I run a small retail Website. For a while, I was accepting Bitcoin and Ethereum as payment. As with paying by credit card, you filled out a form at checkout, which told you how much of either token you needed to pay.
You plugged in your public key, hit the purchase button and after the sale was validated, you received a "Thank you for your purchase" email message.
But...
Before shipping, I had to verify that the amount that came in roughly matched the amount of the sale, which was an extra step I don't have to make when people pay by credit card. And with crypto fluctuations, that amount could, a few hours after the sale, be a lot more or a lot less than the actual sale price.
After two years or so, I stopped accepting crypto, simply because crypto transactions made up about one half of one percent of my sales and it simply wasn't worth the effort.
My real motivation at the time was that I was dabbling a bit in crypto as a hobby and accepting it on my Website effectively allowed me to acquire Ethereum at the cost of my merchandise.
By the way - No one EVER used Bitcoin. The per-transaction fees were simply too high to justify paying that way. Every single crypto transaction was with Ethereum.
Re cost/hassle of cross border transfers, in Canada, TD Bank recently introduced a new international remittance system which permits us to transfer money almost instantly and free online from our TD account to anywhere in the world. Not sure what tech they'e using but it's super helpful. So far only used it for US $ transfers.
Don’t forget we also had the best job market in over fifty years. My kids and their spouses were able to easily get new, better paying jobs but now they are seeing stagnation for their industries because of the uncertainty caused by Trump’s tariffs.
Also it was wages for the lower incomes that were going up the most. From what I have read income inequality actually went down under Biden.
I don't think the comparison between Biden and the current administration is fair. The first abides by the rule of law and norms while the latter does not. Biden inherited the Covid economy, high unemployment, a deadly pandemic and increasing violence, etc. By focusing on the social safety net and economic policy that would improve the quality and quantity of jobs with sufficient attention and funding, Biden's economic policy turned things around. Unfortunately, these programs were dismantled by his successor. The false equivalence adds to the lack of imagination we must nourish and support to continue focusing on the needs of the people and the nation as a whole. The current administration is riding to some extent on the investment and policy of Biden's administration and its economic program and policy. The error in communication in 2024 seems to have been not explaining clearly what was put in motion, what it would mean, clarifying the grievance of those who had been left out and how this and other concerns would be addressed by the Democratic candidate moving forward. While we can buy eggs easily now, many are uninsured and the job market has contracted, etc. etc. etc.
The errors in communication that I saw in the run up to the election was mostly on the part of the mainstream media that buried, downplayed or distorted good news about Biden’s economy but hyped coverage of inflation. Even after inflation had eased significantly the NYT and WaPo chose to highlight the price of eggs and gasoline, not the easing of inflation. I strongly suspect that many in the media bought into the Larry Summers mistaken belief that we needed a serious recession to break inflation. That claim was based in the mistaken belief that it was government spending, not supply chain problems that was the big driver of inflation.
“Yes, the Media Lied About the Pre-Election Economy”
1. In his view, extreme "agentic" unemployment -- that is, there being no need to work because machines are doing it all for us -- was a very good thing. Not enough has been written (and I'm tempted to say, thought) about how to MANAGE a massive increase in productivity/reduction in manpower needs, as opposed to how to STOP IT from happening.
2. Wasn't his target date 2030? We might still get there!
One final point, not about Keynes:
I've read in the NYTimes, on two adjacent pages on the same day's paper, (1) a story about how robots are going to take all of our jobs, and (2) a story about how declining birth rates means that no one will be left to do all the work. Those can't both be true, at least not on an aggregate basis. (Locally, software engineers, for example, might be out of work while hairdressers are much in demand, even in an economy where no one works more than 15 hours a week.)
Why is no one asking why if robots will soon be as capable as humans we are planning to spend about $100 billion to send humans to the moon, far more than what a robotic mission would cost? Is it just in space that humans will be more capable than robots?
"We never said prices are down 600%, and not just because that’s mathematically illiterate. But while that means something to me personally, I recognize that it’s a distinction without a big difference."
"I’m going to take a shot at what the president’s alternative-calculation method is. It would be, most-parsimoniously-stated: invert the price decrease. It becomes a price increase of X %. X is the decrease.
Example: a price drop from $120 to $10. Invert that, it’s an 1100% increase. So, the $120 to $10 price drop is an 1100% decrease! (By normal thinking, it is, of course, a (120-10)/120×100= approximately 91.7% decrease.)"
And, lo and behold, the Times piece said:
"Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has previously partially defended the claim by saying the percentage reduction is measured relative to the final price rather than the initial one; so going from $100 to $25 would represent a 300 percent price reduction. But that is not what those words mean."
And I was right! (The procedure I described produces the same result as the official procedure, which official procedure was above explained by official administration methodologist Howard Lutnick!)
So, never mind the little picayune bit in the Times about "But that is not what those words mean." )
And, remember, Mr. Bernstein and others. “Now we are the hottest country anywhere in the world” is the correct and complete descriptions, and save the effort looking into those petty details!
Almost. When the market tanks by 50%, in Trump speak it tanks by 100%.
Another example to make sure you've got it: If the market goes down by 75%, then: (my statement of the algorithm--which is equivalent to Lutnick's): going from 25% of value to 100% (my "invert that") would be a 300% gain, so the loss is then a 300% decrease in the stock market value. (Matching what the Times piece got!)
JB: "That is, my expectation is less that massive labor displacement will occur than the gains from new tech will flow disproportionately to the top, as has largely occurred thus far."
I think it goes without saying that that is the expectation of those who are pushing so hard on AI. Their expectation is that they will receive billionaire plus amounts of wealth from being first. One of the effects that greed has is to downplay the potential risks of AI, which are, I think, underappreciated today by a lot.
Perhaps the scariest thing about AI is that those who are behind it do not truly understand what they are doing. That is, what they expect or hope to get may not be what they actually get. AI will eventually go its own way and by then it could be too late for use to establish control.
Human beings have always been great at asking "can we" and terrible at asking "should we." Of course, the "should we" question is overridden by the fear that "if we don't, they will" and then we'll never be able to recover. What that calls for more than anything is international openness and cooperation about the pace of development, the sharing of information, and the safeguards that are put in place.
I expect little if any of that to happen. If, in the end, as some fear, AI becomes an existential threat to humanity, the one thing we will be able to say with confidence is "We deserved this." Greed is among the most powerful forces at work and our capitalist system has not only allowed greed to run rampant, it has encouraged it. Today, we have the greediest, shallowest, most selfish president in U.S. history. Donald Trump doesn't care at all about the well-being of anyone but himself and, maybe, on a limited basis, his family members and the cronies who can help him get more of what he wants.
Voting for Donald Trump in 2024 was without question the most irresponsible act the American electorate has ever committed. Voters, who are generally very poorly informed, allowed their own selfishness and wishful thinking to substitute for being informed and rational. They foolishly "believed" Trump's empty, dishonest campaign promises to lower prices and only deport the worst of the worst, which to Trump and Miller includes every non-white immigrant in this country regardless of their status. That is why, once elected, Trump started talking about erasing birthright citizenship for those born in this country of non-citizen parents. He has, unsurprisingly, gone so far as to fantasize about taking citizenship away from people for whom no possible justification exists.
The American electorate voluntarily created an entirely predictable crisis and threat to democracy. Now, those who are developing AI may, out of greed and selfish shortsightedness, create the means that goes well beyond erasing American democracy, but ends the entire human race. I doubt I will live long enough to see that happen, but my one observation apart from I'd rather that not happen is that it could conceivably be good for countless other species unless the means of our own elimination is just as effective at killing off other life.
It's also possible that the AI arms race between the us and China will lead to nuclear obliteration before AI gets to do the job. Hooray for Anthropic today, but China must be salivating.
Richard, China has to be ecstatic that its major international opponent has a complete idiot for a president. That said, apparently China is taking the potential threats of AI more seriously than are people in the US -- and I mean developers, not average citizens.
There are people who are very knowledgeable about AI -- for example, Geoffrey Hinton, the "godfather of AI" -- who are very concerned about the threat that AI poses. I am almost finished reading the book, "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies," which was written by two people who are very knowledgeable about AI and the title is not meant as a joke. One of the most startling things about AI, that I have learned recently from this book and some other sources, is how little its developers understand about what they are doing and what the end product will be. That should scare the hell out of them, but in this country greed often rules.
A few years ago, I heard a series of interviews with AI developers and the discussion centered on the progress that was being made in creating AI that could make photos, videos, and speech that was utterly false, but was becoming increasingly difficult to detect. The interviewer asked one of the researchers, a woman, whether it concerned her that we were rapidly headed toward being able to create, for example, videos that were fraudulent, but that we wouldn't be able to detect as such. Her reply was chilling: She said, no she wasn't concerned because that would mean that no one would believe or trust anything anymore. Why she thought that was desirable, I can't imagine. If she thought that what she was talking about was healthy skepticism, I think she was basically insane.
I have used the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby as a way to differentiate between reasonable doubt and certainty, but I think it is useful in this context. Originally, I argued that I was opposed to the death penalty in all cases, but if there were going to be capital punishment, then morally it should only be used in cases were there was zero doubt about the guilt of the accused. Lee Harvey Oswald, widely believed to have murdered JFK could not, in my opinion, be sentenced to death, because no one could ever be absolutely certain that he had committed the crime. Even admissions of guilt can be untrue. However, Jack Ruby shot Oswald on national TV and so there was no doubt that he was guilty. (I'm not considering more complications for this example.) Today, however, AI would render such a distinction impossible to make. We could see absolutely convincing videos of anyone shooting anyone else and if people don't have airtight alibis, trials and justice could become far more problematic. We could arrive at a point where videos and photographs are inadmissible in court. Trump is already putting out one AI video after another showing him doing things that are absurd on their face, but he could have people create videos and other media that cause serious trouble. No, no one is going to be fooled by Trump dressed in a business suit skating around with a hockey stick scoring goals and then physically beating up an opponent. But the corrupt possibilities are endless. (There is real utility to the videos Trump has put out so far. A video showing him piloting a fighter jet and unloading feces on American citizens protesting his administration below tells us something useful about what kind of person Trump really is. It is impossible to imagine any other president in our history producing such a disgusting display. But that is Trump. A video that came out the other day showing Trump engaged in playing hockey and dominating is so ludicrous that no one (apart from his MAGA base) will take it seriously. But what do Americans think of a president who produces a video that shows him engaging in a fist fight with an opponent? I know what it makes me think of him.
It is obvious that Trump is so corrupt and dishonest that there is no limit to what he will be willing to do with AI in order to help him get what he wants. It should be a no-brainer that under certain circumstances it is a serious felony to make and distribute AI generated materials for corrupt purposes. But it will not be difficult for crooks like Trump to manipulate that law and avoid accountability.
Thank you for your comments on the distortions of the current administration vs prior administrations, like the ones were are part of.
(Many of us, especially those of us who have lived long enough, realize that you can't, in a position as representative of the Democratic party, always be quite straight for the complete and-unvarnished-truth. And we bear that in mind in our important social-epistemological task of trying to figure out what is true when we absolutely can't do so without relying on other people for information and understanding.)
Indeed, on your posts and others, I keep commenting on these wild deceptions from the Republicans (beyond just POTUS) on healthcare, and my guess is that they are just beyond the norms of prior administrations in misrepresentations around domestic policy issues. (But' I'm not positive. I haven't examined the history carefully enough!)
(which was on Krugman) just trying to get some people aware of some of the wild deceptions, including, in one case, giving presentations suggesting exactly the OPPOSITE of the actual effect of a policy proposal. (Involving Dr. Oz, no less!).
Does it matter? The political system runs, mainly, on propaganda and distortion. An eternal fact?
On the coverage declines from the non-extension of the ACA expanded subsidies, I caught something that I haven’t seen elsewhere as people look for a lost-coverage-count from the available data.
I noticed some of the focus has been on a reported drop, 2025 to 2026, of something like 1.2 or 1.3 million SO FAR (from 24 million in 2025). (Whereas the CBO has an estimate of 4 million eventual losses over time.)
In thinking about this issue, I noticed that there was a trend of large enrollment increases in the prior 2 years. 5 million 2023 to 2024, and 3 million 2024 to 2025. So, I saw that this trend would be likely to continue if the expanded subsidies were extended. (Corresponding to mainly more people finding out that insurance was available at the available ACA costs, as well as people thinking about coverage, and deciding, at the available prices, it was better for them to finally pick up health insurance.)
Thus, the effect of the lapsed expanded subsidies, when it is mixed in with that prior trend, is a problem, often in statistics referred to as a "confounding" of effects.
But, then, I was able to find the data available already to separate those effects.
Just look at reenrollment for 2025 from 2024, and compare it to reenrollment 2025 to 2026.
And, I got: 3.5 million More (4.7 million) non-returned in 2026 vs. 1.2 million in 2025
if interested, and anyone wants to see if they can refute it by some data-interpretation error of mine.
--
P.S. Another reason I placed this comment, not directly relevant to any of the topics in your post, is that I had found the comment important today on Dean Baker, and posted it there. (I did not want to have there by any jealousy among old friends, like we, the Bernstein substack subcribers, sometimes feel when you go off and express opinions and present policy analysis on a current topic on, say, "MS Now", before your substack subcribers!)
I run a small retail Website. For a while, I was accepting Bitcoin and Ethereum as payment. As with paying by credit card, you filled out a form at checkout, which told you how much of either token you needed to pay.
You plugged in your public key, hit the purchase button and after the sale was validated, you received a "Thank you for your purchase" email message.
But...
Before shipping, I had to verify that the amount that came in roughly matched the amount of the sale, which was an extra step I don't have to make when people pay by credit card. And with crypto fluctuations, that amount could, a few hours after the sale, be a lot more or a lot less than the actual sale price.
After two years or so, I stopped accepting crypto, simply because crypto transactions made up about one half of one percent of my sales and it simply wasn't worth the effort.
My real motivation at the time was that I was dabbling a bit in crypto as a hobby and accepting it on my Website effectively allowed me to acquire Ethereum at the cost of my merchandise.
By the way - No one EVER used Bitcoin. The per-transaction fees were simply too high to justify paying that way. Every single crypto transaction was with Ethereum.
Re cost/hassle of cross border transfers, in Canada, TD Bank recently introduced a new international remittance system which permits us to transfer money almost instantly and free online from our TD account to anywhere in the world. Not sure what tech they'e using but it's super helpful. So far only used it for US $ transfers.
"Trump and Biden Delivered the Same Non-Resonant Message"
They did, but unlike Trump's, Biden's message happened to be true. Inflation was down. Wages were up.
People didn't want lower inflation. They wanted 2019 prices again, and things don't work that way.
I can't speak for others, but I did really well during Biden's term, particularly during the last two years.
Don’t forget we also had the best job market in over fifty years. My kids and their spouses were able to easily get new, better paying jobs but now they are seeing stagnation for their industries because of the uncertainty caused by Trump’s tariffs.
Also it was wages for the lower incomes that were going up the most. From what I have read income inequality actually went down under Biden.
I don't think the comparison between Biden and the current administration is fair. The first abides by the rule of law and norms while the latter does not. Biden inherited the Covid economy, high unemployment, a deadly pandemic and increasing violence, etc. By focusing on the social safety net and economic policy that would improve the quality and quantity of jobs with sufficient attention and funding, Biden's economic policy turned things around. Unfortunately, these programs were dismantled by his successor. The false equivalence adds to the lack of imagination we must nourish and support to continue focusing on the needs of the people and the nation as a whole. The current administration is riding to some extent on the investment and policy of Biden's administration and its economic program and policy. The error in communication in 2024 seems to have been not explaining clearly what was put in motion, what it would mean, clarifying the grievance of those who had been left out and how this and other concerns would be addressed by the Democratic candidate moving forward. While we can buy eggs easily now, many are uninsured and the job market has contracted, etc. etc. etc.
The errors in communication that I saw in the run up to the election was mostly on the part of the mainstream media that buried, downplayed or distorted good news about Biden’s economy but hyped coverage of inflation. Even after inflation had eased significantly the NYT and WaPo chose to highlight the price of eggs and gasoline, not the easing of inflation. I strongly suspect that many in the media bought into the Larry Summers mistaken belief that we needed a serious recession to break inflation. That claim was based in the mistaken belief that it was government spending, not supply chain problems that was the big driver of inflation.
“Yes, the Media Lied About the Pre-Election Economy”
Dean Baker
https://cepr.net/publications/media-lied-about-pre-election-economy/
Thank you for that.
“ we used to worry about insufficient demand, now we worry about excessive supply “
Naturally, either one can cause prices to drop and be Macro depressive .
But I remember Robert Heilbroner’s
concern:
The market has a keen eye for private wants, but a deaf ear to public needs.
No excessive supply of public needs
Two points about Keynes:
1. In his view, extreme "agentic" unemployment -- that is, there being no need to work because machines are doing it all for us -- was a very good thing. Not enough has been written (and I'm tempted to say, thought) about how to MANAGE a massive increase in productivity/reduction in manpower needs, as opposed to how to STOP IT from happening.
2. Wasn't his target date 2030? We might still get there!
One final point, not about Keynes:
I've read in the NYTimes, on two adjacent pages on the same day's paper, (1) a story about how robots are going to take all of our jobs, and (2) a story about how declining birth rates means that no one will be left to do all the work. Those can't both be true, at least not on an aggregate basis. (Locally, software engineers, for example, might be out of work while hairdressers are much in demand, even in an economy where no one works more than 15 hours a week.)
Why is no one asking why if robots will soon be as capable as humans we are planning to spend about $100 billion to send humans to the moon, far more than what a robotic mission would cost? Is it just in space that humans will be more capable than robots?
Noting your:
"We never said prices are down 600%, and not just because that’s mathematically illiterate. But while that means something to me personally, I recognize that it’s a distinction without a big difference."
I suspect it means you missed a small opinion piece in yesterday's New York Times ( https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/opinion/trump-math-state-of-the-union.html ), where the
official administration translation guide for that Trump (Wharton?) calculation method was presented.
(I am a bit proud of myself. Within my own post, I had guessed on what it might mean, within
https://normspier828307.substack.com/p/the-president-at-davos-indicates , I wrote:
"I’m going to take a shot at what the president’s alternative-calculation method is. It would be, most-parsimoniously-stated: invert the price decrease. It becomes a price increase of X %. X is the decrease.
Example: a price drop from $120 to $10. Invert that, it’s an 1100% increase. So, the $120 to $10 price drop is an 1100% decrease! (By normal thinking, it is, of course, a (120-10)/120×100= approximately 91.7% decrease.)"
And, lo and behold, the Times piece said:
"Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has previously partially defended the claim by saying the percentage reduction is measured relative to the final price rather than the initial one; so going from $100 to $25 would represent a 300 percent price reduction. But that is not what those words mean."
And I was right! (The procedure I described produces the same result as the official procedure, which official procedure was above explained by official administration methodologist Howard Lutnick!)
(Also, note at Davos, the president did indicate there are two methods to calculate price drops. Here: https://www.youtube.com/live/qo2-q4AFh_g?t=2847s .
So, never mind the little picayune bit in the Times about "But that is not what those words mean." )
And, remember, Mr. Bernstein and others. “Now we are the hottest country anywhere in the world” is the correct and complete descriptions, and save the effort looking into those petty details!
So when the market tanks 50% that is actually a 100% gain ???
Almost. When the market tanks by 50%, in Trump speak it tanks by 100%.
Another example to make sure you've got it: If the market goes down by 75%, then: (my statement of the algorithm--which is equivalent to Lutnick's): going from 25% of value to 100% (my "invert that") would be a 300% gain, so the loss is then a 300% decrease in the stock market value. (Matching what the Times piece got!)
JB: "That is, my expectation is less that massive labor displacement will occur than the gains from new tech will flow disproportionately to the top, as has largely occurred thus far."
I think it goes without saying that that is the expectation of those who are pushing so hard on AI. Their expectation is that they will receive billionaire plus amounts of wealth from being first. One of the effects that greed has is to downplay the potential risks of AI, which are, I think, underappreciated today by a lot.
Perhaps the scariest thing about AI is that those who are behind it do not truly understand what they are doing. That is, what they expect or hope to get may not be what they actually get. AI will eventually go its own way and by then it could be too late for use to establish control.
Human beings have always been great at asking "can we" and terrible at asking "should we." Of course, the "should we" question is overridden by the fear that "if we don't, they will" and then we'll never be able to recover. What that calls for more than anything is international openness and cooperation about the pace of development, the sharing of information, and the safeguards that are put in place.
I expect little if any of that to happen. If, in the end, as some fear, AI becomes an existential threat to humanity, the one thing we will be able to say with confidence is "We deserved this." Greed is among the most powerful forces at work and our capitalist system has not only allowed greed to run rampant, it has encouraged it. Today, we have the greediest, shallowest, most selfish president in U.S. history. Donald Trump doesn't care at all about the well-being of anyone but himself and, maybe, on a limited basis, his family members and the cronies who can help him get more of what he wants.
Voting for Donald Trump in 2024 was without question the most irresponsible act the American electorate has ever committed. Voters, who are generally very poorly informed, allowed their own selfishness and wishful thinking to substitute for being informed and rational. They foolishly "believed" Trump's empty, dishonest campaign promises to lower prices and only deport the worst of the worst, which to Trump and Miller includes every non-white immigrant in this country regardless of their status. That is why, once elected, Trump started talking about erasing birthright citizenship for those born in this country of non-citizen parents. He has, unsurprisingly, gone so far as to fantasize about taking citizenship away from people for whom no possible justification exists.
The American electorate voluntarily created an entirely predictable crisis and threat to democracy. Now, those who are developing AI may, out of greed and selfish shortsightedness, create the means that goes well beyond erasing American democracy, but ends the entire human race. I doubt I will live long enough to see that happen, but my one observation apart from I'd rather that not happen is that it could conceivably be good for countless other species unless the means of our own elimination is just as effective at killing off other life.
It's also possible that the AI arms race between the us and China will lead to nuclear obliteration before AI gets to do the job. Hooray for Anthropic today, but China must be salivating.
Richard, China has to be ecstatic that its major international opponent has a complete idiot for a president. That said, apparently China is taking the potential threats of AI more seriously than are people in the US -- and I mean developers, not average citizens.
There are people who are very knowledgeable about AI -- for example, Geoffrey Hinton, the "godfather of AI" -- who are very concerned about the threat that AI poses. I am almost finished reading the book, "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies," which was written by two people who are very knowledgeable about AI and the title is not meant as a joke. One of the most startling things about AI, that I have learned recently from this book and some other sources, is how little its developers understand about what they are doing and what the end product will be. That should scare the hell out of them, but in this country greed often rules.
A few years ago, I heard a series of interviews with AI developers and the discussion centered on the progress that was being made in creating AI that could make photos, videos, and speech that was utterly false, but was becoming increasingly difficult to detect. The interviewer asked one of the researchers, a woman, whether it concerned her that we were rapidly headed toward being able to create, for example, videos that were fraudulent, but that we wouldn't be able to detect as such. Her reply was chilling: She said, no she wasn't concerned because that would mean that no one would believe or trust anything anymore. Why she thought that was desirable, I can't imagine. If she thought that what she was talking about was healthy skepticism, I think she was basically insane.
I have used the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby as a way to differentiate between reasonable doubt and certainty, but I think it is useful in this context. Originally, I argued that I was opposed to the death penalty in all cases, but if there were going to be capital punishment, then morally it should only be used in cases were there was zero doubt about the guilt of the accused. Lee Harvey Oswald, widely believed to have murdered JFK could not, in my opinion, be sentenced to death, because no one could ever be absolutely certain that he had committed the crime. Even admissions of guilt can be untrue. However, Jack Ruby shot Oswald on national TV and so there was no doubt that he was guilty. (I'm not considering more complications for this example.) Today, however, AI would render such a distinction impossible to make. We could see absolutely convincing videos of anyone shooting anyone else and if people don't have airtight alibis, trials and justice could become far more problematic. We could arrive at a point where videos and photographs are inadmissible in court. Trump is already putting out one AI video after another showing him doing things that are absurd on their face, but he could have people create videos and other media that cause serious trouble. No, no one is going to be fooled by Trump dressed in a business suit skating around with a hockey stick scoring goals and then physically beating up an opponent. But the corrupt possibilities are endless. (There is real utility to the videos Trump has put out so far. A video showing him piloting a fighter jet and unloading feces on American citizens protesting his administration below tells us something useful about what kind of person Trump really is. It is impossible to imagine any other president in our history producing such a disgusting display. But that is Trump. A video that came out the other day showing Trump engaged in playing hockey and dominating is so ludicrous that no one (apart from his MAGA base) will take it seriously. But what do Americans think of a president who produces a video that shows him engaging in a fist fight with an opponent? I know what it makes me think of him.
It is obvious that Trump is so corrupt and dishonest that there is no limit to what he will be willing to do with AI in order to help him get what he wants. It should be a no-brainer that under certain circumstances it is a serious felony to make and distribute AI generated materials for corrupt purposes. But it will not be difficult for crooks like Trump to manipulate that law and avoid accountability.
Thanks for clarifying the PPI number. Subscribing to you is all that and a bag of chips. Keep up the great work.
Thank you for your comments on the distortions of the current administration vs prior administrations, like the ones were are part of.
(Many of us, especially those of us who have lived long enough, realize that you can't, in a position as representative of the Democratic party, always be quite straight for the complete and-unvarnished-truth. And we bear that in mind in our important social-epistemological task of trying to figure out what is true when we absolutely can't do so without relying on other people for information and understanding.)
Indeed, on your posts and others, I keep commenting on these wild deceptions from the Republicans (beyond just POTUS) on healthcare, and my guess is that they are just beyond the norms of prior administrations in misrepresentations around domestic policy issues. (But' I'm not positive. I haven't examined the history carefully enough!)
Thus, I post, like this:
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/billionaires-gone-wild/comment/216209281
(which was on Krugman) just trying to get some people aware of some of the wild deceptions, including, in one case, giving presentations suggesting exactly the OPPOSITE of the actual effect of a policy proposal. (Involving Dr. Oz, no less!).
Does it matter? The political system runs, mainly, on propaganda and distortion. An eternal fact?
Off topic, but it might be important:
On the coverage declines from the non-extension of the ACA expanded subsidies, I caught something that I haven’t seen elsewhere as people look for a lost-coverage-count from the available data.
I noticed some of the focus has been on a reported drop, 2025 to 2026, of something like 1.2 or 1.3 million SO FAR (from 24 million in 2025). (Whereas the CBO has an estimate of 4 million eventual losses over time.)
In thinking about this issue, I noticed that there was a trend of large enrollment increases in the prior 2 years. 5 million 2023 to 2024, and 3 million 2024 to 2025. So, I saw that this trend would be likely to continue if the expanded subsidies were extended. (Corresponding to mainly more people finding out that insurance was available at the available ACA costs, as well as people thinking about coverage, and deciding, at the available prices, it was better for them to finally pick up health insurance.)
Thus, the effect of the lapsed expanded subsidies, when it is mixed in with that prior trend, is a problem, often in statistics referred to as a "confounding" of effects.
But, then, I was able to find the data available already to separate those effects.
Just look at reenrollment for 2025 from 2024, and compare it to reenrollment 2025 to 2026.
And, I got: 3.5 million More (4.7 million) non-returned in 2026 vs. 1.2 million in 2025
That analysis I posted today, and is here:
https://normspier828307.substack.com/p/aca-exchanges-i-get-35-million-more
if interested, and anyone wants to see if they can refute it by some data-interpretation error of mine.
--
P.S. Another reason I placed this comment, not directly relevant to any of the topics in your post, is that I had found the comment important today on Dean Baker, and posted it there. (I did not want to have there by any jealousy among old friends, like we, the Bernstein substack subcribers, sometimes feel when you go off and express opinions and present policy analysis on a current topic on, say, "MS Now", before your substack subcribers!)