Economics

Republicans Got Played

The Housing Bill That Gave Democrats Everything They Wanted Follow-on to “The DSA’s Housing Trojan Horse” and “¡Afuera!” I warned you. The ROAD to Housing Act was never a serious supply-side fix. It was a cash cow for sanctuary cities, fraudsters, nonprofits, and the Democrat Socialist machine bent on turning American housing into a government-controlled enterprise. Now it’s law. And Democrats are celebrating like they just won the lottery. Senator Elizabeth Warren and her allies are flooding their feeds, crowing about this “groundbreaking” victory. They call it the biggest housing bill in decades, claiming it will build more units, lower costs,…

Continue ReadingRepublicans Got Played

¡Afuera!

Why Trump Must Veto the ROAD to Housing Act In my last column I warned that the Democratic Socialists of America have a coherent, long-term strategy for American housing: aggressive rent controls paired with tenant “protections” and subsidized “social housing” models designed to gradually displace private property owners and decommodify shelter. That Trojan horse has now breached the gates. In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani just delivered on a signature campaign promise: a rent freeze on roughly one million rent-stabilized apartments. And Congress has handed him, and every other DSA-aligned operator across the country, the federal fuel to make the…

Continue Reading¡Afuera!

The SpaceX 4,400

The Ordinary Workers Who Own the Future In the flood of viral posts and headlines after SpaceX’s blockbuster IPO, one image cuts through the noise: hardworking Americans, janitors, cooks, and welders, standing tall beside the rockets they helped build, now minted as millionaires. It’s not mere meme fodder. It’s cultural shorthand for a truth that unsettles much of the modern political and media class. SpaceX’s public debut, valued around $1.77 trillion, did far more than pad one man’s paper wealth. It created generational wealth for roughly 4,400 current and former employees—welders, cafeteria workers, technicians, launch site staff, engineers, and support personnel…

Continue ReadingThe SpaceX 4,400

Value is King

Why AI’s Job Apocalypse Talk Is Fading as IPOs Approach Sam Altman and Dario Amodei spent much of the past year warning that AI would gut white-collar employment. Now, as their companies pursue potential trillion-dollar IPOs, both are publicly walking back those dramatic predictions. A Fortune article captures this shift, framing it as humble, evidence-based updating. From where I sit, it looks more like classic narrative smoothing driven by financial incentives. AI is a neutral tool—like a gun, an axe, or a shovel in the old Shane analogy. It becomes good or bad based on the character and incentives of those…

Continue ReadingValue is King

The Withdrawal Phase Has Begun

Time to Change the Incentives The 30-year Treasury yield just punched above 5.1 percent: levels we haven’t seen since the desperate days right before the 2008 financial crisis. The 10-year is ripping higher in real time. Mortgage rates are barreling toward 7 percent again. And the bond vigilantes aren’t whispering anymore; they’re shouting. This isn’t random market noise. It’s the market reasserting reality after years of Washington treating tomorrow’s income like an unlimited credit card. As Governor Ron DeSantis pointed out in a recent post, we’ve only gotten away with these massive deficits so far because the U.S. dollar remains the…

Continue ReadingThe Withdrawal Phase Has Begun

AI Doublespeak Is Collapsing

Graduates See What the Elites Won’t Admit In April, I wrote that AI is a tool, Marian: channeling Alan Ladd’s Shane to remind everyone that technology itself is morally neutral. A gun, an axe, a shovel: it becomes good or bad based on the character and incentives of the person wielding it. That piece pushed back against fatalistic UBI talk and the notion that AI would simply “wipe out” work rather than transform it through markets, adaptation, and human ingenuity. This follow-up is necessary because the people holding the tool are currently engaged in a glaring contradiction that cannot last. Big…

Continue ReadingAI Doublespeak Is Collapsing

From Euphoria to Withdrawal

The Urgent Case for Letting Creative Destruction Run Its Course As of this morning, the 30-year Treasury yield has punched through 5.117 percent, the highest print since the final desperate leg higher before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. The 10-year note is ripping higher in real time, mortgage rates are barreling toward 7 percent, and forced liquidations are cascading across gold, silver, Bitcoin, and equities. Trillions in notional value have vanished in minutes. Margin calls are flying. The bond vigilantes aren’t panicking; they are simply refusing to lend America’s future income at yesterday’s fantasy prices anymore. This is not a “crisis.”…

Continue ReadingFrom Euphoria to Withdrawal

Transformed, Not Wiped Out

The Real Story of AI and Entry-Level Work Yesterday we talked about AI as a tool, no better or worse than the character and ingenuity of those who wield it. Guns don't kill people, axes don't chop wood by themselves, and AI won't magically "wipe out" half the entry-level jobs in tech, law, consulting, and finance. Yet here we are again, watching the same dramatic warning from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei make the rounds on X: 50% of those roles "completely wiped out" in 1–5 years. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei: “50% of all tech jobs, entry-level lawyers, consultants, and finance professionals…

Continue ReadingTransformed, Not Wiped Out

AI Is a Tool, Marian

Why the Rush for Universal High Income Misses the Real Story of Creative Destruction Elon Musk posted a characteristically bold provocation on X about AI and Universal Income: Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI. AI/robotics will produce goods & services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 17, 2026 Hours later, Andrew Yang replied with his own crisp declaration: It’s clear that AI will wind up funding universal income. Let’s make that happen…

Continue ReadingAI Is a Tool, Marian

A Texas Tanker Convoy

How Iranian Mines and American Realpolitik Made the Spice Flow Again A wave of empty VLCCs heading for Corpus Christi and Houston isn’t just a dramatic map; it’s living proof that pragmatic Hemisphere-first statecraft turned a Persian Gulf crisis into U.S. energy strength, cheaper domestic natural gas for our factories, and a cautionary tale about choosing politics over production. That map stopped me cold the first time I saw it. Dozens of empty supertankers streaming westward across the Atlantic and Caribbean like a disciplined blue-water convoy, all making straight for the loading terminals at Corpus Christi, Freeport, and Houston. It’s not…

Continue ReadingA Texas Tanker Convoy