The cushion runs out in August. The CEOs already know. Here's what is actually happening to the American economy — and the question no politician has yet had the nerve to ask.
Until American voters stop and understand that we do this to ourselves it will not get better. We elect Republicans because, ....., well I don't know why, I guess because they lie better at the time but they can't govern, never could. Under Reagan the Nation Debt near tripled and unemployment went to 10.8%, I remember well because I could not buy a job. just remember, you can always get a job driving a truck, you won't make any money but you will be able to eat and keep a roof. Then Clinton balenced the budget for 4 years. GW gets elected and takes a negative $500 billion deficit to a $1.4 trillion deficit, a $1.9 trillion dollar swing. He ran this for several years along with 2 wars no one wanted and all based on lies. And when Bush left, he left us with the housing crash that was caused because Republicans deregulated everything and greedy people are just that, greedy. Obama steered us out of that recession and back to a $500 billion deficit, he couldn't get to balanced, the Republicans controlled Congress in his last year and they wouldn't let it happen. And then the racist get a shot and elect Trump, the World's Worst Business Man that has bankrupted more times for more money than anyone else, ever but he was a racist and after 8 years of Obama White American Racist didn't care about his life of complete and total failure, he was one of them, as theye said often. And it had to been the racism because he was rich and they were not so that was the only thing that would make him one of them. Then right back to $1.4 trillion deficit and straight into COVID. If I could draw I would have drawn a cartoon with Trump with a Lysol I.V., a black light up his ass, Ivermectin in one hand and Hydroxycholiquine in the other. The man is so stupid that the one person with the best doctors in the World still near died of COVID due to just shear ignorance. Then we get Biden, a Dem to once again bail us out of the mess we created by electing an idiot and he did just just. He fixed what was wrong, steered us out of COVID, passed bypartisan bills in Congress, did infrastructure, computer chips, renewables, and created more jobs in 4 years than the last 4 presidents did put together. Why, because he knew how to govern. Why did the Reich hate him? Because he is not a racist. No other reason because all their lives were better no matter the lies they tell. Inflation was coming down things were on a good path and what did we do? We re-elected the same criminal that raped a woman and drove us to 1.4 million COVID deaths making us the World leader in How to Kill with COVID when we only have 4% of the world population. And why did we do this? Because inflation wasn't going down fast enough. And how did Republicans win it all, because just like I said before, they lie better than anyone. Need proof? simply look at the World right now compared to what it was 2 years ago. The really bad part of this last screw up we've made, I'm not sure we can get back to where we were much less ahead. Trump is at the 30% approval and here in Alabama people are running for Congress and advertising their Trump Endorsment. Make sense of that. In 2 years we have surrendered our power in the World as the World Leader and right now no one had stepped up, I fear it's going ot be China and if Trump or Vance is still in the White House, we are F**ked.
And what the really bad part about all of this, in 2016, the Reich could have elected John Kasich, and while he is not a Democrat he didn't want to be a dictator and he fully believes in the Constitution and had he beat Hillary we would still not be in this mess. But it always seems that come elections after a successful Dem Admin we vote for a failure and always makes a mess rather than building on the success left for them. When Trump went into office, both times, every good thing that Obama and Biden had gotten done he destroyed for no other reason than he didn't do it and when you try to find one single thing he has done for the country there is nothing. Everything has been for him only. He has almost added more to the debt than Obama in 8 years and Biden in 4 combined. Just imagine for a minute how far advanced we would be as a country with renewables and EVs had the Reich Wing SCOTUS not made GW Bush president. Imagine where the National Debt would be. $00.00. Churchill was right.
Given that Big Tech was all over it and the biggest thing the Reich was pushing was voter machine hacking, to find out they found a way to hack some machines would not surpise me in the least. Our problem is we have no way to prove anything due to the amount of racism still in the USA and the fact that the person I voted for was Black. I know people that would never vote for Trump but didn't vote for Harris because 1st she is a woman and 2nd she is Black. Neither of these things matter to me but they were a ting for 6 million people that voted for Biden, White Male, and didn't vote for Harris. We are now paying the price for that hatred. Russia and the Reich for sure rigged things like YT and X to influence voter perception for sure. They may have well controlled some machines. Gonig forward any thing that is remotely close needs a hand count also.
People keep voting for Republicans because the Republicans tell them what they think they want to hear: Vote for us, and we'll lower your taxes. Then, the Republicans deliver. Then, they note that we can not afford important services, so they cancel them... but — glory be! — they then lower our taxes further!
Americans need to understand that we should not want the lowest possible taxes. We should want the best value for the collective enterprises that taxes buy, and that no one could manage alone. Until that time comes, the Republicans will win, and the public will lose.
Always Vote, I jumped the fence and voted against Tubertrump in the Primary last week, didn't help. I figured Jones was good in his race. Now if Jones can beat Tubertrump, fingers crossed but here in Blood Red Alabama Repubs are campaigning on being endorsed by Trump while he sits at a 30% approval so Trump could send the Military here and put tanks in the streets and these people would still vote for him. Crazy, I now see how Jim Jones did it. You would think people would at least love their children enough to not want Trump and Tubertrump but that is just not the case and they will defend every stupid thing the man does. I can't explain it.
We are the same in Tennessee with a racist governor and the likes of Andy Ogles and Marsha Blackburn in office. In responses to my communications to them, they express complete support of Trump. Nonetheless, I haven’t yet given up and will continue pushing back, although for my mental welfare I am keeping in mind one of the definitions of insanity. (Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.)
It's amazing to watch people willingly so fully support a man that everyone in the entire World can see is a complete and total absolute failure. If nothing else a person would have thought that Jan 6 would have been enough to make them understand but it has become clear ot me they don't understand Democracy, Freedom or Capitalism and they don't know the difference between Communism and Socialism and Authoritarianism. This is why Republicans have keep the schools at the bottom of the country, to keep the people too stupid to know any better it sure seems. And even worse, they don't want to know.
I believe your perspectives thru out this post are all spot right on! I have read that poor education in the South IS deliberate, as horrible as that thought is. As of Sept 2024, there are roughly 186.5 million registered voters in the US, which is 74% of the citizen voting age population. However, not all states report or collect party affiliation data so these stats are based on those who do. 36-38% are registered Dems, 30-32% are Republican & 27-31% Independent. Now let’s jump into the way back machine to the early 1970s. Republicans were not happy with the successes of the Civil Rights Movement & Ralph Nader, who was making huge strides in consumer protection, environmentalism & gov’t reform causes. They realized that the Dem party was going to quickly grow. Leon Powell, then a lawyer for the tobacco industry, later a Supreme Court Justice, wrote a memo to the head of the US Chamber of Commerce urging corporate America to defend the free enterprise system against perceived anti-business attacks from the left. This memo was the catalyst that gave birth to today’s Republican Party as it was THE blueprint for corporate political action. He believed that corporate votes should carry more weight than the votes of individuals. They were very smart in their strategies. They knew it wasn’t possible to win elections with just the votes of those residing in corporate America. They needed at least a minority of the US’ general population to vote Republican to accomplish their agenda. Average Americans would not be interested in hearing their policy aspirations. But, many of them would be interested in retaining their 2nd amendment rights so they began their tales of how Democrats were going to end ALL gun owning rights granted under our 2nd amendment, leaving citizens unarmed against the government’s huge militia. Then Roe v Wade, which gave women the right to terminate pregnancies. This is just my opinion & I haven’t researched it, but it seems to me that was the catalyst for the entrance of religion’s growing influence in politics. They needed that to appeal to both genders with the argument that only God has the right to decide the outcome of pregnancies. Republicans are very good at messaging. They’ve perfected that skill over time so well that today, 50+ yrs later, we’ve seen $50 trillion in wealth transfer from all of the lower classes to the wealthy, the very wealthy & the uber wealthy thru wages & dramatic changes In tax policies. Those changes are why a one income family could own a house & a car, go on annual vacations & still save for kid’s college expenses & their own retirement in the 1970s. I sure hope we that we use this pending turning point to start righting these many, many wrongs that have caused & brought us to where we are today.
You are right and one of our problems as a population is that we have too many that have never read the Constitution much less understand what it means. If they did they would understand things like Citizen's United was wrong, money is not speech, it is money and that just soley coing by the 1st Amendment Religion should have nothing to do with Abortion Laws. If they want to reduce abortions they should follow the state with legal abortion and one of the lowest rates in the nation, Oregon. As it turns out and as most have always known if you educate people and then help them aquire protection of some means you can greatly reduce your pregancies thus reducing the need of abortion. Of course that doesn't give anyone power over anyone else which the Religious Reich really seem to cherish.
so true. 'All Democrats are Communists'. what rubbish. Do most American even know what a communist is? And many socialist countries are the most successful and happiest in the world eg Scandanavian countries
The Reich uses it as fear knowing that their supporters can not be bothered to simply go look up the meaning of either word. Just think of how many that were asked on TV about the Mueller report that would say go Read the Reporet and then asked if they had read it said No. They just trusted what Trump told them just months after Trump had to pay off his Trump U Fraud loses. Amazes me how many people know he is guilty of all kinds of fraud still believe every word he says.
This is not economic history. This is partisan storytelling with a budget chart attached.
Reagan did inherit a brutal inflation and recession environment. Unemployment peaked at 10.8% in 1982, then came down. Leaving that out changes the story.
Clinton did have budget surpluses, but pretending that happened because Democrats magically govern better ignores the dot-com boom, capital gains revenue, the post-Cold War peace dividend, spending restraint, and a Republican Congress. The surplus was real. The fairy tale around it is not.
The 2008 housing crash was not caused by one party pressing one button. It came from years of cheap credit, bad lending, securitization, government housing pressure, Wall Street risk games, and regulators pretending the machine was fine while the bubble inflated.
Obama did not “save” the country by pure genius. The government spent, borrowed, bailed out, printed, and dragged the system forward. That is not the same as fixing the structure.
And Biden’s job numbers were heavily shaped by COVID reopening, government spending, and labor market recovery from an artificial shutdown. Calling that “he created more jobs than anyone” is cute campaign language, not serious analysis.
The problem with your comment is simple: every Democrat failure becomes “context,” and every Republican failure becomes “proof.” That is not history. That is team sports with economic terms sprinkled on top.
If we are going to discuss debt, deficits, inflation, housing, jobs, and war, then we need the full record, not a campaign brochure.
No it's not a campaign brochure it is fact. It ws not just the presidents that did this, but it was the presidents that had the final word and hte power of VETO to control what actually happens. I can't help it if you don't like the History and if you want to go into exacting detail as to each and every presidential term you are free to do that. All I am pointing out is the facts of what happened. All my life I've heard "Tax and Spend Democrats" and that has just never been the truth. Just like Trump, they have all been good at lying. Clinton did have help from congress men like John Kasich but I was not talking about Congress mustly because now we don't have a functional Congress and if the powers in charge have their way we never will again. Yes Biden's numbers were shaped by COVID recovery but it was Trump that drove us head first as the World Leader in COVID Deaths. Like I said, I targeted presidents, feel free to create a full record. Then go look at the last 50 years of National Debt by year and compare the numbers at each Jan 20 every 4 years and get a real good look at the numbers. You will find I started with Jimmy Carter leaving a $900 billion National Debt and 8 year later Reagan Left a $2.7 trillion National Debt, etc. I leave explaining the why the number grow so much more under a Republican President to you. Thanks.
You are not giving economic history. You are repeating the same mainstream narrative with more confidence than evidence.
Clinton did not magically create prosperity. He rode the dot-com bubble, capital gains revenue, the post-Cold War peace dividend, Social Security accounting, and a Republican Congress. Then his trade deals and China policy helped destroy manufacturing towns, move production overseas, and hollow out communities that never fully recovered.
Obama did not fix the structure. He bailed it out, spent, borrowed, printed, and protected the same financial system that created the crisis.
Biden was not some great economic savior either. His “job creation” numbers were heavily shaped by COVID reopening and government spending. And that spending helped produce a cumulative inflation hit of over 20%, around 23% depending on the period measured. That is simple math: when government floods the system with spending while supply is constrained, prices rise.
Your problem is simple: when Democrats fail, you call it context. When Republicans fail, you call it proof.
That is not history. That is team loyalty pretending to be analysis.
If we are going to talk about debt, deficits, inflation, jobs, housing, trade, and war, then use the full record, not the version spoon-fed by the same media that trained people to confuse government spending with governing.
I have an easier solution, how about you simply stop reading what I post. Then you won't be upset that I don't adhere to your prespective of the past. I did notice in your whining about Clinton, Obama and Biden you didn't once mention Reagan, Bush or Trump and that pretty much says it all. Also, there will be no need for you to reply because when I see the notice in my email I will simply delete it. I can suggest you go troll Twitter, lot of Trump lovers over there.
Projection 101: accuse others of your own emotions.
You are so funny. Assuming I will get upset over your ignorance is laughable.
Why would I whine like you? Sharing facts is now whining? Thank you for admitting you do not like other people sharing opinions and facts because it gives you a meltdown.
And yes, you can delete my message, but this is public, and I’m sharing your meltdown with everyone else.
Do what every other weak mind does: block me so you will not be contradicted while sharing a false narrative. 😂
Why must it be one or the other? A different perspective makes one a Trump lover? I hope not.
Politicians and political parties serve themselves, not voters. Check their financial statements before and after public service, generally. As long the voting public continues to play this 2-party hate game, our ‘representatives’ make money doing nothing while working so very hard at getting re-elected … and nothing more.
Personally, I believe they are interchangeable, standing for themselves only - unless social media is involved. Self-serving, hate-baiting drivel. For a vote.
We have surrendered the value of our vote utterly if we continue to be drawn into this game that does not serve the voter. And more, the corruption is systemic no matter where your vote lands.
There are changes that can be made. I don’t even think they are that hard. But I no longer have hope for those changes. But for what is left of my life, I refuse to be either/or. Not red, not blue. And no hate. Just wondering why we are still in this place - voluntarily. Without term limits.
You think you stepped outside the red/blue game, but the conclusion you reached is still the media frame: everyone is the same, voting is useless, nothing changes, and there is no hope.
That is not independence. That is managed defeat.
Yes, many politicians serve themselves. But “they are all the same” is how people stop studying who is actually moving policy, courts, borders, wars, agencies, money, and power.
I do not follow party emotions.
I follow behavior, votes, money, outcomes, and who benefits.
Saying “they are all the same” sounds neutral, but often it is just surrender dressed as wisdom.🦋
It is a uniquely American illusion that the president's on either side of the aisle are doing any more than fulfilling their roles, reading their lines, and faking y'all out into believing there's any Damn difference between them.
And here folks lies the problem, the voterr that can't tell the difference between a president that everything he dies it for the people and the president that everything he does is just for him and screws everyone else. Victoria, if you can't see the difference reading anything here is not going to help you out at all.
I've seen it my entire life and while I'm sure some people can see past it I don't think enough will so the only resolution would be to recruit more voters. History has proven that the more that vote the better Deocracy works. Austrailia it is law that everyone vote and you can see they don't have the problems and issues we have because the majority f people are good and there the majority vote. Here the majority are good but only half vote and that gives the minority equal power and puts us into the position we are in now.
"Just stop electing Republicans" is not an adequate answer. Even if it happened (which it won't), the US would then be a one-party state, which is to say a dictatorship. A dictatorship is not an improvement over the deeply flawed democracy you have now.
The answer is not to kill democracy but to save it, by opening up the system to other parties. It's the "two-party doom loop" that's killing you. Check out Lee Drutman's blog for more details. https://leedrutman.substack.com/
You miss understood, not stop electing them, stop giving them total control. When they have total control they screw up the World because as a whole they can't govern. If voters stop electing them into control they will stop running such flawed people. There was nothing wron gwith John Kasich, I ddidn't agree with al lot of his policy but he is a full believer in the Constitution and the Rule of Law and currently there no one that contrals the levers of power in our government currently in that mind set. That is just a fact. Also this idea that Republicans are running from Trump is B-S also. I am in Alabama and both the radio and TV are covered with ads of Republicans running for office and they are fully and boldly advertising their Trump endorsement and plans to fully suppport everything that corrupt P0S does. I don't want Demcracy gone, but I want it to work and right now it just doesn't and if Republicans get their way it neve rwill again. Don't take my word for it, simply look at what they are doing.
It is easy we do it all the time, they only take total control when they have the majority in both houses of Congress and the Presidency. Did you know that after the Great Depression Republicans did not control the House of Reps for 45yrs? Once they finally were able to Gerrymander enough states to take control of the House and they had the Senate and Reagan was President the downhill slide started and it has not stopped yet. Trickle down was a lie for the very wealthly and they still use it today and even when they don't use the term they govern that way. They just made the lower tax rate on the very rich 21% perment and in the process raised taxes on over 50% of the country, the people that can least afford it. They eleminated 25% of the Federal Gov and paid them for most of the year last year with no one to do the work. They have eliminated all of our Cyber Security and now they are about to put into the DNI a person to eliminate it. We no longer have any alises in the World and we are no longer in the WHO and the CDC is at less than half the staff it was 2yrs ago. And with all that extra money not being spent on paychecks the Republicans running the countrty are spending $1 trillion every 3 months. Gas has gone up, beef has gone up, electricity has gone up, everything has gone up and not by a little, by 17-27%. The Republicans just paid a foreign energy company a billion dollars to not build windmills in the Atlantic ocean to provide power to 300,000 homes in the Maryland Rhode Island area. There is nothing good for all of us, it has all gone to the rich and to Trump and they are glad to tell you "Tough Sh!t" you voted for them. Much of this happened because 7 million people that voted for the Old White Man, Biden, would not vote for the Younger Black Woman, Harris. This is what racism and masogyny gets you, plenty of hatred and a big mess. Harris was clearly the better candidate and blind people are not racist. Had we all been bliind we would not have elected the only man in the World that has bankrputed 6 times for $11 billion, raped a women, failed at every business, cheated on every wife, convicted on 36 felonies, and started an insurrection. The barr is not that high and yet we still screw it up.
I understand that you're frustrated and the Republicans are awful. But many people feel the same way about the Democrats. This is a problem of extreme polarization. Each side thinks the other side is evil, and with the 2-party system, people aren't voting for what they want, they're voting against what they hate and fear.
You are exactly right and I remember when he said it. Were it not for racism and masogyny, both things we should have been past long ago but yet here we are and it was tat racism that got us Trump and all the bad that comes with him.
Nice BS. Question for you. The largest driver of the deficit are the social programs. SS went cash flow negative in 2010. What have the Dems done about it.
Don't blame the Dems, they have tried time and again to solve this problem but as you well know it takes 60 votes in the Senate and that has not been possible. Of course I doubt it will matter. Republicans that have been in total control for the last 17 months have taken the Nationial Debt from $36.2 trillion to $39.2 trillion and they continue to cut revenue. It seems to me their plan is to crash it all and then buy it all since most their money is likely off shore and given that Trump and Son Inlaw and so tightly tied to the Middle East Muslims I guess they will be the ones to buy it all. But, if you are reading my post you are either trying to troll because you are not getting hits on X or you are actually interested. When the Reich has had more time in control than the Left you can't solely blame the Left, I guess you can but it means nothing. I still don't understand why they picked Trump and not Kasich. We would be in a lot better place now.
I do blame the Dems; they have had 16 years to deal with this problem. The largest issue right now is the entitlement problems. Current spending is at 23% of GDP, which is unsustainable.
Of course you blame the Dems, Trumputians blame the Dems for everything they destroy. According to the Trump Admin we are at war with Iran because Obama did it. 1st, they are not Entitlements, that name is a lie, we all pay into Medicare and SS all our working lives and 2nd the fact 76 million people elect people that can't balance a check book an da man that has bank rupt 6 times for $11 billion pretty much speaks to the judgement of the voters that have given us Bush and Trump. It is not something whining to me like to 4yr old will help. Ted if you want to fix it and you have a better solution my advise to you is to run for office.
Fine, blame them then, doesn't seem to matter what facts are you are going to blame the Dems, just like Trump, he is constipated and it is the Dems fault.
Republicans had the same 16 years to fix it and all they have done is made it worse. Nice thing about the comments, you don't get to dictate what my reply is and if I want to bring up Trump complete and total life long failures I can do that. Your option is to just not read them.
We tried that and now the World's biggest con man is our president and he is robbing us blind. All these things he is doing, we have to pay for, he doesn't pay for anything, History has proven that fact. It is time to start fighting back else there will be no Democracy to fight for because the likes of Theil, Koch, and such want to turn us into Russia 2.0 where we do all the work and they get all the spoils. F**k That!.
And then add what MAGA did on the Border, after they took every Exec Order Biden signed to enforce the border to their favorite Texas Federal Judge and had blocked Biden final let Republican Senator James Lankford write a bill and then they would not vote for their own bill that had what they wanted in it so now we still have no law only Trump Gestapo running around shotting and arresting people with many legally here and many are born here. They will all have to answer for this Satanism at some point.
If you would watch the news and not what Fox calls in a court room "Entertainment not news" maybe you would know what actually happened. Rush Limbaugh said the most dangerous thing is the Uneducated Voter and you sure fit that title.
Expect a government response to AI causing loss of employment to be much same as the response to exporting manufacturing jobs to the far east. Margins and CEO compensation are the priority.
The pattern does hold. A technology that displaces millions at the bottom will be regulated in proportion to how much discomfort it causes at the top, which is to say, carefully not at all.
Every time I go to the store, the prices are higher and higher and higher. The gas is higher and higher, and no reason in four years no jobs healthcare more expensive with less I'm telling you by the summer it's gonna be hot and there's gonna be no food and no place to go people are gonna be pissed. It's gonna be disastrous.
Kat, I'm with you. I think this summer is going to be a really interesting test of the system. I'm especially worried that as we go into the fall and prices keep getting higher and food keeps getting scarcer, we need to manifest that as the biggest wave of election we've ever seen in American history
Brilliant analysis. The challenges are not the rising cost of gas or groceries, to think so is to be blind to the forest for the trees. Fundamental structural crises and shifts underlie all--and they're not yet cresting. Of course the rich are building bunkers: after this, the Flood.
The Noah metaphor lands precisely. What the bunkerbuilders have calculated is not that the flood can be stopped, but that their elevation is sufficient. History's verdict on that confidence is consistent.
Yet again…should democrats be fortunate enough to win Congress….they will be saddled with the repair of an economy damaged by a Republican administration.
Erica, this is my Roman Empire. This is the thing that I think about all the time. The fact that for the last 50 years, Republicans have fucked up the economy every single time they have power and then Democrats get elected, come in, fix it, make things better. Republicans point to the shit that they did the last time they were in office as proof that the government can't work and con people into voting for them again. We've got to get out of this cycle somehow
I just completed a class in Pre-Modern history. We learned how each empire in Europe and Central Asia rose and collapsed. The steps that each went through have happened/are happening to this empire. It’s uncanny the similarities to today. It is your Roman Empire and 47 is the last emperor.
We get out of this cycle only if we can elect bold visionaries willing to grab on to power and dismantle the whole system and re-make it. We cannot afford to elect anyone willing to create a patched together Frankenstein monster such as Obamacare. Your proposed solutions are a good start!
In my own family I have relatives that say they would never vote for a woman, they would never vote for a Democrat. They are ignorant and can't see past their own noses.
And, if the Dems don't "fix it fast enough, the Repubs will blame them for the mess because it will be on the Dems' "watch". I've lived long enough to have seen this tactic play out before. We are in deep trouble.
Yup. That’s why the caution by leadership is so utterly infuriating. We’ve seen this play out many times, always the same. But this time it’s for keeps, and they’re so GD blase about it
The Dems have to be BETTER COMMUNICATORS/MESSENGERS. They need to constantly shout about the MESS THEY WERE LEFT & repeat over & over again what they’ve done to fix everything.
The Democratic leadership's problem is that their tactics and strategy focus on the wrong things, namely what's good for the investor and professional classes. Communication and messaging are only half the problem. Vision and imagination are in short supply in the leadership. This isn't the 1990s anymore, but boy you couldn't tell it from the stuff they keep selling. And I say this as someone who votes Democratic and even volunteers for those Democratic candidates whose platforms make sense to me.
It will be interesting to see how Graham Platner's campaign shapes up for the general election. He's awfully close to saying the things the author wants to hear discussed explicitly.
Fortunate to win is right. Trump and his mates will make sure the Democrats don't win that is for sure. Your democracy is hanging by a thread. Even here in little old Aotearoa/ New Zealand the right wing contagion has arrived and racism is on the march. Rest assured it's not just America that has gone mad.
This essay gets one thing brutally right: we’re not living in “the economy,” we’re living in the lag. The shelves and the gas and the paychecks are all artifacts from a country that already ended; we’re just cushioned from the blast long enough to pretend nothing’s on fire yet.
While everyone argues about “AI disruption” in the abstract, I’m watching Amazon’s robot fleet, the warehouse build‑out, and the spine of new data centers. None of this looks like “augmenting” workers; it looks like surgically routing around them at every point in the chain. You don’t pour this much concrete and capital into automation if your plan is to keep paying humans for long.
Which is why the “universal high income” talk from tech billionaires sounds less like mercy and more like narrative management. If they won’t pay us to work, they are sure as hell not going to pay us not to work—not at a level that threatens their control. Vague promises of “sustainable abundance” with no numbers attached are doing exactly what they’re meant to do: tranquilize the public while the ownership class locks in the post‑wage order.
I’ve been asking the UBI question for a while; this piece sharpens it. The real fight isn’t over whether we can imagine a post‑wage society. It’s over who designs it, who funds it, and whose power has to be broken for any answer to be real. My next move is to follow the robots and the real estate—where they are, what those data centers actually do, and how much human work gets quietly erased along the way. Because if we don’t show up with receipts and language before this cushion runs out, the people automating the jobs will happily automate the answer too.
Thank you Monica! That's such a great recapitulation of what I'm trying to say in the article. I really appreciate that you understood it so deeply.
We really need to be paying attention to this and we need to think about what it means because the decisions are being made without us. As I say in the article we don't currently have a seat at the table where the solutions are being designed. We need to insist that we do
Thank you for this. Your article snapped a few loose wires into place I’ve been staring at for a while. It also dovetails with something I wrote this morning about the robots quietly building a country without us in it. Sharing it here for anyone who’s ready to stop doomscrolling and start connecting the dots.
This essay is marvelous! It is true, clear, thorough, well-supported, and historically accurate. We have got to charge the table with a pen and sit down even if it’s on top of some asshole bigwig. We can do this. You set forth great and hard truths and great suggestions for how to rewrite our country, which is being decimated in front of us while people snooze. I’ll demand a place at the table. And I won’t wait for permission from misanthropes half my age.
It occurs to me, as an engineer, that there is a missing piece of the AI-vs-jobs-vs-labor productivity math. If producitivity is increasing while workers are being laid off, yes that is at least partly due to AI, but what is the input that makes this possible?
It's energy -- electricity in particular.
Despite what many people might think, AI is not free labor.
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics says that nothing is free. It says that if a technology replaces people, entropy will increase. In plain English, it means that the cost of the energy used will be greater than the cost of the labor that is being replaced.
But in this sense, the word "cost" is not just in dollars paid for the product -- it's "cost" that's spread all through the population in the form of costs associated with that energy production.
Cost in the form of pollution, climate change, and the depletion of resources that would otherwise be available for other purposes,
We know that the enormous buildout of data centers is associated with enormous use of cooling water. That's to remove the heat from the servers, which is nothing more than energy that went into the equipment and is then thrown away into the environment.
Most of that input energy right now is coming from the burning of fossil fuels. Some AI companies are making promises to use renewable energy, others to use dedicated small nuclear reactors.
Fat chance when you are talking about people who care nothing about the welfare of the general public and they need the extra energy right now.
The costs of climate change and air pollution are borne by the general public. As long as there is no carbon pricing in the U.S., this will persist. The AI buildout will further enrich the already-rich while the general schmuckery that most of us belong to will suffer.
And of course we and media that misleads us will blame whoever occupies political office at the time we encounter the badness.
Anyway, long story short, the overuse of AI to replace human labor will worsen an already dire buildup of global heat content, worsening climate change. If we can get people to understand this, maybe we can inject some sanity into our future.
Imaginative storm. It's such a great point. If none of us are working how the hell are we going to buy anything to participate in the economy? It reminds me of that scene from Say Anything where the John Cusack character says that he doesn't want to do a job by buying or selling anything processed or bought or sold. It's laughable because if you're not doing that, what are you doing?
I keep thinking about Star Trek and The Federation. That's a post-cash/credit society. Everybody has work they love, enjoy, are passionate about and do well, and they have a sufficiency for their lives. In other words, they have Enough, and neither need nor want more, except for a few psychos who are clearly criminal in their pathology. Yet the path to get from here to there is far from clear.
And, in that fictional universe, there are clearly different forms of economic activity, even if it's not classically commercial across the board. What if we reimagine the very concept of work? If we stop seeing it simply as what you do for a wage and start seeing it as a calling that gives your life meaning and depth?
In some countries (like Canada https://www.torys.com/en/our-latest-thinking/publications/2025/02/layoffs-dismissals-and-pay-cuts) employers are on the hook for paying laid off employees for up to *two years* - that's the type of thing that firms who whack employees should have to weigh when actively planning to displace their workers. A guaranteed floor of pay as well as food security are the minimum the US Fed gov't needs to guarantee adults who are underemployed, unemployed or unable to work full time. Who will have the guts to pass such reform when we could not even get the federal minimum wage up to $15/hour?
Themaggie: You're totally right. There are better ways of doing this. There are examples all around the world. The United States seems peculiarly entrenched in doing things the wrong way. My only hope is that this country has proven in the past that it can eventually do the right thing but, as Churchill noted, usually only after exploring all of the wrong options first
Don't forget housing. Especially for the elderly, who are the fastest growing segment of the homeless population. Out of that cohort, the fastest growing demographic of homeless are women over 60.
In Canada the legal norm is to give one month of severance for every year worked. So to get 2 years severance pay you would need to have worked for that company for 24 years.
In Canada the legal norm is to give one month of severance for every year worked. So to get 2 years severance pay you would need to have worked for that company for 24 years.
In Canada the legal norm is to give one month of severance for every year worked. So to get 2 years severance pay you would need to have worked for that company for 24 years.
In Canada the legal norm is to give one month of severance for every year worked. So to get 2 years severance pay you would need to have worked for that company for 24 years.
Brilliant thought provoking. The Oracle has spoken and lets be grateful he's not writing for the dark side. A general strike, yes! March on Washington, even more so. Thank you Lawrence.
A general strike scares the average American. A march on Washington doesn’t impress those greedy, racist bastards in the WH. Blue wave at midterms? 🤞🏻
Sadly IMHO I think the only option is revolution. Not fought “old style” with guns, fought with the young tech guys who are adept at hacking. They will be the disrupters we are looking for.
I worry about the general citizenry’s mental health, and how fragile people are right now. So close to the edge.
I think it was Thomas Merton who prophesied back in the 1960's during the Vietnam anti war era protests and Civil Rights movement that someday the powers to be would learn to "absorb" protests. He was teaching that they were learning how to handle our discontent and building structures of propaganda and elite power where protests simply wouldn't matter. I think he's been proven right. Combine that with James Baldwin's warning from 1974 "That I'm terrified of the moral apathy I see happening in my country" (from I Am Not Your Negro documentary), we're in a world of hurt. Not enough people deeply caring. I think we can agree that the moral apathy he feared 50 years ago is worse today led by our compliant and bought off politicians and institutions. He warned that moral apathy would lead to some of us becoming "moral monsters".
You need to be talking with Graham Platner in Maine. If you have an in with Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, they ought to be able to get you a chance to talk with him about this. He's self-educated, and he's on the right track. He's been dancing around a lot of what's being discussed here, so I think he's capable of building both the strategy and the tactics to build this sort of systemic change.
Brilliant column and chilling. Thank you Mr. Winnerman for a look into the time machine. The Warlocks are winning and we seem to be the eloys. The late Conrad Andenhour said, "In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it is sad, he did not also limit his stupidity.
You can’t have a revolution without a means of comparison.
But, given that corporation’s have taken humans out of the equation of labor what does revolting do.? Are people going to redesign all the companies that now function without humans.?
No wonder the pope has loudly proclaimed AI dangerous to humanity.
Diana, the crazy thing is I'm a huge sci-fi fan. I've read enough science fiction about benevolent AIs that I could see a good world coming out of it. The problem is we don't have the right kind of people leading the AI companies, leading technology in general, leading the country, leading the world. It's literally the worst possible people at every level
This may be the scariest article I've read in a while. Thank you so much for crafting this. A question: What the hell is the current administration REALLY doing? Are they just pumping up the market and robbing the treasury before the whole damn thing blows up? I'm sure they're aware of the consequences; without workers, there will be no more consumers, no more tax base, everything dries up, withers and dies. Is that the plan? To leave America as a husk of its former self? Are these people as evil as it appears? (But maybe I've just answered my own question!)
Art, yes. I really think that's the answer. I think they know what's happening and I think that they are taking as much money as they can possibly grab before everything blows up completely. I suspect they know the magnitude of the disaster that they are helping to create and they are doing it on purpose. I don't know what that purpose is but I have some very deep suspicions
Until American voters stop and understand that we do this to ourselves it will not get better. We elect Republicans because, ....., well I don't know why, I guess because they lie better at the time but they can't govern, never could. Under Reagan the Nation Debt near tripled and unemployment went to 10.8%, I remember well because I could not buy a job. just remember, you can always get a job driving a truck, you won't make any money but you will be able to eat and keep a roof. Then Clinton balenced the budget for 4 years. GW gets elected and takes a negative $500 billion deficit to a $1.4 trillion deficit, a $1.9 trillion dollar swing. He ran this for several years along with 2 wars no one wanted and all based on lies. And when Bush left, he left us with the housing crash that was caused because Republicans deregulated everything and greedy people are just that, greedy. Obama steered us out of that recession and back to a $500 billion deficit, he couldn't get to balanced, the Republicans controlled Congress in his last year and they wouldn't let it happen. And then the racist get a shot and elect Trump, the World's Worst Business Man that has bankrupted more times for more money than anyone else, ever but he was a racist and after 8 years of Obama White American Racist didn't care about his life of complete and total failure, he was one of them, as theye said often. And it had to been the racism because he was rich and they were not so that was the only thing that would make him one of them. Then right back to $1.4 trillion deficit and straight into COVID. If I could draw I would have drawn a cartoon with Trump with a Lysol I.V., a black light up his ass, Ivermectin in one hand and Hydroxycholiquine in the other. The man is so stupid that the one person with the best doctors in the World still near died of COVID due to just shear ignorance. Then we get Biden, a Dem to once again bail us out of the mess we created by electing an idiot and he did just just. He fixed what was wrong, steered us out of COVID, passed bypartisan bills in Congress, did infrastructure, computer chips, renewables, and created more jobs in 4 years than the last 4 presidents did put together. Why, because he knew how to govern. Why did the Reich hate him? Because he is not a racist. No other reason because all their lives were better no matter the lies they tell. Inflation was coming down things were on a good path and what did we do? We re-elected the same criminal that raped a woman and drove us to 1.4 million COVID deaths making us the World leader in How to Kill with COVID when we only have 4% of the world population. And why did we do this? Because inflation wasn't going down fast enough. And how did Republicans win it all, because just like I said before, they lie better than anyone. Need proof? simply look at the World right now compared to what it was 2 years ago. The really bad part of this last screw up we've made, I'm not sure we can get back to where we were much less ahead. Trump is at the 30% approval and here in Alabama people are running for Congress and advertising their Trump Endorsment. Make sense of that. In 2 years we have surrendered our power in the World as the World Leader and right now no one had stepped up, I fear it's going ot be China and if Trump or Vance is still in the White House, we are F**ked.
Thanks David Clark. Exactly right. Somehow we have to figure this shit out and break the cycle once and for all
You’re right, across the board
We have, on average, the government we’ve consistently elected
We vote culture war and grievance and identity, while at the same time we ignore policy, governance, and ability.
There’s good reason why the ultra wealthy are shifting to cash and building bunkers
They are getting into the lifeboats before the rest of us even acknowledge the iceberg
And what the really bad part about all of this, in 2016, the Reich could have elected John Kasich, and while he is not a Democrat he didn't want to be a dictator and he fully believes in the Constitution and had he beat Hillary we would still not be in this mess. But it always seems that come elections after a successful Dem Admin we vote for a failure and always makes a mess rather than building on the success left for them. When Trump went into office, both times, every good thing that Obama and Biden had gotten done he destroyed for no other reason than he didn't do it and when you try to find one single thing he has done for the country there is nothing. Everything has been for him only. He has almost added more to the debt than Obama in 8 years and Biden in 4 combined. Just imagine for a minute how far advanced we would be as a country with renewables and EVs had the Reich Wing SCOTUS not made GW Bush president. Imagine where the National Debt would be. $00.00. Churchill was right.
What’s the likelihood that the two elections that gave us 💩 were not rigged inside and out, Orban and Putin style?
Given that Big Tech was all over it and the biggest thing the Reich was pushing was voter machine hacking, to find out they found a way to hack some machines would not surpise me in the least. Our problem is we have no way to prove anything due to the amount of racism still in the USA and the fact that the person I voted for was Black. I know people that would never vote for Trump but didn't vote for Harris because 1st she is a woman and 2nd she is Black. Neither of these things matter to me but they were a ting for 6 million people that voted for Biden, White Male, and didn't vote for Harris. We are now paying the price for that hatred. Russia and the Reich for sure rigged things like YT and X to influence voter perception for sure. They may have well controlled some machines. Gonig forward any thing that is remotely close needs a hand count also.
More Lenin and California style.
You are sooo right
Elections rigged
People keep voting for Republicans because the Republicans tell them what they think they want to hear: Vote for us, and we'll lower your taxes. Then, the Republicans deliver. Then, they note that we can not afford important services, so they cancel them... but — glory be! — they then lower our taxes further!
Americans need to understand that we should not want the lowest possible taxes. We should want the best value for the collective enterprises that taxes buy, and that no one could manage alone. Until that time comes, the Republicans will win, and the public will lose.
And that is what makes them the Better Liars.
I share your rage.
I'm fresh out of rage.
I have a large surplus of rage
I *am* however, fresh out of fucks to give 😂🤷♂️🤦♂️
So I’m behaving accordingly, and speaking out accordingly
😎🔥😎
me too. Glad I'm in Australia
You've done very well!😎
Please VOTE.
Always Vote, I jumped the fence and voted against Tubertrump in the Primary last week, didn't help. I figured Jones was good in his race. Now if Jones can beat Tubertrump, fingers crossed but here in Blood Red Alabama Repubs are campaigning on being endorsed by Trump while he sits at a 30% approval so Trump could send the Military here and put tanks in the streets and these people would still vote for him. Crazy, I now see how Jim Jones did it. You would think people would at least love their children enough to not want Trump and Tubertrump but that is just not the case and they will defend every stupid thing the man does. I can't explain it.
We are the same in Tennessee with a racist governor and the likes of Andy Ogles and Marsha Blackburn in office. In responses to my communications to them, they express complete support of Trump. Nonetheless, I haven’t yet given up and will continue pushing back, although for my mental welfare I am keeping in mind one of the definitions of insanity. (Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.)
It's amazing to watch people willingly so fully support a man that everyone in the entire World can see is a complete and total absolute failure. If nothing else a person would have thought that Jan 6 would have been enough to make them understand but it has become clear ot me they don't understand Democracy, Freedom or Capitalism and they don't know the difference between Communism and Socialism and Authoritarianism. This is why Republicans have keep the schools at the bottom of the country, to keep the people too stupid to know any better it sure seems. And even worse, they don't want to know.
I believe your perspectives thru out this post are all spot right on! I have read that poor education in the South IS deliberate, as horrible as that thought is. As of Sept 2024, there are roughly 186.5 million registered voters in the US, which is 74% of the citizen voting age population. However, not all states report or collect party affiliation data so these stats are based on those who do. 36-38% are registered Dems, 30-32% are Republican & 27-31% Independent. Now let’s jump into the way back machine to the early 1970s. Republicans were not happy with the successes of the Civil Rights Movement & Ralph Nader, who was making huge strides in consumer protection, environmentalism & gov’t reform causes. They realized that the Dem party was going to quickly grow. Leon Powell, then a lawyer for the tobacco industry, later a Supreme Court Justice, wrote a memo to the head of the US Chamber of Commerce urging corporate America to defend the free enterprise system against perceived anti-business attacks from the left. This memo was the catalyst that gave birth to today’s Republican Party as it was THE blueprint for corporate political action. He believed that corporate votes should carry more weight than the votes of individuals. They were very smart in their strategies. They knew it wasn’t possible to win elections with just the votes of those residing in corporate America. They needed at least a minority of the US’ general population to vote Republican to accomplish their agenda. Average Americans would not be interested in hearing their policy aspirations. But, many of them would be interested in retaining their 2nd amendment rights so they began their tales of how Democrats were going to end ALL gun owning rights granted under our 2nd amendment, leaving citizens unarmed against the government’s huge militia. Then Roe v Wade, which gave women the right to terminate pregnancies. This is just my opinion & I haven’t researched it, but it seems to me that was the catalyst for the entrance of religion’s growing influence in politics. They needed that to appeal to both genders with the argument that only God has the right to decide the outcome of pregnancies. Republicans are very good at messaging. They’ve perfected that skill over time so well that today, 50+ yrs later, we’ve seen $50 trillion in wealth transfer from all of the lower classes to the wealthy, the very wealthy & the uber wealthy thru wages & dramatic changes In tax policies. Those changes are why a one income family could own a house & a car, go on annual vacations & still save for kid’s college expenses & their own retirement in the 1970s. I sure hope we that we use this pending turning point to start righting these many, many wrongs that have caused & brought us to where we are today.
You are right and one of our problems as a population is that we have too many that have never read the Constitution much less understand what it means. If they did they would understand things like Citizen's United was wrong, money is not speech, it is money and that just soley coing by the 1st Amendment Religion should have nothing to do with Abortion Laws. If they want to reduce abortions they should follow the state with legal abortion and one of the lowest rates in the nation, Oregon. As it turns out and as most have always known if you educate people and then help them aquire protection of some means you can greatly reduce your pregancies thus reducing the need of abortion. Of course that doesn't give anyone power over anyone else which the Religious Reich really seem to cherish.
and that's why women are dying when they have an eg ectopic pregnancy
so true. 'All Democrats are Communists'. what rubbish. Do most American even know what a communist is? And many socialist countries are the most successful and happiest in the world eg Scandanavian countries
The Reich uses it as fear knowing that their supporters can not be bothered to simply go look up the meaning of either word. Just think of how many that were asked on TV about the Mueller report that would say go Read the Reporet and then asked if they had read it said No. They just trusted what Trump told them just months after Trump had to pay off his Trump U Fraud loses. Amazes me how many people know he is guilty of all kinds of fraud still believe every word he says.
They drank the kool aid, how pervasive hate can be they will shoot themselves rather the give an inch to a person who needs help.
That’s the core issue here
Identity
They - that hard base of about %30 of the population - have tied their ideas about “who I am” to a political framework
And any challenge to that framework becomes personal and existential
That’s a tough nut to crack
This is not economic history. This is partisan storytelling with a budget chart attached.
Reagan did inherit a brutal inflation and recession environment. Unemployment peaked at 10.8% in 1982, then came down. Leaving that out changes the story.
Clinton did have budget surpluses, but pretending that happened because Democrats magically govern better ignores the dot-com boom, capital gains revenue, the post-Cold War peace dividend, spending restraint, and a Republican Congress. The surplus was real. The fairy tale around it is not.
The 2008 housing crash was not caused by one party pressing one button. It came from years of cheap credit, bad lending, securitization, government housing pressure, Wall Street risk games, and regulators pretending the machine was fine while the bubble inflated.
Obama did not “save” the country by pure genius. The government spent, borrowed, bailed out, printed, and dragged the system forward. That is not the same as fixing the structure.
And Biden’s job numbers were heavily shaped by COVID reopening, government spending, and labor market recovery from an artificial shutdown. Calling that “he created more jobs than anyone” is cute campaign language, not serious analysis.
The problem with your comment is simple: every Democrat failure becomes “context,” and every Republican failure becomes “proof.” That is not history. That is team sports with economic terms sprinkled on top.
If we are going to discuss debt, deficits, inflation, housing, jobs, and war, then we need the full record, not a campaign brochure.
No it's not a campaign brochure it is fact. It ws not just the presidents that did this, but it was the presidents that had the final word and hte power of VETO to control what actually happens. I can't help it if you don't like the History and if you want to go into exacting detail as to each and every presidential term you are free to do that. All I am pointing out is the facts of what happened. All my life I've heard "Tax and Spend Democrats" and that has just never been the truth. Just like Trump, they have all been good at lying. Clinton did have help from congress men like John Kasich but I was not talking about Congress mustly because now we don't have a functional Congress and if the powers in charge have their way we never will again. Yes Biden's numbers were shaped by COVID recovery but it was Trump that drove us head first as the World Leader in COVID Deaths. Like I said, I targeted presidents, feel free to create a full record. Then go look at the last 50 years of National Debt by year and compare the numbers at each Jan 20 every 4 years and get a real good look at the numbers. You will find I started with Jimmy Carter leaving a $900 billion National Debt and 8 year later Reagan Left a $2.7 trillion National Debt, etc. I leave explaining the why the number grow so much more under a Republican President to you. Thanks.
Thank you for proving my point.
You are not giving economic history. You are repeating the same mainstream narrative with more confidence than evidence.
Clinton did not magically create prosperity. He rode the dot-com bubble, capital gains revenue, the post-Cold War peace dividend, Social Security accounting, and a Republican Congress. Then his trade deals and China policy helped destroy manufacturing towns, move production overseas, and hollow out communities that never fully recovered.
Obama did not fix the structure. He bailed it out, spent, borrowed, printed, and protected the same financial system that created the crisis.
Biden was not some great economic savior either. His “job creation” numbers were heavily shaped by COVID reopening and government spending. And that spending helped produce a cumulative inflation hit of over 20%, around 23% depending on the period measured. That is simple math: when government floods the system with spending while supply is constrained, prices rise.
Your problem is simple: when Democrats fail, you call it context. When Republicans fail, you call it proof.
That is not history. That is team loyalty pretending to be analysis.
If we are going to talk about debt, deficits, inflation, jobs, housing, trade, and war, then use the full record, not the version spoon-fed by the same media that trained people to confuse government spending with governing.
I have an easier solution, how about you simply stop reading what I post. Then you won't be upset that I don't adhere to your prespective of the past. I did notice in your whining about Clinton, Obama and Biden you didn't once mention Reagan, Bush or Trump and that pretty much says it all. Also, there will be no need for you to reply because when I see the notice in my email I will simply delete it. I can suggest you go troll Twitter, lot of Trump lovers over there.
Projection 101: accuse others of your own emotions.
You are so funny. Assuming I will get upset over your ignorance is laughable.
Why would I whine like you? Sharing facts is now whining? Thank you for admitting you do not like other people sharing opinions and facts because it gives you a meltdown.
And yes, you can delete my message, but this is public, and I’m sharing your meltdown with everyone else.
Do what every other weak mind does: block me so you will not be contradicted while sharing a false narrative. 😂
Thank you for the joke.
Why must it be one or the other? A different perspective makes one a Trump lover? I hope not.
Politicians and political parties serve themselves, not voters. Check their financial statements before and after public service, generally. As long the voting public continues to play this 2-party hate game, our ‘representatives’ make money doing nothing while working so very hard at getting re-elected … and nothing more.
Personally, I believe they are interchangeable, standing for themselves only - unless social media is involved. Self-serving, hate-baiting drivel. For a vote.
We have surrendered the value of our vote utterly if we continue to be drawn into this game that does not serve the voter. And more, the corruption is systemic no matter where your vote lands.
There are changes that can be made. I don’t even think they are that hard. But I no longer have hope for those changes. But for what is left of my life, I refuse to be either/or. Not red, not blue. And no hate. Just wondering why we are still in this place - voluntarily. Without term limits.
An increasing number of people treat disagreement as being caused solely by "hate", when in reality they hate that there are people who disagree.
This is exactly the point.
You think you stepped outside the red/blue game, but the conclusion you reached is still the media frame: everyone is the same, voting is useless, nothing changes, and there is no hope.
That is not independence. That is managed defeat.
Yes, many politicians serve themselves. But “they are all the same” is how people stop studying who is actually moving policy, courts, borders, wars, agencies, money, and power.
I do not follow party emotions.
I follow behavior, votes, money, outcomes, and who benefits.
Saying “they are all the same” sounds neutral, but often it is just surrender dressed as wisdom.🦋
There's Trump lovers on this platform also.
LOL, Seems so.
It is a uniquely American illusion that the president's on either side of the aisle are doing any more than fulfilling their roles, reading their lines, and faking y'all out into believing there's any Damn difference between them.
And here folks lies the problem, the voterr that can't tell the difference between a president that everything he dies it for the people and the president that everything he does is just for him and screws everyone else. Victoria, if you can't see the difference reading anything here is not going to help you out at all.
🎯
Do tell David, which president in your estimation in your lifetime, did anything 'for the people'.. I'm all ears.
Your comment makes too much sense.
I wish republicans/conservatives could understand it and see their part in this so we can stop suffering through this bs.
Racism and misogyny have to be abandoned as things people subject each other to.
Praying for more likable, sensible, left of center folks to get clout and get elected everywhere so they can get us somewhere good for a change.🙏🏾
I've seen it my entire life and while I'm sure some people can see past it I don't think enough will so the only resolution would be to recruit more voters. History has proven that the more that vote the better Deocracy works. Austrailia it is law that everyone vote and you can see they don't have the problems and issues we have because the majority f people are good and there the majority vote. Here the majority are good but only half vote and that gives the minority equal power and puts us into the position we are in now.
I am inclined to agree.
"Just stop electing Republicans" is not an adequate answer. Even if it happened (which it won't), the US would then be a one-party state, which is to say a dictatorship. A dictatorship is not an improvement over the deeply flawed democracy you have now.
The answer is not to kill democracy but to save it, by opening up the system to other parties. It's the "two-party doom loop" that's killing you. Check out Lee Drutman's blog for more details. https://leedrutman.substack.com/
You miss understood, not stop electing them, stop giving them total control. When they have total control they screw up the World because as a whole they can't govern. If voters stop electing them into control they will stop running such flawed people. There was nothing wron gwith John Kasich, I ddidn't agree with al lot of his policy but he is a full believer in the Constitution and the Rule of Law and currently there no one that contrals the levers of power in our government currently in that mind set. That is just a fact. Also this idea that Republicans are running from Trump is B-S also. I am in Alabama and both the radio and TV are covered with ads of Republicans running for office and they are fully and boldly advertising their Trump endorsement and plans to fully suppport everything that corrupt P0S does. I don't want Demcracy gone, but I want it to work and right now it just doesn't and if Republicans get their way it neve rwill again. Don't take my word for it, simply look at what they are doing.
Maybe I am misunderstanding. I just don't understand what your solution is. How do you elect Republicans without giving them total control?
It is easy we do it all the time, they only take total control when they have the majority in both houses of Congress and the Presidency. Did you know that after the Great Depression Republicans did not control the House of Reps for 45yrs? Once they finally were able to Gerrymander enough states to take control of the House and they had the Senate and Reagan was President the downhill slide started and it has not stopped yet. Trickle down was a lie for the very wealthly and they still use it today and even when they don't use the term they govern that way. They just made the lower tax rate on the very rich 21% perment and in the process raised taxes on over 50% of the country, the people that can least afford it. They eleminated 25% of the Federal Gov and paid them for most of the year last year with no one to do the work. They have eliminated all of our Cyber Security and now they are about to put into the DNI a person to eliminate it. We no longer have any alises in the World and we are no longer in the WHO and the CDC is at less than half the staff it was 2yrs ago. And with all that extra money not being spent on paychecks the Republicans running the countrty are spending $1 trillion every 3 months. Gas has gone up, beef has gone up, electricity has gone up, everything has gone up and not by a little, by 17-27%. The Republicans just paid a foreign energy company a billion dollars to not build windmills in the Atlantic ocean to provide power to 300,000 homes in the Maryland Rhode Island area. There is nothing good for all of us, it has all gone to the rich and to Trump and they are glad to tell you "Tough Sh!t" you voted for them. Much of this happened because 7 million people that voted for the Old White Man, Biden, would not vote for the Younger Black Woman, Harris. This is what racism and masogyny gets you, plenty of hatred and a big mess. Harris was clearly the better candidate and blind people are not racist. Had we all been bliind we would not have elected the only man in the World that has bankrputed 6 times for $11 billion, raped a women, failed at every business, cheated on every wife, convicted on 36 felonies, and started an insurrection. The barr is not that high and yet we still screw it up.
I understand that you're frustrated and the Republicans are awful. But many people feel the same way about the Democrats. This is a problem of extreme polarization. Each side thinks the other side is evil, and with the 2-party system, people aren't voting for what they want, they're voting against what they hate and fear.
I give up, you don't get it and you never will. People that can support a man like Trump will never except anyone else. It is Jim Jones on MAX.
A great sage once said “We get the government we deserve.”
You are exactly right and I remember when he said it. Were it not for racism and masogyny, both things we should have been past long ago but yet here we are and it was tat racism that got us Trump and all the bad that comes with him.
Nice BS. Question for you. The largest driver of the deficit are the social programs. SS went cash flow negative in 2010. What have the Dems done about it.
Don't blame the Dems, they have tried time and again to solve this problem but as you well know it takes 60 votes in the Senate and that has not been possible. Of course I doubt it will matter. Republicans that have been in total control for the last 17 months have taken the Nationial Debt from $36.2 trillion to $39.2 trillion and they continue to cut revenue. It seems to me their plan is to crash it all and then buy it all since most their money is likely off shore and given that Trump and Son Inlaw and so tightly tied to the Middle East Muslims I guess they will be the ones to buy it all. But, if you are reading my post you are either trying to troll because you are not getting hits on X or you are actually interested. When the Reich has had more time in control than the Left you can't solely blame the Left, I guess you can but it means nothing. I still don't understand why they picked Trump and not Kasich. We would be in a lot better place now.
I do blame the Dems; they have had 16 years to deal with this problem. The largest issue right now is the entitlement problems. Current spending is at 23% of GDP, which is unsustainable.
Of course you blame the Dems, Trumputians blame the Dems for everything they destroy. According to the Trump Admin we are at war with Iran because Obama did it. 1st, they are not Entitlements, that name is a lie, we all pay into Medicare and SS all our working lives and 2nd the fact 76 million people elect people that can't balance a check book an da man that has bank rupt 6 times for $11 billion pretty much speaks to the judgement of the voters that have given us Bush and Trump. It is not something whining to me like to 4yr old will help. Ted if you want to fix it and you have a better solution my advise to you is to run for office.
I do blame the Dems; the welfare is bankrupting the country. Four trillion out of a 7-trillion-dollar budget is devoted to social programs.
Fine, blame them then, doesn't seem to matter what facts are you are going to blame the Dems, just like Trump, he is constipated and it is the Dems fault.
1) The Democrats had 16 years to deal with the issue of Social Security. They did nothing.
2) Social Security is an entitlement.
3) Talking about someone's bankruptcy has nothing to do with this topic.
Republicans had the same 16 years to fix it and all they have done is made it worse. Nice thing about the comments, you don't get to dictate what my reply is and if I want to bring up Trump complete and total life long failures I can do that. Your option is to just not read them.
Idiot.
Lefties going to leftie.
LOL, they must be watching Fox Five. Amazing how many people love being lied to, isn't it?
OMG...this reply of yours is so low IQ.
Been watching Trump I see, yep, Monkey Say, Monkey Do. Typical Sheep.
Can you come up with a mature reply?
Your reply is impressive as well Mr Clark….✌🏻✌🏻
Well said! It’s as plain as the proverbial nose. Stupid politicians elected by dumb people. Who don’t know how to do any but hate.
The democrats should just drop all hate for America rhetoric and focus on the future. You can’t change the past.
We tried that and now the World's biggest con man is our president and he is robbing us blind. All these things he is doing, we have to pay for, he doesn't pay for anything, History has proven that fact. It is time to start fighting back else there will be no Democracy to fight for because the likes of Theil, Koch, and such want to turn us into Russia 2.0 where we do all the work and they get all the spoils. F**k That!.
It’s a suggestion.
Really? Let’s be real. MAGA was created in 2012, while Obama was still in office. So do you mean the RINOs?
Funny how now everything is MAGA when MAGA means making the USA better.
Meanwhile, you are here hating your own country because apparently being enslaved to the City of London sounds better to you.
You are the one full of ignorance here, and your level of projection is very entertaining. 😂🦋
And then add what MAGA did on the Border, after they took every Exec Order Biden signed to enforce the border to their favorite Texas Federal Judge and had blocked Biden final let Republican Senator James Lankford write a bill and then they would not vote for their own bill that had what they wanted in it so now we still have no law only Trump Gestapo running around shotting and arresting people with many legally here and many are born here. They will all have to answer for this Satanism at some point.
“every Exec Order Biden signed to enforce the border”… ROTFLOL!!!! You’re hilarious. More please.
If you would watch the news and not what Fox calls in a court room "Entertainment not news" maybe you would know what actually happened. Rush Limbaugh said the most dangerous thing is the Uneducated Voter and you sure fit that title.
Expect a government response to AI causing loss of employment to be much same as the response to exporting manufacturing jobs to the far east. Margins and CEO compensation are the priority.
James, this is true. It certainly doesn't help that we have the stupidest people in the world currently in charge of our government, does it?
Don’t confuse evil for stupid
The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact together they are much more dangerous.
All by design
The pattern does hold. A technology that displaces millions at the bottom will be regulated in proportion to how much discomfort it causes at the top, which is to say, carefully not at all.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 “they don’t really care about us!”
Every time I go to the store, the prices are higher and higher and higher. The gas is higher and higher, and no reason in four years no jobs healthcare more expensive with less I'm telling you by the summer it's gonna be hot and there's gonna be no food and no place to go people are gonna be pissed. It's gonna be disastrous.
Kat, I'm with you. I think this summer is going to be a really interesting test of the system. I'm especially worried that as we go into the fall and prices keep getting higher and food keeps getting scarcer, we need to manifest that as the biggest wave of election we've ever seen in American history
I can't wait to hit rock bottom. I am so tired of people still protecting this pedo in chief. What will it take for them to open their eyes?!
They're going to try to hold it all together until after the November election, then they're going to blame Democrats. I've seen this movie before.
and when the Reichwing wins with a Putin-esque margin of victory, what then?
An armed uprising is my best guess.
Uprisimg without arms should be priority
2 BIG 2 RIG!!!!
What are we supposed to do to prevent the loss of what we have? Where can i find that info? My financial advisor is not helpful?
Following
Brilliant analysis. The challenges are not the rising cost of gas or groceries, to think so is to be blind to the forest for the trees. Fundamental structural crises and shifts underlie all--and they're not yet cresting. Of course the rich are building bunkers: after this, the Flood.
And after the flood MF, the rebuild, we have to promise each other we're going to build it so they can't ever do this shit again
I'm all in, and support your proposals.
Yes, yes, yes, and thank you so much! Brilliant and empowering. Thank you.
The Noah metaphor lands precisely. What the bunkerbuilders have calculated is not that the flood can be stopped, but that their elevation is sufficient. History's verdict on that confidence is consistent.
Not just Noah in mind: Louis XV.
Your link does not work.
Yet again…should democrats be fortunate enough to win Congress….they will be saddled with the repair of an economy damaged by a Republican administration.
Erica, this is my Roman Empire. This is the thing that I think about all the time. The fact that for the last 50 years, Republicans have fucked up the economy every single time they have power and then Democrats get elected, come in, fix it, make things better. Republicans point to the shit that they did the last time they were in office as proof that the government can't work and con people into voting for them again. We've got to get out of this cycle somehow
I just completed a class in Pre-Modern history. We learned how each empire in Europe and Central Asia rose and collapsed. The steps that each went through have happened/are happening to this empire. It’s uncanny the similarities to today. It is your Roman Empire and 47 is the last emperor.
We get out of this cycle only if we can elect bold visionaries willing to grab on to power and dismantle the whole system and re-make it. We cannot afford to elect anyone willing to create a patched together Frankenstein monster such as Obamacare. Your proposed solutions are a good start!
Lawrence,
In my own family I have relatives that say they would never vote for a woman, they would never vote for a Democrat. They are ignorant and can't see past their own noses.
They need to be taught some critical thinking skills…😑
And, if the Dems don't "fix it fast enough, the Repubs will blame them for the mess because it will be on the Dems' "watch". I've lived long enough to have seen this tactic play out before. We are in deep trouble.
Yup. That’s why the caution by leadership is so utterly infuriating. We’ve seen this play out many times, always the same. But this time it’s for keeps, and they’re so GD blase about it
The Dems have to be BETTER COMMUNICATORS/MESSENGERS. They need to constantly shout about the MESS THEY WERE LEFT & repeat over & over again what they’ve done to fix everything.
The Democratic leadership's problem is that their tactics and strategy focus on the wrong things, namely what's good for the investor and professional classes. Communication and messaging are only half the problem. Vision and imagination are in short supply in the leadership. This isn't the 1990s anymore, but boy you couldn't tell it from the stuff they keep selling. And I say this as someone who votes Democratic and even volunteers for those Democratic candidates whose platforms make sense to me.
It will be interesting to see how Graham Platner's campaign shapes up for the general election. He's awfully close to saying the things the author wants to hear discussed explicitly.
Fortunate to win is right. Trump and his mates will make sure the Democrats don't win that is for sure. Your democracy is hanging by a thread. Even here in little old Aotearoa/ New Zealand the right wing contagion has arrived and racism is on the march. Rest assured it's not just America that has gone mad.
I am sorry to hear this. And very sorry that we have led a dubious charge to insanity.
Not you fault Erica
And too many will waffle and focus on their donors, not their constituents
🎯 The Dems have the same corporate & foreign donors as the maga regime
This essay gets one thing brutally right: we’re not living in “the economy,” we’re living in the lag. The shelves and the gas and the paychecks are all artifacts from a country that already ended; we’re just cushioned from the blast long enough to pretend nothing’s on fire yet.
While everyone argues about “AI disruption” in the abstract, I’m watching Amazon’s robot fleet, the warehouse build‑out, and the spine of new data centers. None of this looks like “augmenting” workers; it looks like surgically routing around them at every point in the chain. You don’t pour this much concrete and capital into automation if your plan is to keep paying humans for long.
Which is why the “universal high income” talk from tech billionaires sounds less like mercy and more like narrative management. If they won’t pay us to work, they are sure as hell not going to pay us not to work—not at a level that threatens their control. Vague promises of “sustainable abundance” with no numbers attached are doing exactly what they’re meant to do: tranquilize the public while the ownership class locks in the post‑wage order.
I’ve been asking the UBI question for a while; this piece sharpens it. The real fight isn’t over whether we can imagine a post‑wage society. It’s over who designs it, who funds it, and whose power has to be broken for any answer to be real. My next move is to follow the robots and the real estate—where they are, what those data centers actually do, and how much human work gets quietly erased along the way. Because if we don’t show up with receipts and language before this cushion runs out, the people automating the jobs will happily automate the answer too.
Thank you Monica! That's such a great recapitulation of what I'm trying to say in the article. I really appreciate that you understood it so deeply.
We really need to be paying attention to this and we need to think about what it means because the decisions are being made without us. As I say in the article we don't currently have a seat at the table where the solutions are being designed. We need to insist that we do
Thank you for this. Your article snapped a few loose wires into place I’ve been staring at for a while. It also dovetails with something I wrote this morning about the robots quietly building a country without us in it. Sharing it here for anyone who’s ready to stop doomscrolling and start connecting the dots.
https://monicaandreasen.substack.com/p/the-robots-are-building-a-country?r=vc1st&utm_medium=ios
UBI is revolution insurance. Watch The Matrix; greatest documentary ever made.
This essay is marvelous! It is true, clear, thorough, well-supported, and historically accurate. We have got to charge the table with a pen and sit down even if it’s on top of some asshole bigwig. We can do this. You set forth great and hard truths and great suggestions for how to rewrite our country, which is being decimated in front of us while people snooze. I’ll demand a place at the table. And I won’t wait for permission from misanthropes half my age.
Thank you, Elizabeth! I'm grateful that it resonated with you.
It occurs to me, as an engineer, that there is a missing piece of the AI-vs-jobs-vs-labor productivity math. If producitivity is increasing while workers are being laid off, yes that is at least partly due to AI, but what is the input that makes this possible?
It's energy -- electricity in particular.
Despite what many people might think, AI is not free labor.
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics says that nothing is free. It says that if a technology replaces people, entropy will increase. In plain English, it means that the cost of the energy used will be greater than the cost of the labor that is being replaced.
But in this sense, the word "cost" is not just in dollars paid for the product -- it's "cost" that's spread all through the population in the form of costs associated with that energy production.
Cost in the form of pollution, climate change, and the depletion of resources that would otherwise be available for other purposes,
We know that the enormous buildout of data centers is associated with enormous use of cooling water. That's to remove the heat from the servers, which is nothing more than energy that went into the equipment and is then thrown away into the environment.
Most of that input energy right now is coming from the burning of fossil fuels. Some AI companies are making promises to use renewable energy, others to use dedicated small nuclear reactors.
Fat chance when you are talking about people who care nothing about the welfare of the general public and they need the extra energy right now.
The costs of climate change and air pollution are borne by the general public. As long as there is no carbon pricing in the U.S., this will persist. The AI buildout will further enrich the already-rich while the general schmuckery that most of us belong to will suffer.
And of course we and media that misleads us will blame whoever occupies political office at the time we encounter the badness.
Anyway, long story short, the overuse of AI to replace human labor will worsen an already dire buildup of global heat content, worsening climate change. If we can get people to understand this, maybe we can inject some sanity into our future.
Rick, congratulations, you have just correctly identified the topic of my next article 😊
And, destroying water access in places experiencing drought. Draining aquifers faster than they can be recharged during climate change will be deadly.
One of the first principles we have to adopt in any new approach to tech is "Water Is Life."
Brilliant exposition of the question I've been wondering about: if nobody is employed, who is buying what's being sold?
Imaginative storm. It's such a great point. If none of us are working how the hell are we going to buy anything to participate in the economy? It reminds me of that scene from Say Anything where the John Cusack character says that he doesn't want to do a job by buying or selling anything processed or bought or sold. It's laughable because if you're not doing that, what are you doing?
I keep thinking about Star Trek and The Federation. That's a post-cash/credit society. Everybody has work they love, enjoy, are passionate about and do well, and they have a sufficiency for their lives. In other words, they have Enough, and neither need nor want more, except for a few psychos who are clearly criminal in their pathology. Yet the path to get from here to there is far from clear.
And, in that fictional universe, there are clearly different forms of economic activity, even if it's not classically commercial across the board. What if we reimagine the very concept of work? If we stop seeing it simply as what you do for a wage and start seeing it as a calling that gives your life meaning and depth?
It's starting to seem like that's the only future that's not totally catastrophic - and is in fact terrific. Let's hope, El.
In some countries (like Canada https://www.torys.com/en/our-latest-thinking/publications/2025/02/layoffs-dismissals-and-pay-cuts) employers are on the hook for paying laid off employees for up to *two years* - that's the type of thing that firms who whack employees should have to weigh when actively planning to displace their workers. A guaranteed floor of pay as well as food security are the minimum the US Fed gov't needs to guarantee adults who are underemployed, unemployed or unable to work full time. Who will have the guts to pass such reform when we could not even get the federal minimum wage up to $15/hour?
Themaggie: You're totally right. There are better ways of doing this. There are examples all around the world. The United States seems peculiarly entrenched in doing things the wrong way. My only hope is that this country has proven in the past that it can eventually do the right thing but, as Churchill noted, usually only after exploring all of the wrong options first
Don't forget housing. Especially for the elderly, who are the fastest growing segment of the homeless population. Out of that cohort, the fastest growing demographic of homeless are women over 60.
In Canada the legal norm is to give one month of severance for every year worked. So to get 2 years severance pay you would need to have worked for that company for 24 years.
In Canada the legal norm is to give one month of severance for every year worked. So to get 2 years severance pay you would need to have worked for that company for 24 years.
In Canada the legal norm is to give one month of severance for every year worked. So to get 2 years severance pay you would need to have worked for that company for 24 years.
In Canada the legal norm is to give one month of severance for every year worked. So to get 2 years severance pay you would need to have worked for that company for 24 years.
Brilliant thought provoking. The Oracle has spoken and lets be grateful he's not writing for the dark side. A general strike, yes! March on Washington, even more so. Thank you Lawrence.
Thanks Jeff. I agree we need:
- a march on Washington
- a general strike
- a blue wave during the midterms, bigger than anything ever in American history before
We need something. Otherwise it's going to come to a civil war and we can't afford that in every way possible
A general strike scares the average American. A march on Washington doesn’t impress those greedy, racist bastards in the WH. Blue wave at midterms? 🤞🏻
Sadly IMHO I think the only option is revolution. Not fought “old style” with guns, fought with the young tech guys who are adept at hacking. They will be the disrupters we are looking for.
I worry about the general citizenry’s mental health, and how fragile people are right now. So close to the edge.
I think it was Thomas Merton who prophesied back in the 1960's during the Vietnam anti war era protests and Civil Rights movement that someday the powers to be would learn to "absorb" protests. He was teaching that they were learning how to handle our discontent and building structures of propaganda and elite power where protests simply wouldn't matter. I think he's been proven right. Combine that with James Baldwin's warning from 1974 "That I'm terrified of the moral apathy I see happening in my country" (from I Am Not Your Negro documentary), we're in a world of hurt. Not enough people deeply caring. I think we can agree that the moral apathy he feared 50 years ago is worse today led by our compliant and bought off politicians and institutions. He warned that moral apathy would lead to some of us becoming "moral monsters".
Thank you! I hope your insights go to the people who can make change happen. Before it's too late.
Thanks Carl. I hope so too. I hope all of us together can raise our voices so that they can hear us and we can get a seat at the table
You need to be talking with Graham Platner in Maine. If you have an in with Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, they ought to be able to get you a chance to talk with him about this. He's self-educated, and he's on the right track. He's been dancing around a lot of what's being discussed here, so I think he's capable of building both the strategy and the tactics to build this sort of systemic change.
Peter Thiel has already moved to Argentina. People like him have no reason to stop. Your poverty will increase his wealth by comparison.
"They wrote with the smoke still in their eyes and lungs."
Yep, that's what's coming.
General strike, from yesterday and until the arsonist-in-chief and his goons are out, and we may yet have a voice in the future.
Adrian, I agree. A general strike is going to be the only thing that gets attention at a big enough scale to make a difference from this point forward
Brilliant column and chilling. Thank you Mr. Winnerman for a look into the time machine. The Warlocks are winning and we seem to be the eloys. The late Conrad Andenhour said, "In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it is sad, he did not also limit his stupidity.
Based on the last 2 decades we are soo fu*ked !
You can’t have a revolution without a means of comparison.
But, given that corporation’s have taken humans out of the equation of labor what does revolting do.? Are people going to redesign all the companies that now function without humans.?
No wonder the pope has loudly proclaimed AI dangerous to humanity.
Diana, the crazy thing is I'm a huge sci-fi fan. I've read enough science fiction about benevolent AIs that I could see a good world coming out of it. The problem is we don't have the right kind of people leading the AI companies, leading technology in general, leading the country, leading the world. It's literally the worst possible people at every level
Kakistocracy built on plutocracy by oligarchs.
This may be the scariest article I've read in a while. Thank you so much for crafting this. A question: What the hell is the current administration REALLY doing? Are they just pumping up the market and robbing the treasury before the whole damn thing blows up? I'm sure they're aware of the consequences; without workers, there will be no more consumers, no more tax base, everything dries up, withers and dies. Is that the plan? To leave America as a husk of its former self? Are these people as evil as it appears? (But maybe I've just answered my own question!)
Art, yes. I really think that's the answer. I think they know what's happening and I think that they are taking as much money as they can possibly grab before everything blows up completely. I suspect they know the magnitude of the disaster that they are helping to create and they are doing it on purpose. I don't know what that purpose is but I have some very deep suspicions
Thank you, Lawrence. But you must finish your thought! What are your deep suspicions?