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

Building AI’s River Rouge

Factories, Financing, and Freeing Energy The column started with a single X post from @HedgieMarkets laying bare the financial engineering behind the AI boom: massive data centers funded through special purpose vehicles, off-balance-sheet debt, and leverage that would make a subprime lender blush. Meta's $27 billion Hyperion deal with Blue Owl, Oracle's $38 billion Vantage play tied to OpenAI's Stargate, xAI's $20 billion raise looping in Nvidia GPUs-these aren't just big numbers. They're bets on explosive revenues that have to show up in the next 5 to 15 years, or the whole structure risks looking like a house of cards when…

Continue ReadingBuilding AI’s River Rouge

The BLS Affordability Boost

Unpacking the "Unexpected" January Jobs Report If you've been following the economic tea leaves like I have for over 30 years in this game, you know the drill: Wall Street "experts" cluster their forecasts like sheep, the media slaps "unexpectedly" on anything that doesn't fit their narrative, and real-world metrics get buried under a pile of revisions and spin. Today's January 2026 BLS jobs report? It's a classic case. Clocking in at +130,000 nonfarm payrolls with unemployment ticking down to 4.3%, this thing smashed the lowball consensus and kicked off the year with a bang for the Trump administration and Republicans.…

Continue ReadingThe BLS Affordability Boost

The Squeeze on American Workers

Why Americans Lose Jobs to Foreign Workers Let’s dispense with the illusions from the start. The immigration debate is drowning in deliberately soft, misleading language-“undocumented immigrants,” “common-sense solutions,” “path to citizenship,” “comprehensive reform”-all crafted to mask what is really happening. Peel those euphemisms away and the raw truth stands exposed: we are dealing with large-scale amnesty disguised as humanitarianism and unchecked mass importation of foreign labor disguised as economic necessity. The combined effect is to convert the American labor market into a worldwide commodity pool where U.S. citizens are routinely outbid, displaced, and marginalized in the very economy their forebears built.…

Continue ReadingThe Squeeze on American Workers