Longtime readers have probably caught on to the fact that I’ve never quite been able to make NPNR work—at least not how I’ve hoped. I think it’s been fine. It’s had its moments. But…it’s never been quite right. It never quite lived up to my vision, which admittedly, has changed over the years.

The newsletter is now in its sixth year, somehow, with plenty of hiatuses (hiatai?). And as I was gearing up to put more resources—time, money, and even manpower—into it, I think it’s time to sunset NPNR. Instead, it’ll be reborn with a slightly new focus, and a new name. 

After all, NPNR is a bit of a mouthful, as Tobias Funke might say.

So, what’s next? A rebrand. Everything should stay the same—you all shouldn’t need to do anything differently. But NPNR is becoming TRIALS, and will be more current events-focused. It’ll be fun. Cathartic. You know. 

Who knows, maybe a podcast will be in the mix, too? Tell me if you think that’s a good or bad idea.

With that, have a nice weekend. TRIALS is coming soon. There will be a premium version, as I outlined a couple of months ago for NPNR. Maybe more. But we’ll get started soon—working out the changes as you read this!

Thanks to the more than 1,000 of you who’ve subscribed, and here’s to what’s next!

Sam

Nokia Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey

Apologies, as it’s been a minute. I’ve been trying to slow down and get a feel for just what the hell is going on out there. And I’ve failed. Things are moving fast—too fast—and I think it’s futile to try and keep up. I do think that’s at least partially by design.

I’m sure many of you can relate. Despite my attempts to take a measured mental approach to our current circumstances, I think it may be more beneficial to get swept up by the current of events and do my best to swim against the current—that is to say, nothing makes sense, it’s not going to make sense, and standing by trying to make sense of it all isn’t going to help. So, it’s probably best that I, you, we, and everyone, continue the work. In whatever form that is.

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I was recently able to get a first-hand look at some of the work that is continuing to take place. It’s important work, too, and it’s happening as some of the people doing the work likely fear for their funding, their jobs, and in some cases, the possibility of being kidnapped and shipped off to some gulag in Central America.

Irregardless, as they say.

Last week, I was invited to visit Nokia Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey. The place is absolutely gargantuan—it’s more like a college campus than a corporate office complex.It was all a part of Bell Labs’ 100th anniversary, taking place this year. 
For a bit of background: Bell Labs was founded in 1925, and is a massive complex housing a number of different research laboratories. It’s seriously massive. We—my fellow reporters and journalists on the media tour, roughly a dozen people or so—were led down hallways that stretched for a quarter of a mile—and oddly enough, I’d reckon that 90% of the place is empty. It used to house thousands of workers, but that was a different time.

Bell Labs is famous for developing and inventing all sorts of technologies: transistors, radio astronomy, Unix operating systems, several programming languages, solar panels, and more. The people working there have won several Nobel Prizes. In fact, some of the guys who’ve invented things we use every day are still walking around the place. It was originally owned and operated by AT&T, but over the past few decades, it has changed hands through a series of mergers and acquisitions. Most recently, it was acquired by Nokia in 2016. The labs themselves are also slated to be relocated to a newer building in New Brunswick, not far from Murray Hill, within a couple of years.
I’m not sure what will happen to the current campus, but hopefully, it’s put to good use. There’s a lot of history that deserves to be preserved.

However, as noted, the work at Bell Labs continues. I was a part of a media group that was able to tour several of the individual laboratories within—they’re all spread around the campus, and at some points, it took a solid ten or 15 minutes to walk between them through a series of labyrinthian hallways and buildings. I thought I was going to get lost and die in there—it seriously reminded me of the catacombs beneath Paris or something.

The labs we saw were not open to the public, so it was a cool chance to see some behind-the-scenes stuff. And those labs? They looked exactly how you might expect a scientific lab to look—wires, computer parts, binders, coffee mugs with quirky phrases left haphazardly on cluttered desks (“Yes, let me drop my problems and work on your problems” was one that I particularly liked), and in some areas, there were even autonomous robots zipping around. 

The researchers and scientists themselves were also reminiscent of the cast of “The Big Bang Theory.” It was clear that they weren’t used to having people invade their space, and explain what they were doing to dumb-dumbs like me. But they were all kind and welcoming. It was a great experience.

As for what I saw? One lab was working on undersea cable technology, which is especially important right now, as those cables have become targets for bad actors. We saw a live feed of the data and information moving through one of those cables in real-time—we weren’t allowed to know where the cable was, and they wouldn’t get more detailed other than telling us which continents the cable connected—and how technology is improving the cables.

We saw how Nokia was working on mining technology in Brazil. They had incorporated AI into a mining operation that provided real-time feedback and data from trucks and tractors all across the mine, and in one case, we saw how one truck was experiencing more stress on its chassis than usual. What was interesting about that was that the additional stress caused the truck to shimmy a bit, losing some ore out of the back on every trip, and over the course of a year, potentially losing the operation millions of dollars. Just because of a little shimmy—and there’s no way anyone would’ve really noticed that shimmy. But the AI did, and flagged it, helping keep the mine operating at a higher efficiency, and getting the truck into the garage to fix the chassis.

I was then taken to a robotics lab, where I saw how robots are being used to manage warehouse inventories through voice commands. Essentially, a researcher could verbally tell a robot to go find a specific box on a shelf with numerous boxes, and it could. If the box was missing, it could go track it down, or find a replacement. It was pretty rudimentary, but interesting, and the tech is already being used in warehouses around the country, with flying drones, in many cases.

Another lab was working on improving telecommunications arrays and technology. I’ll admit, most of it went over my head, but the team there had found some relatively simple ways to improve our telecom and cellular systems, which allow more data to flow freely, and increase internet speeds, among other things.

One researcher said something that stuck with me: “If the pandemic had happened a decade earlier, the whole country would’ve been crippled.” That’s to say that we simply wouldn’t have had the technological backbone and infrastructure to support millions of people working and going to school remotely. It all would’ve crashed.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the tour, and frankly, the one that convinced me to make the drive out there through Jersey traffic, was the quantum computing lab. I’ve written about this topic before, and how it’s blowing my mind. Well, they’re working on quantum computers at Bell Labs, and I had the chance to talk to some of the researchers working on it. I listened to a short lecture from the head of the lab while sitting within spitting distance of the computer’s refrigerator, which keeps the machinery cool—and it was colder than outer space, or approximately -450℉.

I got to sit down with a physicist, too, who helped me understand it all a bit better. I’m not confident that I could explain it to you all. Still, the physicist was confident that this technology would become more commercially viable within the next decade, and that could blow the lid off of things. If you thought AI was changing everything, quantum computing is going to be a whole other reality.

I did get to ask some of the people working in the various labs about their thoughts relating to what was going on outside of the campus’ walls. The place is largely dark and quiet, and it felt very insulated from the outside world—insulated enough to do important work without distraction. But given the tumult we’re all experiencing, and the possibility of some of the research needing to cease due to tariffs, losses of government grants, deportations, and more, I was curious if it was affecting the researchers.

After all, these people are doing important things—it’s the stuff we don’t think about, but allows us all to keep doing our own things without disruption on a daily basis. And if they can’t keep working, we’ll all suffer for it.

Surprisingly, they were all pretty upbeat. For now. They’re still getting after it. They’re still heads-down. They’re still optimistic about the technologies they’re working on, and how they could be used to improve our lives and solve problems.

I found it…inspiring? I’ve definitely had trouble focusing. I’m concerned about the future. And all of those big-picture worries have made it difficult to sit down and, you know, write about stock movements, or whatever is in front of me on any given day. 

But these people, who are actually working on important things, are still at it. They’re not letting it get to them. They’re disconnected—physically, in many respects, and mentally. They’re heads down. They know the stakes are high, and they’re getting it done, so far as I was able to tell. I can appreciate that. It’s a type of toughness and resiliency that I’ve been missing recently, and need to work on redeveloping and applying.

This is all to say that, yes, things are crazy. But the work continues. 

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Last week, the president signed an executive order to close the Department of Education. 

I’m sure we all have our opinions on this, and lots of questions. First and foremost, I think it’s important to keep in mind that the DOE’s closure was initiated by executive order. Those can be reversed, and I assume this will be if and when a new leader enters the White House who doesn’t share the same aims as the current leader. Second, it’s important to note that this isn’t something that the president can unilaterally do—though, he’ll certainly try, and he’ll certainly act like it. Congress would need to take action to shutter the DOE, or other agencies fully.  This Congress might do it, too. We’ll see. 

The thing is, there are problems with the Department of Education. There are problems with all agencies, businesses, and organizations. So, if you wanted a reason to close the DOE down, you could find some. Trump’s executive order highlights the fact that we spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year, and get lackluster results from our public schools as a primary motivation for shutting it down:

Unfortunately, the experiment of controlling American education through Federal programs and dollars — and the unaccountable bureaucracy those programs and dollars support — has plainly failed our children, our teachers, and our families…

…Closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them.  Today, American reading and math scores are near historical lows.  This year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math.  The Federal education bureaucracy is not working.  

The order ends by saying that DOE’s “main functions can, and should, be returned to the States.” So, there’s your stated reasoning for closing the DOE. Your logic. Your chum in the water. 

The Secretary of Education, former wrestling promoter Linda McMahon, had this to say about the president’s decision to close her agency:

“With today’s action, we take a significant step forward to give parents and states control over their children’s education. Teachers will be unshackled from burdensome regulations and paperwork, empowering them to get back to teaching basic subjects. Taxpayers will no longer be burdened with tens of billions of dollars of waste on progressive social experiments and obsolete programs. K-12 and college students will be relieved of the drudgery caused by administrative burdens—and positioned to achieve success in a future career they love.” 

Now, let’s assume that the administration is ultimately successful in dismantling it. What then? As the executive order states, each individual state would need to take a bigger, and perhaps the only role in governing education. I think this gives us a good chance to educate ourselves as to whether that would work, and answer an important question: Who bears the brunt of a decision like this?

I’m not arguing for or against keeping the DOE. I’m not informed enough to make an argument. But I do think it’s worth taking a look at the potential effects of its closure.

What the DOE does

The DOE’s main function is to distribute money to public schools around the country, usually through grants and loans. It also distributes federal student loans, and enforces equal access laws as they relate to education. During 2024, it spent $150 billion in grants, mostly for programs that helped schools with “disadvantaged” students, special education programs, and funding after-school programs.

It’s not a terribly large agency, and as of last year, had around 4,200 employees. That’s roughly a single Army brigade. In all, it has spent between between $100 and $200 billion per year running its programs and operations, though that ballooned during the pandemic, and last year, was around $267 billion, and less than half of that during 2023. 

And when it comes to funding public schools, the federal government plays a surprisingly small role. A little less than 14% of public school funding is provided by the feds, according to 2022 data. 

Why close the Department of Education?

While I did note some of the logic behind the closure earlier, it’s also important to know that closing the DOE has been on many a wishlist for a long time. Famously, Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas and Secretary of Energy, said that the DOE was one of the three agencies he would close if he were elected president in 2016—the other two were the Departments of Commerce and Energy, which he would go on to run during the first Trump administration.

It’s probably safe to say that Trump issued his executive order to close it not because he has an ideological bent against it one way or the other, but simply because he’s the head of the Republican Party. And they wanted him to.

As for why the Republicans, by and large, may support such a move? In broad strokes, you can argue that the government is involving itself in a market (education) that may be better served by private interests—which may include for-profit companies. The logic here is that for-profit companies would be more focused on getting better results, lest they go out of business. In theory, they’d also be incentivized to reduce waste and corruption to achieve those results, as the goal would be to maximize profits.

That makes sense, sure. We have many for-profit education companies and schools operating around the country, too. You likely know someone who went to a private school, or perhaps you did.

Further, the idea of getting the federal government out of the education space also, theoretically, reduces the overall government’s size, and its fiscal needs. It saves the taxpayers money, in other words. 

In exchange, we are hypothetically allowing private interests to dominate the education space. Again, this may or may not be a bad thing. However, education is a weird “market,” in the same way that healthcare or childcare is. If you ask me, both healthcare and childcare are classic market failures—the market does not provide adequate solutions to meet demand. I think that’s likely what we’re looking at with education.

That said, with the DOE gone, the burden of educating public school students would be shifted to the states. So, taxpayers may not actually save any money, and there’s really no way of knowing whether the quality of public schools would increase or decrease. It, again, would depend entirely on the state, and how voters in those states value education. This is already in play since public schools get most of their funding from local and state taxes. This is also why we have such a disparity in school quality from place to place, too. 

It’s complicated.

Who bears the brunt?

The important question: If the DOE were to disappear overnight, who would get hurt? It’s likely to be students, parents, and economies in small towns and rural areas. While the DOE closing wouldn’t completely gut public schools, it would levy a considerable hit on many or most of them, remove funding for certain programs, and lead to widespread layoffs where many communities can ill-afford them. 

Again, those who bear the brunt are likely to be people living in rural areas and small towns. If you’ve ever driven through rural areas, and particularly, small towns, schools are often their focal point. They employ a good number of people in the area. The students congregate there, they play sports and join clubs. It’s a place for the community to come together. They’re also strapped for cash, in many cases, and if they lose funding, need to start stripping down programs. That could include sports, after-school programs (impacting childcare arrangements), and more. That could also remove jobs for coaches, aids, and childcare workers, killing jobs.

The employment factor is perhaps bigger than most of us realize. Data from North Carolina shows that public schools are the biggest employers in more than half of the state’s 100 counties, and are among the top three biggest employers in 91 counties. North Carolina is not an exception, either, as many states are much, much more rural and sparsely populated. 

If DOE funding is taken away from those schools and communities—even if it’s certain grants and funding for specific programs or projects—there will be a downstream effect on the local economy.

The states that receive the most federal aid for their school systems are also among those that tend to support the president and his policies, too: Mississippi, South Dakota, Montana, Alaska, Arkansas, etc. So, in some of these states, it’s likely that taxes may need to increase to keep up with the current level of education. But again, it all depends on myriad factors. 

There are other things to think about, too.

There are programs that fall under the DOE currently that would need to be continued, or that need to continue in accordance with federal law (like the existence of the CFPB, which I wrote about a few weeks ago). Those wouldn’t go away, and would still need to be funded. Ultimately, they’d all likely move under different agencies, like the Department of Health and Human Services, or something similar. The costs would simply shift, not disappear.

In all, it’s unclear that disbanding the DOE would actually alleviate the burden on taxpayers. It might, in some places. But in others? They may end up with worse educators and at higher prices. We simply don’t know. 

But if there is one thing we can say with any degree of certainty, it’s that there are disadvantaged (in any number of ways) kids and teachers out there, working with few resources and limited support, who would feel the impact of the DOE’s closure more than others. 

While it may be easy or cathartic to look at some of the states that would bear the brunt of this and laugh—”har har, guess what you got what you voted for!”—an empathetic approach is probably more productive. These people were sold an idea that they’d get a better outcome for a better price, and while theoretically possible, it’s unlikely to come to fruition. As for whether the DOE ultimately survives and is still around in four or six years? It’s anyone’s guess.

As always, I’m open to your thoughts: sammbecker@gmail.com

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Data: it’s supposed to be objective. Black and white. The truth, unblemished by opinion, politicization, or emotion. But some changes at the top are making the data we gather suspect, untrustworthy, or at least, a tad suspicious.

This happened during the pandemic. Remember “if we stop testing, right now, we’d have very few cases, if any?” The whole idea around that was to artificially deflate the number of positive COVID cases. If you don’t test, there are no postive cases, right? Genius.

Now, the same sort of politicization is occuring to our economic data. And, as much as it pains me to say it, that data may be suspect going forward. 

The crux of the issue is the administration’s firing of two expert panels and committees that work with the federal government to verify the quality of economic data, such as GDP and inflation numbers. Specifically, the Trump administration terminated the the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee (FESAC) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis Advisory Committee.

Why?

According to a message sent by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to those on the committee, the reasoning was that “the Secretary of Commerce has determined that the purposes for which FESAC was established has been fulfilled and the committee has been terminated, effective February 28 2025." 

Lutnick, it’s important to note, has recently said that he wants to change how some of the data, such as GDP, is calculated. Specifically, he wants to exclude government spending when measuring the growth or contraction of the economy. That’s also an idea that’s been pushed by Elon Musk, who, you know, is…hanging around.

There may be arguments for or against excluding government data. But it’s important to know that government spending is included in the GDP calculation because there are numerous governmental changes that can shape the economy, such as taxation, spending, regulations, and more — all of it can shape the economy’s trajectory.

Accordingly, that adds a dimension to the calculation that makes the data a bit more transparent and easier to sift through. So, why change it? Well, a simple answer could be that there have been some big changes at the federal level over the past couple of months, with widespread layoffs and mothballed or gutted federal agencies or programs. That, in turn, is likely to effect the wider economy, and result in some fairly ugly numbers when they’re ultimately calculated. The tens of thousands of laid off workers, for example, could increase the unemployment rate, put more strain on safety net programs, and have downstream effects—federal spending does trickle down to the private sector (somebody has to build tanks!), and that could have an exponential effect on employment. We’re not sure how it could all shake out yet.
But changing the way it’s calculated could obscure the damage to a degree.
At least, that’s where my cynical brain veers.

Now, it’s important to note that the the groups disbanded by the administration, like the FESAC, do not provide or produce the actual statistics. The FESAC is merely an advisory comittee. But the question is this: Why disband these committees if their absence will inevitably result in lesser quality data, or even bad data?

The cynic (again, me) might suspect some good, old fashioned corruption. And frankly, it’s difficult to come to any other conclusion at this point. They—the administration and DOGE, mostly—know they’re causing some real damage to the economy, and want to mess with the numbers to make it appear that the damage is not nearly as bad as it may seem. I don’t know if that’s true. Nobody does. However, if you were to manipulate the GDP data, it may help make charts like the one below look a little better.

But more broadly, messing with the economic data models absolutely invites conspiratorial thinking. You’re seeing some of it blossom, as you read this, in my mind. I do need to wonder whether I’m being unfair. Unfortunately, given the people and personalities that are floating the changes, I don’t think I am. I’m not giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Again, we saw this during the pandemic. We also saw them float conspiracies about how the government was changing data or definitions during the previous administration — you might remember when the Biden administration “changed” the definition of a recession? What happened was that there were two straight quarters of negative GDP growth, which is, in layman’s terms, the definition of a recession. But it’s not the ACTUAL definition, and while Biden’s people tried to dance around it, they didn’t change anything. And, in subsequent months, the GDP numbers were revised (as they always are), so there was only one quarter of economic contraction during Biden’s tenure.

Again, though, you can see where this type of thinking leads. You start messing with numbers and definitions and calculations, and it makes us all a bit less trusting. You also can’t really make an apples-to-apples comparison after changes are made, making it all the more difficult to gauge change, negative or positive, over time periods.

Accordingly, there doesn’t seem to be a valid reason for making the proposed calculation changes. Or for disbanding the committees. Those would be, or are, mistakes—in my opinion.

But It’s the kneecapping of public trust, though, that’s the largest casualty. Perhaps it’s even the point? Trump’s people do like to muddy the waters, making it seem that everyone is corrupt and untrustworthy, so their own corruption and dishonor isn’t so bad. I do believe that’s a primary tenent of their strategy, insomuch as there is one. 
You do need to wonder, too, if the administration would be disbanding these committees and floating changes to the numbers if the numbers were, well, looking a bit better? You may remember that during Trump’s first go-around that, as if magic, jobs reports were no longer “fake” or exagerrated, as they were under Obama.

Here’s the actual exchange between a reporter and then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer, when asked about that, per a 2017 report from Politico:

“In the past, the president has referred to particular job reports as phony or totally fiction,” a reporter asked. “Does the president believe that this jobs report was accurate and a fair way to measure the economy?”

“I talked to the president prior to this, and he said to quote him very clearly,” Spicer said. “They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.”

How long before that same line is trotted out to defend the manipulation of CPI or GDP data? Or should I just take my tin foil hat off and have a Diet Coke?

As always, I’m open to your thoughts: sammbecker@gmail.com

Stay vigilant!

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Superposition in action

It’s not fun to feel like the dumbest person in the room, but sometimes, it pays off. That’s because you’re likely learning something new, and hanging out with people that are operating on another level than you are, at least in some ways.

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That was my experience this past week, as I was working on a story about quantum computing. I’ve written and read a bit about quantum computing before, and frankly, it’s above my head. Way above. I don’t understand it.

But if I were to lay my chips on the roulette table, I’d say it’s the next big thing. The new, new thing. It could change everything — even more so than artificial intelligence throwing the world into a tailspin.

Given how important I think the topic is, and will be in the coming years, I wanted to put together a sort of primer, which can hopefully help establish at least a baseline understanding of what quantum computing is, how it works, and why it’s important.

To set the stage, most of what I know about the topic derives from conversations I’ve had with the team at a company called D-Wave. Their team has been extremely helpful in dumbing things down for me, and as a result, I was able to cover the news that the company has effectively “achieved quantum supremacy.” That means that it used a quantum computer to do something that would otherwise be impossible to do with normal, or “classical” computers. Their team was able to simulate the properties of a hypothetical magnetic material without actually creating the material. That would’ve taken a million years to do with a normal computer.

Imagine what else we could do with that technology!

What is quantum computing?

I’ll start with the most basic question: What is quantum computing? If you Google that question, the answer you’ll get will describe computing performed using the principles of quantum mechanics, or something along those lines. It’s confusing, abstract, and difficult to conceptualize. 

In effect, quantum computers use wild concepts like “superposition” and “entanglement” to work things out. You may know that a classical computer, at its core, uses binary language, 0 and 1, to compute. Quantum computers use “quantum bits,” also called “Qubits,” which are actually 0s and 1s at the SAME TIME. That’s what “superposition” refers to: Being in two places, or two things, simultaneously.

Have a headache yet? Me too.

But you can think of it this way: If these computers can simultaneously look at or analyze the same thing in two different ways simultaneously, it can reduce the time and energy required to work out computations. That’s how it ultimately made the most sense to me.

On top of that, classical computers compute in a linear fashion. So, they read computer code and follow the instructions accordingly. Quantum computers, on the other hand, don’t need to work in a specific order, or operate one step at a time. They can do it all, all at once. It’s like that movie, Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, which itself is a reference to the quantum realm.

So, if you want to boil it down? Quantum computers can, basically, do a bunch of things all at once, which means that they can do a lot more, a lot faster, and with fewer resources.

Is this stuff even real?

If you start reading about quantum computing, you’ll learn that a lot of this stuff is hypothetical. Theoretical. It’s pie-in-the-sky.

Notably, the CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang (an Oregon State grad! Who knew?), recently ruffled feathers when he said that quantum computers were decades away. That, evidently, is not true. D-Wave has quantum computers, and has clients that are already using them. Other quantum computing companies likely do, too — a list that includes Rigetti Computing, IonQ, and others. Big companies are also in the mix, like IBM, Google, and Microsoft.

In fact, Microsoft recently made a quantum announcement of its own. The company unveiled a new quantum computing chip in February, and that was a couple of months after Google announced one of its own. Not to be outdone, Amazon also announced a quantum chip a couple of weeks ago.

So, yeah, there’s momentum in the quantum space. There’s money flowing to it, and people are working hard to make this all a reality. Or, more of a reality.

What’s next?

The big question for quantum computing, really the only question of any substance, is this: What does this all mean and how will it materialize in everyday life? Well, as noted, quantum computers are already in use. They’re being used in laboratories, and I was even told that some telecom companies are using them in various ways to help improve their networks.

But it’s the potential here that is particularly striking. Since quantum computers can do so many things, all at once, cutting down calculation time, there is immense potential. For instance, they could be used to try and find new drugs or cures for diseases — instead of having scientists and researchers physically create new drugs in a lab and test them out, it may be possible to use quantum computing to simulate their creation and then virtually test their effects. That could shave years off of development times.

They could be used to create unbreakable codes, helping the cybersecurity field. They could, as D-Wave demonstrated, help materials researchers develop new materials that power new and improved technology. And then think about how it may help with modeling in fields like finance or even meteorology.

Quantum computers could change everything. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. It’s not often that I learn something completely new that really blows my mind, but this is a topic that did.

Even if it did put me on my heels and take me out of my comfort zone, that’s what it’s all about, right? Imagine trying to teach your great-grandparents about ChatGPT? Or showing a medieval peasant an iPhone? In some ways, that’s how I feel—out of my depth.

But it’s cool, and probably best that we start learning about these technologies now, before they’re implemented into everything and anything around us, like AI.

Questions? Thoughts? Tell me: sammbecker@gmail.com

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Friends,

A reminder that NPNR will start publishing more often this month, and at the end of the month, will go premium. That is, you can choose to pay for more content, or continue with the current format. Either way is fine with me, and I appreciate you all no matter what.

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That said, aside from the usual screed, a friend wrote something that is included in today’s edition about what’s happening in Texas. Whitney Riek lives in West Texas, and is a mom—so, she has some thoughts on the measles outbreak going on down there, and who better to weigh in, really? I’ve known her for more than 20 years, and appreciate her thoughts. Hopefully, she’ll continue to contribute.

But first, who else feels…disrespected by what’s going on?

I feel profoundly disrespected

Like many of you, I’ve been trying to grapple with what’s going on. Frankly, there’s too much to comprehend—that’s partially by design. But more so, as I’ve written to you all before, I’m just trying to get an idea of how I actually feel about it. 

Mad? Sure, but not really. But in another sense, really.

Sad? Yeah. Maybe “disappointed” is a better word, but that’s in the mix.
Discouraged? You bet. 

But I think that if I were going to sum it all up, I’d say that more than anything, I feel absolutely and completely disrespected. I think you should, too. It’s been pretty clear that the people in charge don’t have much of an idea about what they’re doing, but when asked for solutions or even ideas to remedy serious problems, we’re getting absolute nonsense in return. 

Here are some of the ones that have particularly irked me:

Brooke Rollins, the Secretary of Agriculture, on grocery prices: For some reason, egg prices are a big deal to a lot of people. And while reducing egg prices was one of the administration’s big promises during the past election, we’re apparently on our own. Rollins’ advice to the American public on how to handle egg prices? Get some chickens.

Great. Thanks. Of course, the whole issue with egg prices is that avian flu is killing all the damn chickens, and we all know how well these people handle pandemics.

Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense: It feels like we’re inching closer to World War III, but the Secretary of Defense has bigger things on his mind. Namely, getting rid of “woke” stuff—whatever that means. In an effort to purge the Department of Defense of anything that may promote inclusion or diversity, Hegseth’s minions are removing content from social media profiles and more that may make some people a tad uncomfortable.

That includes removing images of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. Because, you know, it has the word “gay” in it. These are serious people, folks.

J.D. Vance, the Vice President of the United States: One thing I’ll never forget is the non-answer that J.D. Vance offered up when asked how the administration might help with child care costs. For reference, my household pays thousands of dollars per month for child care. It’s a mess. So, I was interested. Vance’s suggestion? Get grandma and grandpa to work for free, assuming they’re available, or just get rid of standards for daycares. See his answer for yourself.

“I think one of the things that we can do is make it easier for families to choose whatever model they want, right? So one of the ways that you might be able to relieve a little bit of pressure on people who are paying so much for daycare is…maybe grandma and grandpa [want] to help out a little bit more, or maybe there’s an aunt or uncle that wants to help out a little bit more. If that happens, you relieve some of the pressure on all the resources that we’re spending on daycare.”

I would expect at least a half-ass answer out of him, but I guess that expectation was a bit too lofty.

United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: There’s a measles outbreak in Texas—read below for more—and RFK Jr., worm-eaten brain and all, says we should eat more carrots. Seriously, though, read below!

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick: Most recently, when asked why the stock market is falling and the economic data hasn’t been rosy in recent weeks, Lutnick said that Biden “left [Trump] a pile of poop.” And that all the bad data is “Biden data.” What we’re seeing, of course, is a reaction to a new trade war that we’ve waged for some reason, and frankly, the data isn’t even that bad. Not yet. Give it a few months. Either way, we’re already well into the blame everything on Biden campaign, so that’s neat.

I also appreciate when adults use phrases like “pile of poop,” it really garners a sense of maturity.

These aren’t answers. People have real concerns. Real problems. And this is what we’re getting from the people in charge? Say what you will about the current administration’s opponents, but at least they pretend to have some actual answers or solutions, even if they’re not necessarily what you want to hear (like, everybody needs to pay more taxes to implement a national child care system, or something like that).

Hopefully, these people get a bit better at what they’re doing, or explaining their rationale, or telling Americans what to do or expect. I suspect they won’t, as they’re not serious people. And I don’t like the fact that I don’t respect them, or think that they’re serious people. I wish they were. But they’re talking to me like I’m a gosh-darned idiot. A pile of poop.

As a result, I feel disrespected.

Dangerous and divisive advice, from the top-down

By Whitney Riek

Measles is surging in West Texas. Proliferating anti-vax misinformation, spread by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy (RFK Jr.), is to blame for declining vaccination rates, and thus, the current outbreak.

While this current outbreak should serve to prove the efficacy of vaccines, RFK Jr. provides a weak recommendation that focuses more on vitamins and lifestyle than the life-saving vaccine that once eradicated the very disease threatening to plague us again today.

During the recent measles outbreak, RFK Jr. wrote this in a recent opinion piece for Fox News:

“As healthcare providers, community leaders, and policymakers, we have a shared responsibility to protect public health. This includes ensuring that accurate information about vaccine safety and efficacy is disseminated. We must engage with communities to understand their concerns, provide culturally competent education, and make vaccines readily accessible for all those who want them.

It is also our responsibility to provide up-to-date guidance on available therapeutic medications. While there is no approved antiviral for those who may be infected, CDC has recently updated their recommendation supporting administration of vitamin A under the supervision of a physician for those with mild, moderate, and severe infection. Studies have found that vitamin A can dramatically reduce measles mortality.

Tens of thousands died with, or of, measles annually in 19th Century America. By 1960 -- before the vaccine’s introduction -- improvements in sanitation and nutrition had eliminated 98% of measles deaths. Good nutrition remains a best defense against most chronic and infectious illnesses. Vitamins A, C, and D, and foods rich in vitamins B12, C, and E should be part of a balanced diet.”

Rather than recommend vaccination against measles by way of the MMR vaccine, he urges parents to merely talk with their doctors and consider it, since the “decision to vaccinate is a personal one.” An avid anti-vaxxer and historical spreader of misinformation, RFK fails to acknowledge the proven efficacy of the MMR vaccine. 
While RFK's recent "call to action" in the wake of the measles outbreak in West Texas should have been a recommendation to vaccinate, it was not, and instead, was a weak suggestion to consider vaccinating, riddled with misinformation and subtle notes of karma. He seems to say that if we had all been eating healthy to begin with, this never would have happened in the first place. 

As a parent of young children living in Texas, I find this absolutely infuriating. 
Not only does his response fail to address the measles problem, but this narrative also perpetuates a dangerous dichotomy between nutrition and medicine. While not surprising to most, RFK continues to prove himself unqualified at best and a threat to public health at worst.

Measles is a highly contagious respiratory illness. Symptoms include fever, cough, congestion, and eye irritation, followed by a rash. While most cases are mild, severe symptoms include pneumonia, blindness, and encephalitis. Infections can also lead to lifelong health consequences. Measles was declared eliminated in 2000 but has recently reemerged in a Mennonite community in West Texas. 

According to the CDC, 164 total cases of measles have been reported so far this year. Of those, 95% are unvaccinated (or have an unknown vaccination status). Of the total cases, 20% have resulted in hospitalization and one death has been confirmed. The current outbreak has predominantly affected children.

Kennedy almost gets it right, as he acknowledges that "vaccines not only protect individual children from measles but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons." 

He also acknowledges the decline in measles cases immediately following the vaccine, yet he attributes the elimination of 98% of measles deaths to "improvements in sanitation and nutrition". Moreover, he claims that "good nutrition remains the best defense against most chronic and infectious illness". 

Vitamin-rich foods should certainly be part of a balanced diet. Since measles does not have a specific anti-viral treatment, vitamin A may be appropriate when administered by a physician as supportive care. While it is true that sanitation and nutrition are critical for overall health, it is not a replacement for vaccines. Both are true - overall health is important and vaccines reduce the risk for infectious diseases. 

The nutrition versus medicine dichotomy is not only false but dangerous and divisive. The resurgence of an eliminated illness is no doubt due to the declining vaccinations, thanks to the dangerous dissemination of misinformation. And what's happening in West Texas now is a prime example of the consequences. 

Our community should be doing everything we can to keep our families safe and healthy. The MMR vaccine reduces risk by 97% and has been proven effective for stopping transmission and reducing the risk of severe illness. RFK's call to action is not to vaccinate, but "for all of us to reaffirm our commitment to public health", whatever that means. 

The decision to vaccinate is not personal, it's communal. And our children's lives depend on it.

As always, remain vigilant. Reach me at sammbecker@gmail.com.

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I entered the working world in 2009. Though I had jobs stretching back years before, that spring, I graduated from college, and like many others around my age, was looking for a way to kickstart a career. I didn’t have much direction, but I wanted to do something. I was happy, at the time, to see where the currents took me.

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But the universe had other plans. As many of you may recall, 2009 was not an ideal time to do…anything, really. Except buy stocks. The financial crisis had caused the Great Recession, and we were all doing our best to get by. The Obama administration had just come into office, and Democrats had big majorities in Congress. 

So, they passed a whole bunch of Wall Street reforms, including the Dodd-Frank legislation. Part of that was the creation of a new government agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB. It’s job? Exactly what it sounds like: Protect consumers from financial malpractice, scams, and the like.

Naturally, banks and other financial institutions weren’t and haven’t been big fans. The CFPB has done a lot of things that have worked to the benefit of ordinary people, too, such as capping certain types of fees that banks can charge, and more.

But the CFPB is one of many agencies and programs that is being targeted by the Trump administration. Interestingly, he more or less left it alone during his first go-around in office. This time, however, it’s being strangled, defanged, and left to wither. 

I wrote a story about it a couple of weeks ago, and have had the opportunity to speak with several experts about it. They’re…perplexed. The CFPB is a prime example of a government agency that works more or less how it should, and it brings in more money than it spends. Since it was created around 15 years ago, it’s clawed back $21 billion for consumers, and it costs less than $1 billion annually to administer.

Even so, Trump put a new guy in charge: Acting director Russell Vought, who is also serving as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought was confirmed to his role along a party-line vote, so he was far from a consensus candidate. He is, so far, delivering for Trump’s people: He’s fired or is in the process of firing pretty much everyone, is dropping ongoing lawsuits against companies for financial wrongdoing, and even closed the CFPB’s headquarters. 

One source told me that Trump—or, Trump’s people, because I really doubt Trump himself has any idea what the CFPB is or what it does—was persuaded to go after the CFPB early in his second term by some of his friends or “friends” in the financial industry. Under the Biden administration, the source says that the CFPB was fairly aggressive. And it was. Here are some examples: 

• Slash credit card late fees: A year ago, the CFPB announced a rule capping late fees on credit cards at $8 for some credit card companies, which was expected to save consumers more than $14 billion per year.

• Capped overdraft fees: The CFPB capped most bank overdraft fees at $5 in December 2024. This move aimed to save consumers around $5 billion annually (if it sticks).

• Removed medical debt from credit reports: The CFPB targeted old medical debt on credit reports, aiming to reduce the financial burden on consumers.

• Generally stuck it to the man: The CFPB pursued aggressive legal action against financial institutions accused of wrongdoing, including a lawsuit against Capital One for allegedly misleading customers about savings account opportunities.

These are just a few examples. There are many more. But overall, the consensus was that Biden’s CFPB overstepped. It took things a bit too far. And now, it needs to pay. So, Trump’s people are tearing it apart. 

Why does this chap my hide so much? Let’s be real: Pretty much everything that’s happened over the past six months has really chapped my hide, but this? I suppose it all stems from the fact that I know exactly when and why the CFPB was created, and have closely watched what it’s done over the past decade and a half. I know damn well that it’s made a difference, and that it’s a fairly good example of good governance—lord knows we’re short on those.

But here’s the other thing: By dismantling the CFPB, the Trump administration is actively stealing from the American people. It’s an agency that was created by Congress, and paid for by the taxpayers. So, we’ve all paid for it. It exists as a matter of legality. And they’re trying to take it away.

Again: It’s yours. You paid for it. You’re entitled to it, by law. And they’re taking a baseball bat to the entire thing, for no apparent gain. It actively hurts the American public, but they’re doing it anyway. There’s truly no excuse for it.

I know, I know. The same could be said about many other things that are going on right now. But as I said, this is one that strikes my tiny little heart particularly hard. 
With all of this in mind, it’s important to know that the CFPB, since it exists as a matter of legality, isn’t completely going away. At least not yet (they could try, I suppose). But what they’re doing instead is neutering it, and will likely allow it to continue to exist as a zombified entity. Like a shell company, in some ways. There is still a lot of CFPB legislation and proposals in the air. There are rules that it has put into place. Those aren’t necessarily going away immediately, either. We’ll need to wait and see what happens.

But I do want you all to think about what’s happening, whether it’s to the CFPB, or otherwise. I’ll say it again: You paid for it, and are entitled to the protections that agencies like the CFPB provide. You’re being deprived of those protections because of craven cronyists who aren’t even pretending to have your best interests in mind.

It really grinds my gears, let me tell ya.

Remember: You can reach me at sammbecker@gmail.com with your thoughts, insults, or anything else.

Stay vigilant, friends!

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Rehashing economic sentiment may seem pithy at this point in time, but I think it’s important to get our bearings before the geniuses in charge plumb the depths in the months and years to come. And it’s coming.

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With that in mind, the overall public perception of the economy has left me and many others flummoxed over the past couple of years. You’ve heard it all before, and I’ve written about it before: Americans feel that the economy was bad, when all the data and indicators seem to say otherwise. The stats were telling. Less than a year ago, almost 60% of Americans believed we were in a recession—and yet, we’ve been nowhere near a recession.

I’ve thought a lot about this. I’ve tried to make sense of it. I’ve seen a bad recession. Most of you have, too, unless you’re 15 years old. I don’t think you could honestly look around in recent years and think, “yeah, the economy is in tatters.” 

But you can see it in the economic sentiment measures. Things bottomed out in July 2022:

This may be what sunk Biden. And possibly Kamala Harris. Trump basically ran the same play he did in 2016—“the economy is bad, I can fix it, American carnage,” and so on—even though it wasn’t true then, and it isn’t now. I’d argue that we’re in a much, much more perilous position now than we were even a few months ago, let alone three years ago.

That said, I did come across some reporting that has helped this all make a bit more sense to me this past week. Let’s be clear, again: I think we’re about to get a dose of reality as it comes to recessions. I think the first go-around, Trump mismanaged the economy, which was a big reason we experienced inflation in recent years—some might disagree with me on that, but who cuts interest rates when things are chugging along, and cuts taxes when the country actually needs to raise revenue? It didn’t make any sense.

Regardless, the piece I am referencing was published earlier this month in “The New York Times,” and if I were to summarize it as best I can, I’d say this: The economy is doing really well, but it’s come at the expense of pretty much everything else. That, I agree with. At least, I would say that I agreed with it up until the past month or so—because I really don’t know where things stand as of writing. 

The story analyzes a host of data and indicators, showing that the U.S. economy has outperformed every other in its class since 1990. Again, that seems to track, if I were to just use what I know off of the top of my head. Again, though, there’s the catch: That performance has come at a cost: 

“But by many other measures of well-being — especially health and happiness — the U.S. fares worse than many other rich countries and has fallen further behind since the 1990s.”

Give and take

The takeaway itself is derived from a sort of “report card” called the State of the Nation Project, which was released in early February by a group of economic scholars. And again, to reiterate, the main takeaway is that we’ve managed to become an economic juggernaut by grinding the American people into dust—the cost was the well-being and living standards of many Americans. Not everyone, of course, but it’s clear that many people aren’t sharing in the growing prosperity, and are frustrated by it.

As such, economic unrest and insecurity are rife. We simply don’t focus on, or make a priority of promoting the health and happiness of our citizens. Instead, we focus on the numbers at any cost: Make those lines go up and to the right, no matter what. While it may be a bit too simplified (I think you should click through and read the Report Card and the corresponding NYT report!), here are a few charts that may put things into perspective.

To get this: 

We’ve had to accept this:

And, as the report sums it all up, “our rising incomes are not translating into greater perceived well-being and social relations.” That, in my mind, is the most important piece of the puzzle. We bought in, we made the sacrifice, and the payoff isn’t what we were expecting or hoping for. 

Here’s the takeaway, in more detail, from the report: 

“Our measures of perceived well-being, especially in life satisfaction and mental health, are all going in the wrong direction, even as our material well-being continues to rise. Research has generally suggested that “money buys happiness,” at least to some degree, but our trends on these measures are moving in opposite directions. We also see declines in our relationships with others, including social isolation and half of the trust measures. Given the importance of social relationships in our lives, these two trends are probably related.

One possible general explanation is that rising income is still improving our perceived well-being, but other factors are acting more powerfully to offset this and make us feel worse off. Another possibility is that the way in which we are pursuing material wealth is directly reducing psychological and social well-being. We encourage future investigation about the possible explanations.”

Vibecessionists weren’t completely wrong

I don’t know if there’s a solution to all of this—if there isn’t, it certainly isn’t an easy one—but it does make sense to me. And I think, as mentioned, that this is what’s at the root of all the dissatisfaction with the status quo. So, as it relates to recent economic sentiment, I do think that people have been wrong. The economy has been strong. But they’ve also been correct in that things…aren’t that great. It’s just that the rosy data outshines the rest of it. And that rosy data is what we’ve chosen to pay attention to.

To bring it all back: The “vibecession” wasn’t completely off base. But I fear that our recent choices are going to bring us much closer to actual economic pain than most people were hoping for.

Remember: You can reach me at sammbecker@gmail.com with your thoughts, insults, or anything else.

Remain ever vigilant!

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I don’t know about all of you, but I feel dumber. Maybe it’s because I’m older, or that I’m dealing with kids and mortgages and tax deductions. Maybe it’s the prevailing national discourse? I’d argue that’s certainly not doing any of us any cognitive favors.

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Or maybe it’s technology. I’m in front of a screen for a good part of the day, be it my computer, TV, or phone. I do think that those things have all made me smarter and more capable over the years, but there are times when I’ve sacrificed brain cells for the sake of vegging out for a bit—I once watched six seasons of some show called “Chrisley Knows Best” for no apparent reason, and I couldn’t tell you who Chrisley is, why he’s famous, or why he had a TV show. All I know is that he’s in jail.

Interestingly, we’re getting more insight into what technology is doing to our brains. And more specifically, AI tools, which may be the newest and shiniest toys out there. Have you tried messing around with an AI tool yet? You’ve probably heard about them—ChatGPT is perhaps the biggest, but there are several others, such as Copilot, Llama, Gemini, Perplexity, DeepSeek, and so on. 

I’ll be the first tell you that I have not used or played around with most of these. The only one I have any real experience with is Copilot, which is Microsoft’s AI assistant. The only reason I used it was because I was asked to write some rather in-depth stuff about Excel functions, and I thought that Copilot would be able to help me understand and simplify those functions—I was right!

But many of you have probably used ChatGPT or Gemini for one reason or another. They’re pretty neat. I do, however, just think that they’re sort of the next evolution of a Google search. We hear about “prompt engineering,” and I don’t see how that’s all that much different from learning to use a search engine effectively, or utilize Boolean logic to find more precise terms.

That’s another topic, though.

Though all of this stuff is new, having really just come onto the scene and into our lives within the past couple of years, the technology is rapidly evolving. I wrote a story last summer about AI agents, which are basically virtual human beings, that was outdated by the time I finished with it. I had to kill the idea before it could publish. Suffice it to say that AI is real, and it’s speeding along at a healthy clip.

It may be moving along too fast. So fast that we’re not really able to grasp what the larger effects are on society. We know that it’s already leading to job losses—Google “AI layoffs” or something similar and you’ll see a lot of stories. And it makes sense. These sorts of technology can do a lot of things, and do them quickly. If you needed someone to write code, you can now just ask the AI to write it for you, and it’ll do it in 15 seconds. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of that?

To give you an idea of how transformational this stuff might be, I asked an expert a while back to put it in “caveman terms” so that I could understand. They said that it was basically like going from the abacus to the calculator. At one time, you needed a room full of people doing calculations to solve a difficult problem. Then, with a calculator, you could do it yourself in 20 seconds.

But again: What does it all mean for us? And our brains? The early indications aren’t good.

god let’s hope the data is lying

We know that social media was kinda-sorta a mistake. It’s melted people’s minds. It’s locked us into silos and echo chambers. It’s taken our data and attention. It appears that AI may be doing something similar.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft released a study this month, which looked at how Generative AI (that means all of these AI tools, collectively) is affecting critical thinking skills and practices among knowledge workers (creatives, etc.). The study itself surveyed 319 people to see what the deal was, and…it’s a bit concerning. 
Here’s the key takeaway, from the paper’s conclusion: 

“...While GenAI can improve worker efficiency, it can inhibit critical engagement with work and can potentially lead to long-term overreliance on the tool and diminished skill for independent problem-solving. Higher confidence in GenAI’s ability to perform a task is related to less critical thinking effort. When using GenAI tools, the effort invested in critical thinking shifts from information gathering to information verification; from problem-solving to AI response integration; and from task execution to task stewardship. Knowledge workers face new challenges in critical thinking as they incorporate GenAI into their knowledge workflows.”

So, AI is melting our brains. People who use it at work are effectively offloading their critical thinking to AI tools, and, if I may be so bold, making us dumber. Here is, perhaps, the most important sentence in the whole study:

“Used improperly, technologies can and do result in the deterioration of cognitive faculties that ought to be preserved.” Deterioration! Lordy! I don’t think we need any more deterioration, of any kind, during these trying times!

Let’s keep our pants on: This is only one study. It’s an early one. And it only focuses on one specific type of work. So, things could change. We don’t really have a grasp on how AI is going to change things yet, or how people are going to incorporate it into their lives and work. But I think this is worth paying attention to, and when you think about it, the whole point of these tools is to offload critical thinking…isn’t it? 

Why write that email when the machine can do it for you? Why try to think up a synonym when the machine can spit out numerous options in two seconds? Why why why??

I do think it’s only a matter of time before we forget how to write (again, the machine will do it for us), read (how many people read, anyway?), or formulate a cogent thought. Lord knows we all have trouble doing that.

What’s also interesting is that there is existing research that finds smartphones and social media have similar effects. Have you seen kids these days? They can barely function. That may be because they’ve grown up with immediate access to everything in the world in their pockets. When you have that kind of power, you’re already offloading your critical thinking—why try and learn or memorize anything when you can just look it up anytime you want? 

Reserach shows that even being around a phone, even if it’s turned off, reduces our cognitive function. We’re basically turning into cro-mags because of all this stuff, assuming we don’t make an effort to put our brains to work. That’s especially true for kids. 

A very boring “Terminator” sequel

What can we do about it? I’m not sure, I’m in the same boat as all of you: Playing with the new AI tools and trying not to devolve into a chimpanzee. I suppose the best thing to do is to not rely on this stuff too much. Write your own emails. Read some books. Take a walk. Talk to other human beings.

Otherwise, the machines win. Imagine a “Terminator” movie where the Terminator wins by simply doing everything for John Conner, and Conner gets so lazy and dumb that he just…chokes on a pretzel or something. The Terminator wins. 
Is that the future we’re staring at? Slack-jawed, and drooling?

Remember: You can reach me at sammbecker@gmail.com with your thoughts, insults, or anything else.

Stay vigilant, friends!

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A little something for your Super Bowl Sunday.

Last week, I was in a group discussion with a few other writers. We’re all working on various projects, and one of the writers had some concerns. The writer is working on a book, one that involves a certain domestic terror incident from a few decades ago, and its direct and incalculable impact on their life. It’s an amazing concept, and I hope that it comes to fruition at some point.

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One thing that the writer did say about it, that made them want to pursue the project NOW, and with vigor, is that on January 6—the day of the coup that we’re all pretending didn’t happen—she saw “the same people” destroying the Capitol. The same people who were behind the attack that affected them so deeply years ago. So, it could be a timely project.

We were discussing how we would talk about our respective projects during an interview, or if we were to make a media appearance. The writer said that one thing they’d like to avoid is any type of political slant, or politics at all. I don’t blame them.

All this person wants to do is share their story and how it connects to current events. Not get involved in the muck, have their friends or family members get on their case about their views (or what they suspect their views might be), and be sucked into the political miasma so many of us find ourselves caught in.

But suspected that’d be impossible. I asked them what they would do when the conversation did turn political. If, for instance, they were doing an interview, and the host steered the conversation to politics. I think that their project would absolutely attract this type of conversation, even if it wasn’t intended.

They didn’t know what they would do. And I think it made them second-guess doing the project at all. That’s a shame. Their story should be told, and they’re too worried about potential political backlash to it.

Which brings me to it: We’re all in it now. We’re all politicos. Even if we don’t want to be.

I like politics. I think policy, and taking aim at big problems with government tools and laws is interesting, and can be effective. Not everything works, but a lot of it does. But I wouldn’t say I have particularly entrenched political positions or opinions. And yet, I, too, am in the thick of it. With all of you.

I think we should simply embrace that there is no dodging or evading political discussion, or avoiding forming our own opinions about what’s happening. We don’t need to broadcast those opinions, of course, but we can’t act like we’re not a part of it.

I think that, in many ways, that’s brought us to where we are. A lot of us are disengaged. We’re busy. Our attention has been picked apart by algorithms and reality TV and Call of Duty and a million other things. I’m no different. And truthfully, I’ve tuned out of the news in recent months, as many of you likely have as well.

But that disengagement, the desire to simply not pay attention and hope that things turn out okay? It hasn’t produced the best results. We shouldn’t expect it to going forward.

That goes for everyone—even if you disagree with me on most things. Odds are, if you’re happy about the way things are currently going, you were unhappy with the way they were going a year ago. You probably tuned things out, to some degree, then. Now, the shoe is on the other foot.

Again, the point? There’s no escaping the political black hole we’re in. We should embrace it, and hopefully, start to find some common ground as much as possible. I don’t know how we get out of the current dynamic, or if we do at all. I think that’s really worth hitting home: We may not fix this. I think we will, as we have many times before, but there are no guarantees.

If we do manage a fix, it’s not going to happen on its own. It’s going to take some serious work. And likely decades, despite what a lot of us might be hoping.

Democracy is fragile. Our country requires routine maintenance. While we may have been able to ignore the “check engine” light for a while, at some point, you gotta pop the hood and figure out how to fix things.

While I promise this isn’t going to be a strictly politically-focused publication going forward, and certainly not a place to air my grievances against the Trump administration—though that’ll be a part of it—what is happening to the federal government simply can’t be brushed off and ignored. These are perilous times, and none of us can afford to pretend it isn’t happening. We’re in the thick of it, and even if you’d rather not think about, talk about, or get engaged with anything political, most of you, dear readers, are Americans, and it’s your country and your responsibility to know what’s going on, and to help guide things along.

As it stands, the Trump administration is performing a sort of legislative blitzkrieg. There have been executive orders, purges, and more. For some reason, Elon Musk has his hands in things and is doing…something. This is part of a strategy, too—hit everyone with everything, all at once, and your opponents are overwhelmed. They can’t focus on anything, get tired, and give up.

I’m tired, I feel deflated. But I don’t think that I, or any of us really have a choice. I recommend reading Notes on the Crises for some specific reporting on what’s happening at the Treasury, which is…bonkers.

Finally, I’m sending this out shortly before the Super Bowl. You may not read it for several days, but I think it’s notable that we used to think of sports as a sort of politics-free safe space. But that was never really the case. I’d also point out that within the past decade, in the NFL specifically, half of the country lost their minds over Colin Kaepernick’s fairly benign protest against police brutality—he would kneel during the national anthem.

As protests go, that was as low-key as it gets. But it did make a lot of people mad, which I suppose was, at some level, the point. People were upset that athletes at the NFL were allowing displays of political speech. They didn’t want to see it on the field, they just wanted to watch football.

Well, today, Trump will be at the Super Bowl. I can only imagine it’s because he can’t handle the fact that something else is getting more attention than he is for a day. He’ll be the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl, making it, by definition, political.

I can only assume that there will be similar complaints from the peanut gallery about the politicization of the game regarding that appearance.

As always, send your complaints and insults directly to me at sammbecker@gmail.com.

And remember: Sammy loves you.

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There’s a lot to be angry/dismayed/frazzled about. But I feel oddly calm. Like the people in the photo above. Let’s talk about it.

But first, some catch-up.

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Housekeeping

Before I start foaming at the mouth, it’s been a while, so let’s play a little catch-up.

I’ve been working on several things, and hopefully, I’ll be able to share some of them with you all soon. I also managed to write a couple of cool stories, if you want to check them out (one has a paywall: be forewarned). My new website is up, too, and it’s great—thanks to my friend Carly for putting it together. My wife, too, has a growing wedding-planning company that’s taking off, and I’m very proud of her. 

On a personal level, I’ve been busy chasing toddlers, trying to keep up with work stuff, and putting together the aforementioned projects that will hopefully see the light of day at some point. Yes, it’s fascinating stuff. But it’s also been a “how did 16 months go by and I didn’t even notice” type of thing.

Well, I’m back. And, as I wrote in my previous update, NPNR is going premium. That means that at the end of February or the beginning of March, I’m going to turn on paid subscriptions for those who wish to contribute. THANK YOU TO THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE ALREADY PLEDGED!

There will be more details closer to the launch date, but the gist is this: Paid subscribers will get three editions of NPNR per week, plus some other stuff—early looks at my projects, whatever else you want, etc. Free subscribers will get one, and my gratitude.

Now with that boring preamble out of the way, let’s talk about the whirlwind of sewage we find ourselves schlepping through as of early 2025.

It’s the end of the world, and I feel…okay

So, being a journalist, I’m not really supposed to have an opinion. Or share it. And oddly enough, I do find myself being less opinionated than I was when I was younger. I guess as you get older, it’s more of a “take things as they come, hope for the best, and don’t assume malice” on a daily basis. 

But, of course, I do live in the world. Things happen. I’ve been a conscious person for 25 years or so—meaning that I was aware of what was happening in the world outside of my own home, and actively paying attention and forming my own thoughts and opinions around things. Accordingly, I do have thoughts and opinions now. Some of you are well-versed in what those are, or probably are. 

And when it comes to the current state of the world? Well…I’m having a hard time making sense of it all. I think that’s because it doesn’t make sense. I definitely think we’re in a decidedly bad place—worse than five years ago, worse than ten years ago, and worse than 20 years ago. But maybe this is something that we, as a society, need to work through every so often? It’s happened in the past, a few times in the past century (McCarthyism, the Business Plot). I guess we’re due to fight off another fever?

But we are creating new problems for ourselves, and that’s what’s frustrating. We could be eradicating diseases or landing on Mars. Instead? We’re apparently telling children they should work at fast-food restaurants rather than expect to be offered lunch at school. Trying to make cars less efficient. And trying to trick federal employees into quitting their jobs, while promising them eight months of severance (federal law only allows up to $25,000, pre-tax, which would be far below what most federal workers earn).

I feel like Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in “No Country For Old Men”: I don’t know what to make of it.

That brings us to the election itself, what I think is the single biggest and most important event of the past couple of years. I was certainly disappointed in the outcome. But not really surprised. Oddly enough, I’ve felt a sort of calm about the whole thing, too. Even as some people around me ask why I’m not pulling what’s left of my hair out.

I’ve thought about that a lot. I am dismayed. Disappointed. Worried. But I’m also, in an odd way, at ease. I think it’s because, if anything, I have some clarity. I’ve been able to wrest insight from outrage, I suppose you can say. 

Specifically, it’s become clear to me that:

• Trump 2016 was not an aberration (as I had hoped). This is who we are now. Let’s hope we revert to the historical mean.

• We’re going to be grappling with fascists, backed by billionaire power, likely for a generation (assuming they don’t win).

• An uncomfortable amount of people — including our friends, family members, and neighbors — are on board. They support what’s happening. They want an authoritarian, and they want to see punishment meted out, even if they don’t really realize it. Further, I think they believe they’re the good guys, or at least on the just side of things, which I, again, disagree with wholeheartedly.

As for Trump himself? My read on the guy hasn’t changed much. I don’t think he has any idea what he’s doing. I don’t think he’s a mastermind, planning out his moves. I think people know how to manipulate him, and they do it—then, he acts accordingly. In that sense, it’s pretty simple: He’s impulsive, petulant, narcissistic, and emotional. There isn’t much more to it than that.

And let’s be clear, after four years of craziness, sitting by while a pandemic kills more than a million people and pretending that everything was fine, convincing people that medicine was poisonous, and then attempting the violent overthrow of the country? The guy’s irredeemable. I don’t think that’s unfair. 

Again, just my read on things. And having a sense of clarity—yes, we have a problem, and yes, it’s going to take a long time to fix it, if we can—has helped me stay sane. In other words, knowing the outcome, what we’re all facing, and now being able to think about how we’re going to contend with it all is easier, to me, than grappling with the uncertainty and what-if scenarios. How did we get here, and I promise this will be quick, because we’re all sick of hearing and talking about it, right?

First of all, people can’t read. That’s an issue. Maybe it’s THE issue? But that’s a topic for another day.

Second, Trump used the same basic trick that he did in 2016: Pretending that the economy is bad. It’s not, although there are things that could be better. Seriously, reading some things online and talking to some people, it’s like they completely forgot what an actual recession looks and feels like. For some of you younger people, that’s probably true, given that the last real painful economic contraction occurred more than 15 years ago at this point. Yes, we experienced a bout of moderate inflation, and we now have interest rates that are probably where they should be.

But this is us coming off the sugar high that ended with the pandemic. Inflation wasn’t close to record levels. It moderated pretty quickly. Things are more expensive, yes, and houses are way too expensive. There isn’t an easy solution to that, despite what some people might tell you. 

So, where does that leave us? I don’t know. I can hope that our leaders will make some wise, informed, and responsible decisions to help us stay on course, economically speaking. But I doubt it.

What ISN’T going to help is lowering interest rates and cutting taxes. Sure, that’d be great for a minute, but it’s not the solution. It’s the opposite. Because if we cut taxes, we’re effectively giving people more money, which they will spend, which will probably cause prices to go up again. And keeping interest rates way too low for way too long is exactly what created the home-pricing issues. 

This is also what Trump did during his first term. The economy was on solid ground, and instead of taking a measured approach to keep things in balance, he pushed all the levers forward, cranked all the dials, and smashed all the buttons—cutting taxes, pressuring the Fed to lower interest rates, etc.—and then the pandemic hit. It created a bit of a mess. 

We’ll see what happens.

Wrap it up already

Yeah yeah yeah, enough already.
I’ll leave you with this. 

I feel disrespected. I feel made to suffer fools. I’m frustrated that diner-goers in Erie who don’t understand how interest rates work and think that vaccines are poison have more say over the direction of the country than I do. But what are you gonna do?
I don’t feel optimistic. Just this past week, we saw the administration freeze federal spending, and then try and take it back, while pretending that taking it back meant that the courts would leave them alone, but that they’d also be able to freeze the spending. That’s where we stand: They took away the memo, not the freeze. As Bill Lumbergh might say, they fixed “the glitch.”

god almighty this is some genius-tier stuff. 

I already have a headache. 

Anyway, I’m looking forward to connecting with you all, and having some likely discussions and working through our thoughts and feel-feels together. It’s important to talk, even if I don’t want to, and I invite you all to send me a message if you’d like to call me stupid or whatever. Plus, if you have additional ideas for NPNR, what else you might like to see out of it, or anything else, I’m all ears. It’s all about you guys, after all.

As always, you can reach me at sammbecker@gmail.com

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It’s been some time. NPNR has been silent since October 2023. If you’ve been waiting patiently for it to return to your inbox, my apologies. I have two toddlers and three brain cells. I had to set something aside.

If this is your first time receiving NPNR, thank you for subscribing, and no, this is not typically what the newsletter looks like. Bear with me.

I’m not getting any less busy, but this newsletter/publication/whatever you want to call it, is a labor and project of love, and I will bring it back. That is, I’ll be resuming a regular publishing schedule soon.

There will be some changes, though.

NPNR was, originally, focused on money and financial topics. That’ll still be a part of it, but not the primary focus. The newsletter has gone through numerous iterations, and it’ll likely keep evolving. But going forward, I’m going to be writing about all sorts of topics, sharing the other things I’m writing and reporting on, and maybe letting you all in on some of the bigger projects I have cooking. It’ll be a mix of commentary, analysis, and original reporting. 

Further, even though I’ve been on hiatus, more and more people keep subscribing — thank you for that. NPNR now has more than 1,100 subscribers, and I appreciate you all. A handful of you have even elected to pay for a subscription, which I had not previously offered, or entertained. But, given the commitment NPNR takes, I am going to add a new tier for those of you who want to pay for a subscription — you’ll get three newsletters per week, and some TBD extras. If you have ideas, let me know.

If you don’t want to join the paid tier, you won’t need to do anything at all. And it won’t hurt my feelings. You’ll continue to receive one newsletter per week, just as before. 

Yes, this is annoying, and yet another thing that you’re being asked to spend money on. I get it. But again, if you don’t want to, don’t worry about it. But you will help support NPNR, me and my other projects, and ensure that I can continue to stock my freezer with spanakopita from Sam’s Club and my pantry loaded with Kraft Macaroni and Cheese for the kids. That’s more important than you’ll ever know.

The fact is, I’ve been writing the newsletter on and off for years, and with my time increasingly short, I need NPNR to generate a little bit of revenue. 

We’ll see how that goes. As for pricing? I’m not sure. Nothing crazy. I’ll let you know. I can always work something out on a case-by-case basis, too, if need be.

As for when to expect things to kick into gear? I plan for NPNR to start republishing regularly later this month or early February. The new paid tier will likely come into play in early March.

But for now, that’s it—just a quick update. I hope you are all well. We’re in for quite a ride, and it’ll be nice to be able to try and make sense of it all together, don’t you think?

As always, you can reach me in the comments, or at sammbecker@gmail.com. 

Sam

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A couple of weeks ago, I was invited downtown to meet with a fairly high-ranking executive at one of the biggest banks in the world. It was sort of a press meet-and-greet type of thing. Nothing too formal. But it was planned months in advance, and I agreed to go – you never know how many opportunities you’re going to get, after all.

What intrigued me about the invite was that I…don’t think of myself as a “friend” of the banks. Certainly not the big ones. I remember seething all those years ago during the financial crisis, and a lot of my ire was targeted at the big banks and Wall Street – justifiably so, I think. I even had my own personal “Occupy Wall Street” moment in suburban Seattle, as I strutted into my local Chase branch (my accounts were at Washington Mutual, which collapsed and was taken over by Chase) and told them I wanted to close my accounts.

I opened new accounts at the largest local credit union in the Pacific Northwest, where they remain to this day, and Chase lost out on literally hundreds of dollars in customer accounts that day. I did speak with the branch manager, interestingly, who asked why I was moving to another institution. I said that I didn’t appreciate the bank’s behavior in the run-up to the then-current economic cataclysm. He nodded and wished me good luck.

Now, I was fresh out of school. I had three jobs. There was a time when I had four jobs. It was ridiculous. I was salty. I still am. And as we all know, the big banks largely walked away from it unscathed. Some collapsed, but others came out stronger. 

Anyway – this is all to say that, in my head, I was wondering if the people inviting me to their gorgeous glass tower in Manhattan knew who I was, and what I thought of them. Apparently not. So, I agreed to go.

Given it was an off-the-record conversation, I won’t say who I talked to or where, but I do think it’s worth discussing, in broad terms, some of the things we talked about, and what I took away from the conversation. Again, if this were 15 years ago, I probably would’ve gone all punk rock on them, but, you know, if you want answers and solutions, you need to have a little tact.

So, I made the trek from where I live north of New York City into Manhattan, and was met in the lobby by a very nice young woman who took me to one of the building’s upper floors. It was quiet. A lot of security. And very upscale. I imagine it would be like working in a Four Seasons or something. And the views outside? You could stare in any direction, out any window, for hours. I’m a West Coast boy at heart, but New York City, in its mammoth glory, really is a sight to behold if you can get above street level.

I was then led and introduced to – let’s call this person “the banker.” The banker was perfectly pleasant. Very nice. I like them. And we sat down and chatted for 30 minutes about all sorts of stuff, but I did manage to gain some perspective from the upper echelons of the financial universe. This is good. It’s helpful. It helps me do my job, and it helps me shape my thoughts and feelings about things in a more rounded way. 

I will say that I don’t think these people are out to destroy us plebs, though it may feel like it sometimes. They’re simply caught up in what I think is a rather destructive cycle of short-term thinking: They need to get the numbers up for their quarterly reports, and that’s their job. So, they do what they need to do to do their job. It’s not always good, and it’s not always bad. 

But from the average American’s perspective, it can look nefarious, oftentimes. I guess if you are working in a high-level, high-impact position – imagine you were the president, for instance – it can really be hard to grasp how big of a ripple effect seemingly small decisions can have on people that you’ll never meet or see. I struggle with this in my writing – I may express an opinion or write a sentence that, in my mind, is fairly innocuous. I’m just a guy, in my house, typing on a keyboard. But I forget that people around the world – millions, over the years – have read the words I’ve written in my small office. Not everyone is going to absorb the words in the way I intend. It’s…often hard to keep in mind.

But back to the meeting.

There were a few things that I gleaned from my meeting that I feel are worth highlighting. Again, nothing specific, but I think it can be helpful to get some insight into how some people in finance – a world that often feels like it’s in another orbit, or in another universe – are thinking about the issues and concerns of us normal working people.

On the economy: nothing unexpected, really

I’ve written about how many people are struggling to figure out whether the economy is good or bad right now – as I always say, it doesn’t really matter, it just “is.” But given recent blockbuster jobs reports and more recently, a GDP report that blew the doors off the building, it’s really hard to say that we’re in a recession.

Alas, many people think that we are. Price increases and layoffs in many industries have people in a pinch, and they don’t feel good about things. 

So, I asked the banker: What’s the deal? Their response? What we’re seeing is more or less what was expected. We’re not all the way out of the woods in relation to the shock waves of the pandemic. Things are still settling down and sorting themselves out – including supply chains and inflation – and it’ll likely be a couple more years before they really are. So, there’s no panic coming from the top. That’s not to say that there aren’t problems, they told me. But there aren’t really huge concerns that we’re about to fall off an economic cliff.

They’re aware that people are hurting

On a similar note, I asked how banks are looking at prevailing sentiment surrounding both banks themselves, and the economic environment. The banker said that they’re not unaware of how many people perceive them, first and foremost. That’s a big reason that many large banks are bringing in some big changes. Again, in broad terms, many banks are getting rid of fees, they’re making their products simpler, and some are even remodeling their branches to make them a bit more welcoming.

This is all in an effort to shift and win over more customers. That’s a start, right?

They’re also keeping an eye on customers’ financial health. While they may not be watching your bank account, they do see trends and can come away with some data points about what’s going on with consumers’ finances. Right now? Yeah, people have less savings and many are feeling the squeeze. But what seems clear is that not everyone is struggling, and by and large, consumers seem to be on more sound financial footing than even individuals themselves may believe. 

Take that how you will.

Relationships: The next big thing

Finally, the banker and I discussed relationships – not our personal relationships, of course, which is always fascinating – but relationships with financial institutions. That’s going to be a big focus of banks in the years ahead. It’s already a big focus for many companies. Think about all the work that goes into Apple or Google or Amazon fomenting a “relationship” with customers – getting them into an ecosystem, and fostering the relationship for years to come.

Banks do this already, but I get the sense that this will become a big focus in the years ahead. Again, I do think that people hate banks. There’s good reason for that, too. And I think that at least some of them are trying to mend that relationship and create lifelong customers. 

I’ve said it before: I think people should switch banks more often. But they generally don’t. That’s likely the primary reason banks have been so unresponsive to customer concerns in years past. That does seem to be changing. 

I could go on. But those are some of the key takeaways from my meeting with the banker. 

Numbers and links

• Go see a star war: The Space Force unveiled its first official painting showing a space battle. (Space.com)

• 24 hours: A look at the “average human day.” (Scientific American)

• Tax talk: When we discuss the budget deficit, why don’t we talk about revenue? (Marketplace)

• C’mon man: My congressional representative pulled a fire alarm to stall a vote. I expect better. (The New York Times)

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A Case of American Exceptionalism

We’re blasting through our savings, putting us at odds with the rest of the world.

American exceptionalism. You know the term. I’m not sure how long it’s been around, but it garnered heavy use in the post-9/11 world – at least that’s when I remember first hearing it. In a nutshell, it’s meant to describe the inherent ways that Americans are, well, exceptional. How we’re just plain better, or at least different, from our counterparts around the world.

I’ve traveled a bit. I’ve been around the world. And while I think there are certainly some ways in which Americans are clearly different from people in other countries, I do think that we’re more or less the same, at least in most respects.

That said, there is some new research unveiling a new “Only-in-the-U.S. phenomenon,” published this week by the New York Fed. Specifically, the data shows that household spending among Americans increased, and we’ve “spent down” the savings that were accumulated during the pandemic. That’s much different from other countries, where households have, for the most, held on to the savings they accumulated.

As we all remember, many households were able to save some money as they weren’t going out and doing as much, and there were several rounds of economic stimulus. That helped Americans pad their savings – a good thing – but what we’re now seeing is that a whole lot of American households are now spending all that money away. That’s not to say they’re spending it on frivolous things; we simply don’t know. It’s more likely that price increases over the past two or three years have caused them to dip into their savings to make ends meet.

When your rent doubles or triples in a year, what else are you supposed to do?

The Fed report shows that blasting through our collective savings has propped up our GDP and economy relative to other countries. So, when you hear that the U.S. economy is on better footing than, say, some European countries, that’s true. But this helps explain why.

Here’s how the Fed report puts it:

“In the U.S. and Canada, stepped-up social benefit payments and other income support measures pushed incomes well above pre-pandemic trajectories, while similar measures in the euro area, United Kingdom, and Japan kept incomes near their trend paths. Meanwhile, consumption plummeted in all these economies.”

It continues:

“…Saving rates spiked in 2020-21 in the major high-income economies, ranging from a 6.5 percentage point increase in the euro area to a 10 percentage point jump in Canada relative to pre-pandemic averages. What’s more interesting for our present purposes is the divergence in saving behavior since 2022. While saving rates have fallen across the board relative to 2020-21, only in the United States has the rate dropped below its pre-pandemic average.

This divergence is quite stark. The average U.S. saving rate since 2022 is down some 2.5 percentage points from the 2015-19 average. Saving rates elsewhere range from slightly above pre-pandemic norms (0.5 percentage point higher in the euro area) to markedly above (3.5 percentage points higher in Canada). The same relative comparison holds in the latest quarterly data, with saving rates down from the 2015-19 average in the U.S. but up from the earlier period elsewhere.”

And here’s a visual:

Finally, the report notes that nobody’s quite sure why this is happening, at least in terms of savings behavior. As I’ve discussed, and as I’m sure you’ve seen, many Americans are feeling pessimistic about the economy – which should lead them to save more. But they’re not. I think higher prices do play a role here, but we’ll need to wait and see how things shake out in the coming years to see if this is one area in which the U.S. remains “exceptional.”

The push and pull of the American economy

I want to mention another element at play here, which is that we – all of us American consumers, and perhaps consumers across the world – are caught in the middle of a push-and-pull messaging war about money and the economy.

What I mean is that we’re simultaneously told we need to save more, but that we also need to keep spending to keep the economy growing and humming along. It’s confounding, and I’ve heard from more than a few people that it’s confusing. Of course, it’s not a cohesive message coming from one source, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility to browse the homepage of a financial news site and see an op-ed saying that people need to go to restaurants and support their local communities, and a headline right below it saying that some serious belt-tightening is in order.

I’m always reminded of when then-Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick suggested that people go shopping during the pandemic to save the state’s economy from potential recession – effectively putting their lives at risk. At the time, Patrick mentioned that only 500 people had died in Texas, out of 29 million. That number eventually swelled to more than 93,000.

However you feel about all that, I do think that his comments really hit home in that we have people in authority actively telling us to disregard our personal safety (or, more typically, sound financial footing) in order to spur the economy, but at the same time, other authorities (sometimes the same ones) criticizing fiscal irresponsibility. It’s a push and pull, and it can be frustrating to endure.

Numbers and links

• The Great Mismatch: Sharing a story I wrote - job seekers are having a hard time finding jobs despite a strong labor market. (Fast Company)

• Can, Should, Won’t: Why we should reduce the budget deficit, but won’t, from Paul Krugman. (The New York Times)

• C’mon Jerome: The housing industry wants the Fed to stop raising interest rates because that would help the housing industry. (CNBC)

• Cheap Smells: A friend wrote this interesting story about the surprisingly high amount of interest in cheap, old perfume. (Bloomberg)

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Defense doesn’t win championships

Financial media often preaches defensive-mindedness. Coach Kilmer says go on offense.

Image: Something I wanted to include because I love Varsity Blues (shoutout Cameron Pogue)

You’ve probably heard the phrase “defense wins championships.” It’s a phrase rooted in sports, and by Googling it I found that some dude actually wrote his thesis on the topic. While that is interesting enough in and of itself, the core concept of the phrase is that by protecting your own goal, you can win not only a game, but an entire season.

It may be true in some instances. Especially in sports. But what about other aspects of life? I want to focus on one aspect: Financial media, and the financial advice that much of it aims to distribute to consumers.

I’ve been writing on the topic of money and finance and the economy and all that for a long time now — around a decade. And a lot of the things that I’ve written over the years involve what I want to think of as a “defensive” mindset. For instance, articles with titles like “6 ways to stretch your budget,” “how to financially prepare for a recession,” or “expenses you can cut to save money.”

There are multitudes of these types of content out there. And I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with them. But I think if we take the temperature of the state of Americans’ personal finances, it’s safe to say that all of these tips, tricks, and pieces of advice are largely ineffective. Not completely, but largely.

Overall, people aren’t putting it into practice. Because it’s difficult — part of the magical attraction of a “listicle” is that it sort of feels like your problems can be solved in a series of short steps. But it’s not really true. Changes are difficult to implement, and we’re all living through different life events that make a lot of the advice we receive from the media ineffective.

Getting back to the defensive nature of it all — this type of content also has readers thinking that they’re on defense here, and that they can protect what they have from the forces trying to take it away. Again, that’s all fine and well, to an extent, but it’s not really working.

Accordingly, I think more “offensive,” or “offensive-minded” financial content would be beneficial to a lot of people. Not offensive content — like Alex Jones or something — but offensive content, like Patrick Mahomes. Or Connor McDavid.

Imagine if Patrick Mahomes was a personal finance article. That’s what I’m talking about. We should stop thinking about protecting what little resources we have, and instead, focus on ways to get more resources.

Of course, the elephant in the room, currently, is inflation. While inflation has subsided in a big way — it peaked last summer at 9% (going by CPI readings), and is now less than 4%; not good, but a whole lot better — millions of Americans are feeling the sting. And that defensive-minded financial approaches aren’t, in my opinion, going to get people through it. Prices increases may slow down, but prices aren’t going to fall by any meaningful measure outside of a few goods like gasoline.

I know — blah blah, nerd stuff. What am I saying? I think you should stop trying to budget your way through all of this and instead focus on bringing in more cash. SIMPLE, RIGHT?

Overall, your money buys less than it did a few years ago. And if you’re still earning roughly the same amount you were a few years ago, you’re falling behind — people are feeling it, too. How could you not?

Again — are you going to Google budgeting tricks to try and make it all work? You can try, but that’ll only get you so far. Households and workers are going to need to go on offense instead. They’re going to need to increase their incomes not only to contend with rising prices, but to get ahead and reach whatever financial goals they’ve set out for themselves.

You’ve likely experienced this or heard it from a friend or loved one: The raise they received this year, if they got one at all, simply wasn’t enough. They’re probably right — data shows that the average raise among U.S. workers this year is 4.6%. Last year, it was 4.2%. But we had price increases of much more than that going on for nearly two years now. So, if you received, over two years, a raise of roughly 9%, you’re still not gaining any ground.

While it would be nice if your employer decided they were going to give you a 20% raise to contend with everything, they probably won’t. Why would they? Remember, you have expenses — rent, childcare, dog food — and to a business, your paycheck is another expense. Why would they be looking to spend more money if they didn’t need to?

That’s the opening. You need to force the issue. Make sure they know they NEED TO.

This is part of the reason that everyone is seemingly on strike. Healthcare workers, Hollywood writers and actors, UPS drivers — everybody is on strike, and for good reason. Jobs simply aren’t paying enough, and a little offense is evidently needed to press employers to open their pocketbooks.

Yes, increased expenses on businesses may further increase prices. But what are you supposed to do? Sit back and take it? What would a business do? Hope their customers want to come in and pay more for goods and services while the company goes bankrupt?

Of course not. This, I think, is why more people need to start thinking like a business. We’re all businesses, in a way — we sell our labor for money, and we should be selling to the highest bidder. So, get out there and find some bidders!

Again, not easy. But this is a market-based economy, for the most part, and the market is going to be your primary tool for earning more. It’s the football field, and you’re Patrick Mahomes.

And yet, people are reluctant to test the waters of the labor market. Just this week, The Wall Street Journal published a story on this topic. Change is difficult, and many people want to stick with what they know, especially if they’re worried about the economy. But the labor market is always churning, and I think it’d be beneficial to ALWAYS be looking for other opportunities. That’s how you’re going to find promotions and raises. If that angers employers — so what? Again, think like a business. You’re probably working to make money, not keep your employer’s turnover ratio low.

That’s the offensive weapon in the worker’s arsenal: The market. Use it. Go on offense. You’re not going to win a championship — or get the rent paid — by playing defense. If it didn’t work before, it’s definitely not going to work now.

Numbers and links

• Powell Goes to York: The Fed Chair visited York, Pennsylvania to see how the other half lives, and he “got an earful.” (Reuters)

• Death is Red: Seatbelt laws, cigarette taxes, and public health investments — some of the things contributing to differing partisan death rates. (Washington Post)

• $14 per month: Facebook (or Meta or whatever the hell) is considering charging European users to use its social platforms. (The Wall Street Journal)

• Godless: An op-ed I couldn’t agree more with: America doesn’t need more God. (The Washington Post)

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With that, I wanted to do a quick survey to get a lay of the economic land as of summer 2023. It’s been a weird, wild ride over the past few years, but I’d have to say that we’re sitting in a pretty okay place. All things considered.

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More good inflation news

We’re seeing the numbers we want to see.

If you had told me a year ago that’d inflation would be at 3%, I’d say you were crazy. But that’s what the latest CPI report showed: Year-over-year prices increased 3% in June. That’s still above the 2% target, but way below the 9% peak seen last summer. In short, it’s excellent news.

We’re seeing the numbers we want to see. And given that inflation is, right now, the huge monkey on everyone’s back, if we keep moving in the right direction, we might be able to focus on other things.

But just to hammer at a main point again, just because inflation is cooling doesn’t mean that prices are decreasing. Prices are still increasing, just not as fast as they were. Prices naturally increase over time, and it’s probably not reasonable to expect rounds of deflation — that would cause a host of problems all on its own.

Another good thing in the latest CPI report is that wage growth is finally outpacing price increases. The Labor Department’s most recent wage summary shows that real wages grew 4.4% in June, compared to the CPI clocking in at 3.1%. That means workers are finally making up ground.

All good news.

“Bidenomics”

The president coins his term — and makes a bet.

The president and his administration went on a media blitz with a new term: “Bidenomics.” I suppose this means that they’re all comfortable enough with the state of the economy that they’re going to take credit for it.

It’s hard to say how much an administration influences the strength of the economy. The economy goes in cycles, and that influence is definitely not zero — but it’s not 100%, either. Still, I think two or so years into an administration, the president can really start to take credit for things, and we can start drawing some sort of conclusions as to how effective certain policies are, assuming they have policies.

So, we’re left with Bidenomics. I’ll be straight with you, I think that given where the country stood a few years ago — following an attempted coup d’etat, a pandemic that killed 1.1 million people (my money is on way more), and most recently, a bout of inflation unlike most people in this country have every experienced — I’m impressed. I’m supportive. I like the way things are going, generally. Obviously, there’s a lot that can be going better, but I think that the cart is behind the horse, and the train is on the track — whatever metaphor you want to use.

Again, how much of that is due to Biden’s policies? I don’t know. Some of it. But that’s the other side of the coin here: Biden is taking credit for the economy, and he’s making a bet that it’ll still be strong 15 or 16 months from now when we’re steeped in the election. If it cracks, so do his chances of reelection. I guess we’ll see what happens.

As for what Bidenomics actually is? In effect, I think it’s sort of the inverse of trickle-down economics, or “Reaganomics.”

Under those systems, which I don’t believe work very well, we essentially free up resources for the upper crust in the economy with lower interest rates and lower taxes. The idea is that if a corporation is paying lower taxes, then they’ll have more money to do other things with, like hire more employees and ramp up production.

The problem is that isn’t what happens. Companies often just engage in stock buybacks and pocket the difference.

So, Bidenomics then, is a different approach. While it’s sort of a nebulous term and idea, FiveThirtyEight recently published a podcast that goes into what “Bidenomics” actually entails — you can listen to it here, and it will help you get a better understanding of what the administration is talking about.

But here’s what Bidenomics boils down to, per that podcast:

• Making smart investments in America

• Educating and empowering American workers to grow the middle class

• Promoting competition to lower costs and help smaller businesses

As for the actual legislation that’s been introduced to push these things forward? There’s the CHIPS Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the infrastructure bill — in the aggregate, they’re pushing a whole lot of resources into the economy to try and achieve these stated goals.

Will it work? I don’t know. Looks like it’s going okay for now. But again, with Bidenomics, the administration is placing its chips on the table. It’s shooting its shot. We’ll see if it pans out.

Feels over reals

Despite good economic news, people still don’t feel good about the economy.

Most signs are pointing in a positive direction. People are earning more money, price increases are slowing, and more. We should be feeling pretty good. But most people aren’t. There are still a lot of people who believe we’re actually in a recession — which makes me wonder how they’re going to feel when we actually enter one.

But if you look at consumer sentiment numbers (the chart above), consumers are feeling worse now than they were in April 2020 — how does that even make sense?

We’re also seeing this in the low confidence people have in the economy, and it’s dragging the president’s approval numbers down, if that matters. But as I’ve written before, I think there’s a lot of perception that the economy is bad that is not born out in the data.

I recently spoke with an economic analyst about this, who told me it was flummoxing, but that they think the answer is simple: Inflation.

People simply felt inflation a whole lot more than they did other economic issues. They were more worried about paying twice as much for gas than they were about finding another job. It’s squashed budgets, you can’t escape it — it all comes down to the price increases we’ve seen.

That makes sense to me. Everyone feels the effects of inflation. And since we haven’t really experienced it in any real form since the 1980s, it’s sort of a novel type of economic problem for many, if not most households. It certainly was for me.

But with things improving, it’ll be interesting to see if perceptions change. With 3.6% unemployment, CPI at 3.1%, and the stock market up almost 18% since January…it’s clear to me that we’re not anywhere near a recession. Even so, 44% of Americans apparently think we are.

Again, and as always, that’s not to say that things won’t change fast, and that the bottom could fall out. After all, the next recession is always coming.

Numbers and links

• $800 billion: The value that could be lost in commercial real estate by 2030 because people are working remotely. (McKinsey Global Institute)

• WTF: The Emmy nominations are out, and somehow the guy who played the king in that new Game of Thrones show isn’t listed…(The Hollywood Reporter)

• Frankenstein: Former Fox News executives regret bringing to life a “disinformation machine.” (Boulderpreston.com)

• GWAR visits NPR’s Tiny Desk, bringing this fake news article to life. (NPR)

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Maybe this is finally the “great reset”

We never really returned to a “normal” economy following the financial crisis, but maybe this is it.

Let’s start off with the fact that the Fed did not increase interest rates during its last meeting. That was the first time in 11 meetings, since the beginning of last year, that it didn’t do so. That’s why you’ve been hearing about the “rate hike pause” all week.

That sounds like good news, right? The Fed is, after all, seeing the intended effects of those rate hikes, which was to slow down inflation. The latest CPI report showed that inflation cooled to 4% last month. That’s down from 9%, its peak, in the summer of last year. That’s all good news — progress! And as a bonus, the jobs market is still strong, so the Fed is seeing inflation fall, without tipping the economy into a recession.

All good things.

As a result, the stock market has remained relatively high, and there’s been some buzz that “we’re back, baby.” I’ve even seen, read, and heard several people insisting that rate cuts are just around the corner. The markets would love that, as would businesses and consumers. We could get back to cheap money!

I don’t know what’s spurring that, however, as Jerome Powell said, bluntly, rate cuts are at least a couple of years away. See for yourself:

This is critical to take into consideration, if for no other reason than to temper our expectations about what’s ahead. The Fed has no reason to cut interest rates any time soon. It’s trying to cool the economy off, not stoke it. And given where the jobs numbers are, and the relatively strong metrics in other areas of the economy (most recently, perhaps, housing starts), it’d be a very strange about-face to turn around and cut rates.

But, Powell has done it before — bowing to political and corporate pressure to cut rates when there was no reason to do it. But this time, I don’t think he really has a choice: The Fed will need to keep rates up, and they even plan to raise them at least twice more this year, per its own projections.

With that all in mind, it’s got me thinking: Perhaps we’re finally seeing a sort of “great reset” in the form that we never saw following the financial crisis 15 years ago, and the subsequent Great Recession.

Here’s what I mean: The financial crisis happens, the housing bubble bursts and the economy comes apart at the seams. It’s 2009. The outgoing Bush administration/new Obama administration does all sorts of things, including a huge (for the time) stimulus package, and the Fed cuts rates to zero. And rates stayed at zero for a very, very long time. In fact, the Fed didn’t start to raise rates for six years, only starting in 2015.

When the Fed also tried to taper its quantitative easing program — which effectively just pumped money into the stock market to keep demand up, and stock values high — the markets went nuts and we witnessed the infamous “taper tantrum.” You’ll probably remember this in late 2018 and early 2019, when then-president Trump started publicly dressing down the Fed and Powell, insisting that they needed to keep the program going and cut interest rates in order to keep the stock market roaring. Powell, as noted, capitulated.

But then, the great equalizer: The pandemic. While everything about it was horrible, it may have served as a sort of equalizer when everything is considered. Yes, rates were slashed to zero, and several huge stimulus programs were introduced. But as we’ve come out the back side of the pandemic, we had to grapple with inflation — which really hadn’t been any sort of problem since the 1980s.

Cue Powell’s response: Stop quantitative easing, start quantitative tightening, and raise interest rates. Fast.

And now, as of June 2023, we’re sort of back to where we were in, say, 2007. Interest rates are ~5%, and we’re no longer pumping money into the markets. We’ve….sort of hit “reset,” and come full circle.

On top of that, we’re seeing relatively good results: Inflation is coming down, and the economy isn’t in shambles. The stock market isn’t at record highs, but it’s not far off. In fact, the S&P 500 is up 16% over the past year. It’s up more than 14% since the beginning of the year.

So, again, there’s no impetus to cut interest rates. Or do anything, really. Powell is making it clear that there’s still “a long way to go” before the Fed is comfortable with everything (inflation at 4% is still twice as high as they want it to be), but we’re more or less back at 2007 conditions, and maybe that’s a good thing.

It can be good to have interest rates more in line with historical norms. That gives us ammo for cuts if the economy does falter. We were addicted to zero rates and cheap money for more than a decade, and we paid the price eventually — while we did see a lot of growth, we also got a lot of nonsense. It’s hard to think that the crypto market could’ve grown the way it did under most other circumstances, for instance.

This is all to say that, despite all the turmoil and stress in recent years, we’re in an okay place. The next crisis may be right around the corner, but if we’ve “normalized” a bit after a decade and a half, I think that’s a positive development. Maybe we can look at real growth — rather than coke-fueled sugar highs in the market, fueled by money printing by the Fed and zero interest rates.

Again, assuming there isn’t a time bomb waiting to go off and blow it all up. Like another round of bank failures, as we saw earlier this year.

If we do get rate cuts, it may be because we’re overestimating just how effective rate increases were in lowering inflation. We’re seeing prices come down in a big way, and there are a number of reasons for it. Take eggs, for example — egg prices were up in a huge way a year ago, but now are back down to “normal” levels. That didn’t happen because interest rates were up, it had to do with avian flu killing millions of chickens and lowering supply.

Check out this egg price chart, which I was really surprised to learn exists:

The Daily, a New York Times podcast, also did a great episode on this very topic, discussing whether inflation is falling due to the Fed, or just because things are sort of…working themselves out. The answer? A bit of both.

To wrap it all up, if we take a 10,000-foot view of things as they stand, we’ve come full circle in some ways, with some economic metrics mirroring those from before the financial crisis. It’s strange — that crisis, and then the pandemic and bout of raining inflation — have brought us back to a more “normal” slate of interest rates. It was a sort of “reset” for the Fed, which otherwise would’ve needed to taper its quantitive easing and raise rates while the markets went ballistic.

Obviously, we’ve got a host of other problems to deal with, but if you can imagine someone looking at an interest rates chart in a book 50 years from now, they’d see rates ebb and flow a bit over a 15-year period. Without the wild context behind it all, it’d be hard to imagine how it all came back around.

Numbers and links

• 53%: The percentage of parents who say climate change is playing a role in their decisions to have kids — that includes yours truly. (CNBC)

• 125%: Used car loan-to-value ratios hit 125 during Q1 2023, meaning more Americans are taking out loans worth more than their cars. (Bloomberg)

• Liz vs. Sherrod: Legislation has bipartisan support to claw money back from executives of failed banks. (The American Prospect)

• Mean ol’ reporters: Small, local governments get mad at newspapers and take revenge in numerous ways. (The New York Times)

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Note: This is a couple of days late. I actually had written another piece — stemming from this nutty clip. But I canned it, I didn’t think it was good enough to share with you all. Just know that there are people out there who are willing to burn the world down because they think they’re going to be rewarded after they die for doing so because somehow they’re the good guys and that absolves them of responsibility. Or something like that.

ANYWAY.

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A student loan debt plan I can get behind

A group of Republicans put together a student loan debt plan that seems reasonable!

The Supreme Court is probably going to nix Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. A while back, I wrote in this very newsletter that I didn’t really like that plan — I understand why the administration went ahead with it, and I think it’ll do some good for some people. But my main issue with it is that it doesn’t actually solve the problem of student debt.

It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a broken leg.

But imagine my surprise when a group of Republican Senators released a package of bills meant to help alleviate the student loan debt crisis. Frankly, I can’t remember the last time Republicans put forth a serious policy proposal to solve an actual issue in this country — aside from the “health care plan” they worked on for ten years, and which never materialized — so this was a welcome surprise.

An even bigger surprise: I don’t think it’s a bad approach!

On Wednesday, the Senators held a press conference to announce the package. From Bill Cassidy’s (LA) official press release, here are the five bills included in the package, and what they do:

• The College Transparency Act (CTA) – Reforms the college data reporting system to ensure students and families have better information on student success and outcomes as they consider higher education institutions. Cassidy previously introduced this bill.    

• The Understanding the True Cost of College Act – Requires institutions of higher education to use a uniform financial aid letter with clear indications of the types and breakdown of aid included (scholarships, loans, work study, etc.) so students and their families can understand and compare their financial aid options. U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) previously introduced this bill.     

• The Informed Student Borrowing Act – Supports students in meeting their academic needs and budget when deciding to take out loans by offering clear information about the duration of their loan, their expected monthly payment, how much money they will likely make in the future after attending their school and program of choice, etc. It requires borrowers to annually receive this information through loan counseling to understand the value of their student loan. U.S. Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) introduced this bill today.    

• The Streamlining Accountability and Value in Education (SAVE) for Students Act – Streamlines confusing repayment options for borrowers from nine options to two to give students and families clarity as to which repayment plan best fits their needs. Additionally, the bill limits new loans to undergraduate and graduate programs where former students cannot earn more than a high school graduate or a bachelor’s degree recipient, respectively. U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) introduced this bill today.    

• The Graduate Opportunity and Affordable Loans (GOAL) Act – Ends inflationary Graduate PLUS loans and puts downward pressure on rising tuition costs by limiting graduate school borrowing. Additionally, it allows institutions to set lower loan limits by program to protect students from over-borrowing. U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) introduced this bill today. 

In short, these bills would cap lending to grad students, reform and streamline payment plans, make schools more accountable in terms of graduates’ future earnings, create standardization for disclosures from the Department of Education (outlining costs, tuition, fees, and net price before loans are given out), and expands data collection efforts.

Obviously, there are some good things here, and some that many people may not agree with. And, as always, if any of these were to actually become law, there would be some sort of unintended consequences. But I do think this is an actual effort to take on the issues at the core of the student loan issue.

That issue is that millions of young people believe they need to go to college and earn a degree to find themselves on a viable career path. Higher-education institutions know this, so they charge whatever they want for a degree, and since we want more people to earn degrees, the government is willing to lend to basically anyone. In the end, we have people paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for college degrees that could probably be earned for far, far less — if they’re needed at all in a given field.

This is difficult. Young people are looking for a viable path forward. I was. And for many years, many, if not most of them, were directly or indirectly told that college was the way to go. For me, that was community college, and then transferring to a state university. I didn’t plan that, exactly, but it turns out, that’s probably the most cost-conscious route there is for most young people.

Others went ahead and enrolled at four-year schools far from home. Honestly, if I had the chance to do that (I really didn’t put much effort in during my high school years), I probably would’ve done the same. Go far away and meet new people and learn things? Sounds great.

But at a cost of $50,000, $60,000 per year? Plus living expenses? Ouch.

That’s one of the things that I like about this package of bills. It should provide prospective students with a rundown, or menu, of what they’re getting, and how much it costs. Otherwise, it’s pretty damn hard to tell how much you’re on the hook for. I think a similar idea could be put to use in health care: “Hey, welcome to Bob’s Hospital, here’s our menu!”

And while I think some people will naturally be bummed at the thought of the government providing fewer loans to students, maybe it’s worth a shot.

Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, one of the Senators sponsoring the package of legislation, and who I think very little of, had this to say: “The last 35 years have shown that a government blank check to the universities has made problems worse.”

I think he’s wrong about just about everything, but I think he’s right about this. It’s effectively the same issue that led to the housing bubble and crisis in 2008 and 2009. Sure, there are some differences, but when you create unlimited demand for a product (in this case, education), why wouldn’t the suppliers continue to raise prices every year? Consumers may bitch about it, but they’ll never stop buying!

I know that Biden took a shot at this. But it isn’t enough. And I don’t think that handing out loans to every 18-year-old who wants to go to whatever school, when there are other viable options (vocational schools! trade schools! apprenticeships!) out there.

Let’s look at the numbers: The federal government is set to loan out roughly $1 trillion in student loans in the next decade or so. I’m not opposed to the government loaning money to students or businesses — in fact, I think that’s a pretty darn good use of public funds, all things considered. But what we’ve been doing clearly isn’t working in some respects, so maybe it’s time to try a new approach.

And then there’s the fact that even if Biden’s loan cancellation plan survives a Supreme Court challenge (I’m betting it doesn’t), we’ll be back in the same position in terms of total student loan debt in the U.S. ($1.6 trillion) by 2028.

Like I said, it’s a Band-Aid. It’s not going to solve the problem. It’s not enough.

Above all, we’re talking about schools. Educational institutions. These are designed to be places for higher learning, and I really, really dislike how they’ve turned into money-making engines for both the private and public sectors. I was, as I’m sure many of you were, on the receiving end of many lectures from older people who went to school for a few hundred or thousand dollars, and paid it all off by working part-time during the summer. Yes, that was before these systems were hijacked and turned into revenue generators.

Don’t even get me started on the business of college sports, too. I used to like college sports, like football and basketball, just as millions of other people do. But as I get older, the whole concept becomes stranger and stranger to me — the schools and coaches and sponsors make piles of cash but can’t fathom paying the people actually doing the work — the students? But again, another topic for another day.

I’ll end with this: I’m surprised to see a real, live policy idea from the Republican Party. I’m surprised that I don’t completely disagree with it. I’ll be VERY surprised if it actually goes anywhere. But I do think the higher-ed system needs a jolt, and I think it can start with smarter policy about how we’re funding people’s educations.

These bills probably won’t get any traction and become law. But maybe they can germinate some ideas and get us thinking differently. Here’s hoping!

Numbers and links

• 14: The age of a new SpaceX employee who just graduated from Santa Clara University. (The Mercury News)

• The Kaczynski moment: The Unabomber, who recently died, is inspiring a new generation of crazies. (New York Magazine)

• Shhhh: “Quiet luxury” is having a moment, even as everybody is broke. (CNBC)

• “Nobody’s Perfect”: This golf guy thinks everybody should get over 9/11 because…Saudi Arabia pays him a lot, I suppose. (Fox News)

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We don’t trust the media, but we get what we pay for

Paying for good information is money well spent.

Image: Knight Foundation

If you dislike or distrust something, it can be hard to make the argument that you should invest resources into or towards it. But that’s the argument I want to make about the media (and government, but not today!).

Earlier this year, the results of a survey from Gallup and Knight Foundation showed that Americans, by and large, have some serious issues with the media. A couple of top-line stats: 26% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the news media, and 53% have unfavorable views. Further, people perceive the media as more biased than they used to, and younger people have more negative views than older people.

I think that this is all reasonable. I think it’s perfectly rational, and probably wise, to come across everything with a sense of skepticism, and to try and think critically about what you’re consuming, be it online, in a newspaper, or on TV. Especially if you like getting your news from spicy memes.

I also think there are a lot of things at play. But I’ll come out and say it: A lot of our problems with the media derive from the fact that we don’t value information, and information gathering, nearly as much as we should. That is, we have something of an expectation that information — such as fair, accurate, news reporting — is and should be free. It’s not. But getting back to the things that are at play, and there are a lot of them.

For one, not all “media outlets” are the same. Some have reporters who dig up facts and develop stories, which are passed on to editors and often lawyers, ensuring they’re as accurate as possible. Some take the stories that others publish and publish their own articles based on the original story. Some take pieces of the stories and publish opinion pieces or hot takes derived from the original story. It takes some serious effort for many people to actually understand what they might be reading or consuming at any given moment — is it a news report? An opinion? An advertisement? Many people simply can’t tell.

Further, there’s the profit motive and audience-building element to consider. This is perhaps the easiest to see in cable news, where you have three main channels — Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC (there are others, yes) — which more or less create news and opinion for specific audiences. This can obviously breed resentment and distrust. The most glaring and recent example is what recently happened with Fox News, which was knowingly and repeatedly lying to its viewers (many of its hosts and personnel were doing the same, too) because they knew what their audience wanted. In the case of the 2020 election, it wasn’t the truth.

So, there’s a motivation at play to create the content that the audience wants, not necessarily what is true. That isn’t always necessarily an issue, but when you bill yourself as a “news” network, it certainly is. But this isn’t just about specific news or media companies. We have ourselves to blame for our falling out with the media, perhaps more than anything. 

Americans love love love low-effort, sugary content. I know we do. I’ve seen the analytics. Media execs and editors see the analytics, too. That’s why they produce it in the first place. You might see stupid article after stupid article clogging up your social media feeds, and there’s a reason for it: People click on it and read it. If they didn’t, media companies wouldn’t create it.

Do you know what we don’t like? Complicated, nuanced stories, filled with smart people telling us things we don’t like to hear. That’s why huge stories — the Panama Papers come to mind — fizzle, while we simply can’t stop talking about the drama surrounding the Royal Family. Again, this is on us. Why eat asparagus when you can have kettle corn?

It takes effort to stay informed and to look at things with a critical eye. This is why most of us, or at least a good portion, just don’t do it. It takes time and energy, something a lot of us, including me, seriously lack.So, in that sense, I don’t blame people. We want what we want, and when someone offers it up, we gobble it down. Especially if it reinforces our current views or ideas — it can also make us feel smart, too.

Here’s another recent example: There was a story that made the rounds last month about homeless veterans staying in a hotel in a town not far from me, Newburgh, New York. Those veterans, the story went, were kicked out of the hotel to make room for migrants who had been sent to New York from the Mexican border. Outrageous? Sure. I don’t think anyone would really think that was a good or reasonable thing to do.

The story went wide, and people were, in my mind, justifiably outraged. The problem? It was all bullshit. But I’ll tell you what, in a few years, if you bring this story up, you’re absolutely going to hear from people who still think it was true, and who will hold a grudge against Biden or someone else for letting it happen. Which, again, was the entire point.

So, yes, you’re often right to distrust the media. There are lies and manipulation. It happens on social media (obviously) to a great extent as well. And it’s going to get worse. Also last month, after Twitter changed its rules about “verified” accounts — which were “verified for a reason! — fake images of an explosion at the Pentagon also went far and wide. Because the accounts sharing those images were “verified,” many people believed it was true. But again, all bullshit.

I do think that these types of absolute nonsense stories are relatively rare, though. Mostly, the lies and manipulation are more subtle. A local newspaper may simply avoid reporting on powerful local business interests, for example, for one reason or another. A certain media outlet might get in a spat with an elected official, and publish a series of scathing op-eds or stories painting that individual in a bad light. Those stories may hold water, but there’s still a little bit of tomfoolery at play.

This is all to say that most of the time, especially when you consider news outlets, most media outlets do their best. Some screw up, absolutely, and the serious ones make corrections, redactions, and apologies. The ones that really screw up get sued (like Fox News did), and theoretically, take a hit in the “information marketplace” — if that’s a thing.

This is all to say that I think we can all do better. Journalists can do better. Media executives can do better. And we can do better, as media consumers. That starts with actually paying for solid information.

This takes me back to the beginning: We get what we pay for. We like low-effort, easy-to-digest fluff, and we get it. We like stories that confirm our previously-held biases, and we get it. We don’t want nerds talking down to us — we want people who look and think like us to tell us how it is, and we get it.

With that in mind, this is all a tough nut to crack, and I don’t necessarily know if there’s a way to piece our trust in the media back together. But I do think we all should consider subscribing to or otherwise supporting media outlets that are doing good work. I’m not talking about signing up for Fox Nation or whatever the next incarnation of CNN+ will be — if you like those products, sure, go for it — I’m talking more about your local newspaper. Trade publications. Maybe bigger media outlets that you think do a good job, be it The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times (I subscribe to both).

The point is, if you distrust the media, then you should be looking for a higher-quality product. And no, it’s probably not going to be completely free. Yes, many of us are working within the constraints of a budget, but information is valuable, and if you’re filling your head with garbage that shapes and informs your worldviews — and your resulting decisions — I think it’s worth investing a little into outlets that are going to provide you with worthwhile information, news, and even opinions.

You don’t need to agree with everything that’s published — lord knows I don’t, and in fact, I think that’s a good thing to challenge my own beliefs and change my mind when the facts change. But we should reward journalists and media outlets that do good work. It’s easy to overlook the role these people and organizations play, but they’re still the gatekeepers, by and large. So, take a look at what you can afford, and consider subscribing to or finding other ways to support them.

Again, I think a good place to start is a local newspaper. These are the outlets that send reporters to community meetings, press conferences, and other boring things, so that you don’t need to go. ChatGPT isn’t going to your local town’s town hall. A reporter will. And that reporter needs to be paid for their time and effort.

Yes, I work in the media. I’ve seen how and why certain pieces of content are developed. I’m not an expert or executive, but I have a good sense of the issues within the media, too. But this isn’t a one-sided problem, as consumers need to take responsibility for their own media diets. 

It’s a hard thing to do, but that’s what this whole newsletter is about: Doing things the hard way!

Numbers and links

• 8: The number of votes in one Oregon county that separates the minority, who want to break away and join Idaho, from the majority. Who’s going to pay for all their stuff without Portland and Uncle Phil? (NBC News)

• 750,000: The number of people between the ages of 50 and 54 who could lose access to federal food assistance as a result of the debt ceiling bill. (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)

• Crypto-no?: The SEC finally did it — it sued Coinbase for being an “unregistered” securities broker, as it expands its attempt to stake out crypto-regulation jurisdiction. (Fast Company)

• Is this it?: Deutsche Bank predicts the first policy-led U.S. recession in decades. (Fortune)

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We created $160 trillion in 20 years, but at what cost?

(some) People are making a lot of money, but it’s coming at a cost.

I like to think about the big picture. The long-game. I don’t like following the day-to-day movements of the stock market, or who AOC or MTG slammed on Twitter today. I want to know how and where those market movements are allocating capital, who’s going to benefit from it, and why. I want to know what AOC or MTG think life, for the typical person, should look like in the U.S. 40 years from now, and what they’re doing to make those visions become a reality.

That’s why I was thrilled to come across a new report from McKinsey Global Institute this week — no, that’s not a sentence that’s ever been written or said out loud — looking at the big picture. That report, titled The future of wealth and growth hangs in the balance, was right up my alley.

Here’s the teaser: “The past two decades have generated $160 trillion in paper wealth but sluggish growth and rising inequality. What comes next?”

What, indeed? First of all, let’s consider the two pieces of information preferred in that teaser.

We have $160 trillion generated in 20 years. That’s astounding. And overall wealth has tripled during that time, too. But note that that says “paper wealth,” which basically means “unrealized” wealth. Assets could be sold for that amount, but have not necessarily been sold. So, it’s not “real” real wealth. At least not yet.

The other thing: Sluggish growth and rising inequality. That’s interesting. We’ve tripled our wealth, but it’s come at the cost of slower growth and more inequality. So, things have grown worse for many people (maybe not necessarily worse, but more people are behind, in a sense), and the economy isn’t growing as fast it could have, or should have.

That’s tough to reconcile when you look at the stock market’s growth over the past two decades:

Image: Macrotrends

Also, look at average home prices:

I could add more visuals, but let’s stick with these two — investment appreciation and increasing home valuations are, for many people, the primary drivers of wealth, after all. But with just these two things in mind, it’s easy to see how wealth could’ve tripled within the past 20 years.

But we have to go back to the costs of that wealth generation: A slower economy, and one that is inherently less fair. This is, in large part, due to the decade-plus Fed spending spree that pumped tons of money into the stock market after the Great Recession — which we didn’t stop until recently. That, in large part, has amounted to a transfer of wealth from the public (government) to private hands (but probably not yours).

So, all that wealth generation has come at a cost. It’s hard to determine what, exactly, that cost is, but it probably takes the form of fewer or less-lucrative job opportunities (consider that the federal minimum wage has not been raised since 2009), lower wage growth, and increased rent-seeking by giant companies and wealthy individuals.

Again, consider this: Since 2020, $42 trillion in wealth has been created, and two-thirds of that money was pocketed by 1% of the population — the 1% that really doesn’t need it.

So, while most people have likely benefited in some way from all of that wealth creation, I would argue that the costs of generating all those trillions has been too high. While we have smartphones in our pockets and a TV can be purchased for relative pennies compared to decades past, I think it’s worth asking whether life is actually better for most people. Again, in some ways, yes.

But the bigger issue, in my mind, is that there really isn’t a way to slow this whole thing down — at some point, inequality becomes such an issue that people take to the streets (they already have, in some cases), and the disparity between the costs of homes (which have increased in price by an average of ~250% in 20 years), education (tuition and fees at in-state, public universities is up 175% between 2003 and 2023), and food (up 78% in 20 years) and people’s actual earnings (the median household income in the U.S. was about $71,000 in 2021, up from $43,000 in 2003, a 65% increase), is putting people in a higher squeeze every year.

Again, this tells me that for a majority of people, there’s less breathing room in the budget. Of course, we all make choices about where and how we live, and what we spend our money on, but speaking in broad strokes, the prices of everything (don’t get me started on vehicles) is far outpacing how much money the typical American is earning.

At some point, it becomes too much. That’s what worries me. Yes, your portfolio is up, but are you actually better off?

Let’s jump back to the report, here’s another interesting tidbit: “Economic growth was sluggish, inequality rose, and every $1.00 in investment generated $1.90 in debt.” Again, this tells me that the wealth generation we’ve seen has come at a cost, isn’t sustainable, and is probably largely due to the public sector pouring money into the private sector — the whole damn thing’s been propped up by you, me, all of us, for years.

As for the future? The report outlines four scenarios. From my point of view, and one that I’ve espoused in this newsletter plenty of times before, all of this is completely unsustainable, and at some point, someone has to pay the piper — we all know who that’s likely to be.

Here’s what the report says about those scenarios:

…the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) models four scenarios to capture the range of potential outcomes. We call them “return to past era,” “higher for longer,” “balance sheet reset,” and “productivity acceleration.” In the most desirable scenario by far, productivity accelerates so that economic growth catches up with the balance sheet, thereby combining fast GDP growth, rising wealth, and a healthier balance sheet. The three other scenarios are all far from ideal, each in its own way.

Here’s a visual:

The scenario on the far right is the one we should be aiming for:

The scenario decision makers should strive toward is the one in which investment strengthens and is productive, accelerating productivity growth. This scenario somewhat resembles the period of very rapid productivity growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The balance sheet grows, but less quickly than GDP, and therefore is healthier and more sustainable.

Interestingly, it mentions that we want an economy that looks like the late 90s and early 2000s…you know, before we started to triple our wealth generation. We’ll see what happens. But again, I think we’re a little too addicted to easy, cheap money and bailouts to really put the genie back in the bottle at this point.

But this brings me back to big-picture thinking. The ups and downs of the market on a daily basis, debt ceiling fights, “milktoast” — it’s all noise. We need to focus on the big picture, and consider the overall costs of what we’re doing. That’s no easy feat, of course, but it could make a long-term difference.

See you all out there.

Numbers and links

• $1 trillion: Nvidia became the latest trillion-dollar company after its stock price went bananas. Thanks, AI! (CNN)

• $22 billion: How much executives and early insiders profited through “well-timed” trades of SPAC shares before prices “collapsed.” Shocking stuff. (The Wall Street Journal)

• You can BS a BSer: Scientists uncover a “BS blindspot,” in which people who think they’re good at spotting BS are, in fact, full of S. (PsyPost)

• The debt limit debacle: Enjoying the flirtation with economic destruction? How we can avoid another debt limit problem. (The Message Box)

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