 2024-2025 is missing one of the key elements that helped propel Hitler and the Nazis to power: The Great Depression."
IMHO, that speaks poorly of the US media and the right. They were no reacting to horrors, but to a president whom they did not like.
He finished their forever war in Aghanistan after trump stuck him with the clean up. The press never forgave him for being competent, and thus dull.
Maybe you're just looking in the wrong places, or simply choosing to look only at what's closest to you. My family is seeing the impacts, because we have two people with serious health issues, things they had no hand in creating, and even with insurance, it is tight. My daughter's family faces the possibility of no insurance or insurance with premiums they can't afford. We also have an elder we are trying to keep comfortable and cared for as she slowly deteriorates. This is a heavy load both physically and emotionally.
I am surrounded by people whose livlihood is on the land, small family farms- and facing crop failures because of drought, without fiscal buffers because this is the third year. This year drought, last year floods and heavy rains during the pollination and growing season. We have lost most of our tourist business because of the drought and Trump's erratic non-policies. A couple of folks in my family work in a small specialty family-owned factory, and while their jobs are stable right now, they know that demand for the product that factory produces could tank as people prioritize rising food prices, heating fuel, and just maintaining.
America may have felt prosperous to you in 1924, but not to a lot of other people, who were just beginning to get on their feet again when Trump began pulling the rug out. I guess it all depends on what's in your perspective to begin with. Sometimes not feeling the effects is like having blinders on. It's happening, but you can't see it because you aren't seeing beyond your own current circumstances yet.
Moreover, the Nazis did improve the economic lot of “Aryan” Germans by offering them plundered goods - apartments seized from Jews or abandoned as they fled and material goods seized in Czechoslovakia and Poland - and many were just fine with getting their share of the plunder. Our fascists are not “national socialists” however. Our fascists are fine with letting the plunder keep goosing the stock market by sending everything to the top and cutting health care and food for our “Aryans”.
Pee wee German's plan was to condiscate stuff from people he deports and give it to MAGAts. Pretty disgusting for a Jew to have a plan to mimics The Third Reich.
The difference between Germany then and us now is that Germany had no democratic tradition at all. The people were used to kings and dukes. Weimar was the new thing to them, and it didn't seem to work well. Plus the Communists were there stirring the pot from the left, which is not comparable here.
I have confidence that our democratic tradition and culture will carry us through. The 250 year anniversary of independence will be a reminder of how we fought against a Mad King then. We can do it again, much to Trump's surprise.
I am afraid we might not enjoy the « no king celebration of the new republic » 250 birthday 🎂 the way we expect it. Trump and Co will probably turn it into a big celebration of « Caesar for life » enthronement… Where are the future Cassius, Brutus and Albinus who will deliver the Republic ?
The U.S. is doing more than muttering discontent. But it does seem that as long as people's retirement accounts are okay, the fascists can kill whomever they want (as long as it isn't me) and turn a blind eye. I guess in the end, even with all the knowledge we have, we're no better than the Germans who turned in Anne Frank and her family.
I'm convinced that every single MAGAt would turn in Anne Frank in a heartbeat. With great enjoyment since the cruelty is the point.
And crucify Jesus because you know, brown, Jewish guy.
But weren't these retirement accounts okay under Biden too? And they, still, all turned against him. Didn't they? There is something else under the surface
Racism, Faux Noise propaganda & 1%-er social media assist.
Dark money.
Ding, ding, ding. We have a winnah!
oh boy
The frog is boiling, we will soon begin to hear from farmers whose crops have not been sold. China took its soybean business to South America. Perhaps this will be the year of the harvest that wasn't ... crops bouldering in the fields while people starve.
There are already murmurs of farm subsidies. They did not plan for that in the Big Beautifil Billshit. Also a lot of social media memes about rebate checks ... DOGE refunds. Social Security bonus checks ... Really?
Is the regime trying to buy our complacency? Uncle Donald will save us?
I think the difference here is that compared to the years leading up to the tech boom, corporations have not taken on as much debt ... remember the years before tech boom were M&A maniac. Instead companies have plowed cash into equity buyback to benefit 'shareholder' value. Asset heavy organizations take longer to cut back and layoff than those under heavy debt ...
And I would also suggest that workforce are already very lean ... to the extent that many of us are covering what would have been two to three positions or workloads compared to our 2000 era peers.
Yes, Argentina sold it soybean to China after Trump gave them $20 billion. So they got 20 billion from us and 20 billion from China. Looks like Trump was had by Argentina!
I think you just wrote the Cliff Notes version of _Art of the Deal_
Not really. It's more like "we" (meaning the MAGAnuts who voted for him) were had by Trumpkopf. He did it to support a fascist dictator - he expects something personal in return.
Read the most recent post on TheBigNewsletter.com by Matt Stoller: Monopoly Round Up Soy Boy America. In it, a link from an Argentinian media source that the $20 B bailout to Argentina was engineered by the treasury secretary at the behest of his hedge fund manager friend Rob Citrone. I bet Bessent would love to add to his $25 million? billion? worth of farm acreage investment, also at low bottom prices. As many have commented on here, the coming economic depression is to rob people of their assets, livelihoods, & retirement security. My brother says he doesn't make the rules, he just plays the game and has pivoted to investing much money & time into cattle to diversify from row crops. Climate and soil have a lot to do with what is possible to grow geographically and there isn't much demand for other appropriate alternatives, either. In fact, there is a global glut of just about every manufactured product and labor, as well. Every century, it seems, new generations get an attitude adjustment their forebears faced. It would be good to see the spoiled, privileged narcissist global leadership included, but that is rarely the case for the victors of war or conquest.
Absolutely. They're all grifters.
Yup...just like he expects things from his buddy Putin.
Everything a transaction. He lives for Quid Pro Quo. Just ask Melania.
She's the queen of quid pro quo, she gets a quarter mil for every appearance she makes.
Part of Trump's plan to "normalize" his behavior. He doesn't care about anyone except himself.
Or he’s getting money on the sly.
I’m sorry but I don’t think he needs to get it on the sly, he’s getting it out in front of everybody in many other circumstances.
Yeah.
Among other South American countries, China's buying soy beans from Argentina - the country Trump is bailing out. So the US Government is harming US soy bean farmers and supporting Argentinian soy bean farmers. Think about it.
https://www.farmprogress.com/commentary/china-thrives-without-u-s-soybeans
https://www.newsweek.com/trumps-argentina-bailout-sparks-fury-among-farmers-republicans-10809559
I just read that the Admin is turning its eyes to a farmer bailout today. Guess we'll see...
Farmers in MO have been complaining about trouble with crop sales for a few months now.
The effect of trump's economy depends on the community you're in. My area has a huge number of seniors, and there are regular discussions about what foods people no longer buy because they are priced out. So people aren't going hungry, but their feeling of well-being has diminished extensively. Seniors like to eat out a lot. They've stopped. I used to go out to lunch three, four times a week. Now it's twice a month. Then there are other prices crowding people out - electricity bills in our area are up by 50-60%, water bills are sky rocketing, and the prices of cars are devastating. I know multiple people who continue to drive their old cars because the cost of a new one is completely prohibitive. And rents for working people are insane. You might do okay if you have a middle income job ($50-100,000) but anyone is the $23,000 to 30,000 is working to pay the rent and that's it.
It takes a while to turn the ship around, but Trump has pointed it at the rocks. Since politics has become so tribal, we can expect some Sixpacks to blame Biden when the hull starts letting in water.
Joe and Jane Sixpack are busy entertaining themselves with Friday night lights high school football, SEC college football, and the NFL. Oh also they are busy being pissed about Bad Bunny being the Super Bowl halftime show.
Not to mention NASCAR events and truck and tractor pull events.
Sounds like Iowa to me
A substantial number of investors believe that pain is catastrophic. To reinforce PK's point: even as stocks hit new highs, another segment of investors is buying gold. There are many reasons why people invest in gold, but some of the drive has always been "the end of the world is coming." Gold has broken through its all-time real highs of 1980, which I never thought it could do. By contrast, gold was close to an all-time real low in the prosperous Clinton years, when a record high percentage of Americans had salaried jobs and wages were rising.
When the tariffs were announced large companies that could afford to ordered lots of inventory immediately and stocked up before the tariffs went into effect. This gave the companies time to figure out what to do next, how to price items and negotiate with their suppliers to reduce the tariffs’ impacts on price. With time passing we will see more prices rise now. There has been a delay and the effects are different depending on the industry and the company and its ability to manage inventory and negotiate etc.
From my view, surrounded by a diverse working class community, I don't see the Sixpack family as muddling along. I see them as Joe and Jane Voiceless. Unless, of course, they are MAGA oriented. This is kind of the point to oppress and frighten people without resources from speaking up or showing up. People without a network to help them recover from malicious Trump driven hurdles stay quiet. People holding on to the threads of friendships in their community with sorta MAGA types are quiet. Plus when adults are all working two, three, or four minimum wage jobs to make ends meet it is hard to show up and be heard. When a family shifts from buying vegetables to growing them or bartering with the neighbor I am not sure that counts as muddling but maybe. My main point is the communication connection for the Voiceless-Sixpack is muted at best and going unrecorded.
I don't follow social media, but my wife does. She says there is a constant drumbeat of complaints about grocery prices. So I think pain is registering at the local level.
The rules of the universe just don’t seem to apply to Trump. He is by far the luckiest man that ever lived. “Teflon Trump.”
Unfortunately for us, it will take time for the damage of the tariffs to wend it's way through the system. It hasn't hit yet, but when it does...
We don't have reliable data on the outcomes achieved by Mr. Trump and Crew. They have destroyed the agencies that might give a picture they don't want given.
I hope you are wrong, but history tells us you are dead on. However, history has told us also what goes up rapidly eventually leads to a collapse. There are a lot of people who remember the period of real, widespread prosperity. They will enlighten others what used to be. Political and economic instability will bring the regime down.
If it's the economy that drives people at the ballot box, then things aren't looking very promising for 2026, at least at this rate.
Well, it drove Biden out and by that logic he shouldn't have been since things were not looking very promising for Trump in 2024.
I'll take a contrarian view. I'd venture to say that the people who show up on Paul's Substack are at least solidly middle class, if not wealthy. The fact that we may have become inured to the (relatively) slow increase in prices is because we can absorb them. That does not mean there aren't large numbers of people for whom even small increases throw their budgets out the window. Couple that with the regime's reductions in food support, child care support, medical support and their situations are dire. Just because we aren't experiencing the pain doesn't mean it isn't out there.
One big difference was that during the 90s the internet and tech held the promise of making the world a better place for the common people. Create opportunities not imagined. Make everything more humane and equal.
Now off course we all know that didn't happen that way. And the feeling today is more of it's a society disrupting force that only benefits rich/powerful people
Also the tech boom of that time enabled popular democratic movements & rebellions vs. the bewildering misinformation flooding the zone today
Yes, Andreas we were taken for a collective ride on the opiod dreams of cheerleaders like Steven Pinker that promised us a future of all of us coding websites or running artisnal cheese shops in magically revived downtowns, blah, blah blah…
Now as it turns out we are being made serfs in a Tech Feudalism 2.0
It’s also impossible to ignore the fact that the people developing AI are insane with more money than countries.
Other concerns about AI: the data centers are energy and water hogs, driving up costs of the former and draining supplies of the latter in multiple jurisdictions; fraud, e.g., fake videos of medical professionals selling quack remedies; oppression, as governments and businesses use AI to generate propaganda and control thought.
Right. I just saw the beginning of a video claiming that sweet potatoes will cure sciatica.
😵💫🤪😂
If trump and his ilk are talking, they are lying, misleading and/or ignorant.
Total agreement re Trump!
As Paul points out, this is a great economy for those with spare money to invest in the stock market, but it's a scary economy for those who are dependent upon their job continuing to exist. Therefore, I think the best economic promise that Democrats could make is universal free supported job training for every American citizen. For more info see:
How to Fight Trump: Part One
https://kathleenweber.substack.com/p/how-to-fight-trump-part-one
It will still come down to the fact that people want the jobs to come to them - they do not want to move. I heard one man complaining that he got the re-education to be a programmer, but then couldn't find a job as one. He didn't realize when he started training that the jobs were somewhere else.
I think we have to be very upfront with people about what jobs are available where they live and what jobs require relocation.
As long as private companies are competing for the task of re-educating other people, that's not going to happen.
All of the above.
I pick "all of the above"!
It is the AI job worries but part of the bubble is the invention of crypto which has trillions of dollars of notional value, mostly gleaned by a small band of bros, with the broad public either not participating or losing money on meme coins.
Yep. Crypto is a thought virus and an economic virus. It provides no real value, and plenty of cost. It’s a hard no for me.
Crypto is certainly part of it - how to hold and launder money out of sight of “regulators” since our supine congress has given them a blank check. But in the meantime the AI bubble is destroying the planet with its insatiable energy demands (and preference for coal or gas over renewables). Two kinds of greed that are indifferent to actual hunger and illness in human beings.
As I read this on my smartphone, I’m loathe to denigrate technology. But AI generated “people” scare the bejesus out of me. The power of human touch is something to be preserved and enjoyed. Please keep sounding the alarm, Paul.
It doesn’t help that the tech bros who are promoting AI are a bunch of elitist, crackpot misanthropes who are convinced they will be immortal — Elon Musk, Bryan Johnson for example. Peter Theil has been giving talks to techies about the antichrist to tech groups, even speculating that Greta Thunberg could be the antichrist.
What really puzzles me is these egomaniacs tell us AI and robots will replace our jobs but they are also demanding women have more kids. They also think man, not robots, must do space exploration — at a far greater cost to us taxpayers who subsidize them — while they avoid paying taxes.
Exactly. What so-called AI can only do is repeat and remix what already exists. What it cannot do is, as an artist friend of mine said -- look at the world sideways. That type of vision produces new ideas.
Another important point is all of these current AI models train on the internet. The internet that is now slowly filling up with AI generated data. It’s a snake eating its own tail.
Even you, honey, are about to be replaced by a sexy anime AI chat bot.
Could be a bot, they come into non-paywalled comment sections.
REPORT IT PLEASE (I can’t, the report function doesn’t work from an iPhone).
I've reported it. Glad there aren't too many more of these.
Thx.
I'm sorry this article is behind a paywall, but it shows the ridiculous but scary ideas about AI becoming your new best "friend": https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/10/friend-ai-companion-ads/684451/ And the company marketing "Friend" has no really money or income, has few users, but still insists AI is going to change the world for the better. A relevant quote: "A microphone in a plastic disk on a necklace connected to a chatbot is not a god, but Altman and Amodei both have declared that they are racing to usher in a sort of superintelligence. In a way, Schiffmann [the marketer of "Friend"] has simply said aloud the truth of many AI leaders’ grand vision. Meanwhile, the people defacing Friend’s advertisements are expressing a much larger, inchoate rage at the broader AI industry, not just these plastic pendants that practically nobody owns."
Thx for the link (I have a subscription).
The dotcom boom was so much fun. Y2K was the great unknown threat that might trip everything up. But it was a great non-event. The fault was to lay in ourselves in our self-inspired arrogance.
But at least we had a rule of law. At least armed goons were not prowling the streets of our capital. At least we had a bureau of statistics. At least there was an effort to police white collar crime and not a White House plundering the world for self-enrichment.
We are walking atop of a very tall skyscraper. It's just a question of time before we step off it and everything comes tumbling down.
Y2K was a 'great non-event' because tons of people who knew Cobol and Fortran came out of retirement and worked hard (with others not in retirement) to make sure that Y2K didn't happen. I sure wish people would remember that the 'nonevent' was a success story!
Absolutely. In my company, we even had to tackle the stuff coded in "C." Any program that used two-digit years had to be modified. The databases required the most work.
Remember standing by the emergency generators at the former Banker's Trust bldg at 130 Liberty St in Manhattan that night, it was all hands on deck. Once nothing untoward was reported from Russia, I figured we'd be fine, since so many Russian programmers were working here, because Cobol was still used there.
Thank you for the education!
:-)
Yep, I worked on fixing code for Y2K (wasn’t retired).
I was at Ford, and they had a lot of Y2K fixes being done.
One program scanned everybody's computers, looking for 2-digit dates (in my case, it had a high false-positive rate, which I had to manually verify).
I also remember triggering a Y2K bug in Excel, in '97 or so.
It was finding the problems that took time. They were simple to fix.
There is a difference between the tech boom of the 1990s and now. Those new machines replaced what we did with our hands. AI is replacing what we do with our brains.
But also raping the planet to reproduce itself. We are an embodied species and yet seem ok with letting our bodies be destroyed by the urge to create a disembodied simulacrum of intelligence.
A house of cards me thinks.
AI=ecological nightmare. Energy hole. One more thing the tech bros have brought us. I'm sorry, but I know there is a minisule amt that creates some positive but as Jeff Goldberg said in Jurrasic Park, they could do it but didn't ask if they should(paraphase).
There are serious plans to build small scale nuclear reactors to power AI data centers.
I make a point of not using AI in my searches ( add -ai to your searches) because of the power ai wastes and the resulting environmental damage. Just ask the people in Memphis who live near Musk’s methane energy plant who are seeing higher rates of asthma and other respiratory problems. I have rarely found AI to add anything that I can’t get from a traditional search and AI searches answers are often worse than Wikipedia.
I am not opposed to the idea of AI but there is a huge cost to its use. We can all avoid using it for no good reason. In fact it should be an opt in feature at least until the insane energy demands are addressed.
Thanks for the insert <-ai> in search keywords tip!
True, if one knows how to ask the right question(s), then AI is hardly needed for online searches. Worse, the brain is like any other body part: use it or lose it. If one doesn't know anything about a topic, or the right questions to ask and relies on AI, one will end up believing AI hallucinations.
I think the plan is to deliver the Wall-E sippy cup future, but it naively fails to anticipate that the ones paying for the AI revolution aren’t doing it to simply turn over the profits to the betterment of all mankind. They expect to be paid back and are eying the world labor market as the source of funds. Because they will not share, we are going to get Ready Player One instead.
I am perturbed that every time I mention "tittytainment" from the book The Global Trap, based upon a conference 30 years ago predicting how the economically useless 80% will have to be distracted with scrolling screen crap, NYT never shows that comment, most recently to the article on Elon Musk's sexy anime chatbots.
A big difference from 1999 from a fiscal standpoint. Under Clinton, there was a budget surplus and he raised taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Under Trump, exploding deficits and large tax cuts for the wealthiest.
“By contrast, it’s hard to find people who aren’t worried about AI. It’s common to hear warnings that AI will eliminate large categories of jobs, and maybe even lead to mass unemployment. I take the first prospect seriously — past technological change has taken away most of the jobs in major occupations, from coal miners to longshoremen. As a card-carrying economist, I’m skeptical about the second: People have been predicting mass unemployment caused by automation since the 1930s, and it keeps not happening. But the point is that AI is creating widespread anxiety even as it boosts GDP in the short run.”
While we may have another tech bubble bust due to AI, I think the goal is to eliminate as many man held jobs as possible. We’re already seeing data that shows that 13% of entry level college jobs are going to AI systems, and this trend will continue.
Let’s not forgot, that just two years ago, AI was an infant compared to today. Its learning curve is faster than we could have predicted. And CEO’s goal will always be to streamline and become more efficient. Human jobs means benefits like healthcare which continues to increase costs exponentially.
Furthermore, how many CEO’s would hire people, half of whom have might decide to have children, which reduces effectiveness, when they can have AI which operates 24/7 and it’s only cost is the energy needed to supply its system, and data inputs to control the algorithms.
Bottom line: these AI investments are about the future of business which begs the question, “What happens to people as AI gobbles up all of the advancements people have contributed over history, and is no longer capable of learning from humans?”
Whatever is happening, I’m not sure the future of the workforce is going to be reliant on human capital. IMHO…:)
Wonder also if those of us longer of tooth, recall that the productivity gains did not trickle down, instead we picked up the relative workloads of the disappeared roles .... bye bye secretarial pool, administrative support. Still in the throes of completing a file room clean out, 20 to 30 years of stuff, reviewing scanning and storing documents which would have been handled by admins or analysts ... but they are gone or otherwise occupied and it is deemed beyond the ability of temp staff ...
The "job creators" were always the profit Creators. Nothing wrong with that but we should speak the truth. Labor is a cost they want to minimize.
The tech story is also a tariff story, because computer parts are exempted from tariffs. This has the effect of pushing more investment into the AI boom than there would be without the tariffs. That's happening even though computer parts and chips ARE a national security issue - if China takes Taiwan they could cut off the supply of high tech chips to the USA - while importing kitchen cabinets poses no national security risk.
https://www.apricitas.io/p/the-tariff-exemption-behind-the-ai?utm_source=substack&publication_id=377949&post_id=169250438
In other words the tech sector is booming because they aren't dealing with tariffs like the entire rest of the economy is.
"In other words the tech sector is booming because they aren't dealing with tariffs like the entire rest of the economy is.”
Yes, and that makes the oligarchs more powerful and they funnel some of that money into Trump’s pockets while he empties ours.
He is going totally anti-Biden. Biden administration imposed high tariffs on technological imports from China, and cut Chinese off from the high tech supply chain of the chips manufacturing industry.
Trump is literally doing the opposite. His vision dubbs Kitchen cabinet imports as a national security threat, whereas the high tech transfer has no bearing on national security situation. What an idiot!
What the oligarchs want is modern feudalism: a few rich people and a vast sea of serfs, peasants, servants. We won't need college professors or lawyers and not so many doctors, insurance agents, school teachers, but you can't replace people who shovel snow, take care of babies, the sick and the old. Hollow out the middle class and just have servants and their masters. Perfect! AI will help with that project.
The rich have always loved being served but hated having people dependent on them and people who were so intimately involved in their lives that they knew all their secrets. History is the story of how to get people to serve you and at the same time keeping them "in their place." This is just the latest chapter. Misogyny is just another piece of it: get women to do the work but keep them in their place beneath men.
Professor Krugman: IT'S THE GREED! IT'S THE GREED!! in the 1990s, the greed was all we could see, and we ran madly towards it hoping we too could get our grubby hands on some of that coin. now, most people are afraid. they're afraid of the orange rapist's threats of violence, afraid the gestapo will visit their workplaces and disappear them, their families, their associates or their employees, afraid that the gestapo will burn down their houses, afraid they will not be able to afford healthcare, regardless of how much money they might get their greedy grabby hands on.
AI is the unrealized monster that is growing, strengthening, putting its tentacles into everything we do and care about. when this monster is finally unleashed onto the country, we all will find ourselves in a world of economic and political trouble, in a world of economic and political pain.
Already happening.
I have already gotten out of the stock market for the most part because I believe the bubble will burst fairly soon, not that I had much invested. But I'd rather have a house paid off than a bunch of stocks that rose in value and then plummeted. At least I can live in the house.
REPORT THIS BOT (I can’t because it doesn’t work from an iPhone)