2025-06-20 23:19:13
June 14 was a day of stark contrasts and dueling narratives. As President Trump staged a military parade and tanks squeaked down Constitution Avenue, millions of Americans — from Bangor to Beverly Hills — marched in the streets to protest. Trump celebrated the country’s military might (and his 79th birthday), vowing to crush foreign adversaries that threaten the U.S. and use “heavy force” to stop any domestic protesters who stood in his way. The peaceful resistance movement in 2,100 cities and towns across America had a simple message: No thrones. No crowns. No kings.
The clash between hardware and software made strikingly clear that putting tanks and troops on your own roads isn’t a sign of strength, but weakness. There are three firewalls between a democracy and autocracy: the courts, the media, and the citizenry. The GOP represents the 1% at the cost of the 99%. The Democrats are more interested in grasping for social virtue than improving the material and emotional well-being of Americans. When your representatives won’t represent, you become your own delegation.
Attendance at Trump’s parade to commemorate the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary appeared to fall far short of the White House’s estimate of 250,000 people. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s yawn, captured on camera, said it all. The celebration, brought to you by sponsors such as Coinbase and Palantir, was a sad spectacle. The event had the cool factor of your drunk uncle showing off his karate moves at Thanksgiving. I wonder if what ultimately limits the damage of this clearance-rack autocrat isn’t the courts or the 10-year bond, but just how lame he is.
The No Kings campaign was a dramatically different story. A widely-cited analysis from data journalist G. Elliott Morris estimates that 4 million to 6 million people participated in the protests. That represents 1.2% to 1.8% of the U.S. population and makes it one of the largest single-day protests in American history, probably even bigger than the 2017 Women’s March, when more than 4 million people showed up at demonstrations around the country. Supported by a long list of organizations, from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Service Employees International Union, the rallies were deftly timed to divert the spotlight from 47’s show. TV networks had no choice but to cut to the protesters chanting, dancing, and marching shoulder to shoulder. America got a split screen: bottle service at Applebee’s vs. Bagatelle in Saint-Tropez.
The No Kings turnout was significant, even if it didn’t reach a critical threshold. When at least 3.5% of a country’s population actively engages in a peaceful protest movement, it has always resulted in political change, according to Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist and professor at Harvard. Chenoweth analyzed 323 nonviolent and violent mobilizations between 1900 and 2006, highlighting a range of campaigns, including the People Power movement against the Ferdinand Marcos regime in the Philippines in 1986; the Rose Revolution in 2003, in which the people of Georgia ousted Eduard Shevardnadze; and an uprising in Sudan in 2019 that forced its president of 30 years, Omar al-Bashir, to step down. She also concluded that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent movements. Every senior — in every high school, in every country — should be forced to read the previous sentence 100 times.
In an interview on Pod Save America earlier this week, Chenoweth said protest campaigns that fulfill their objectives and ignite change have similar characteristics: They are united, inclusive, highly organized, and disciplined — they stick to their strategy without getting baited into defending and debating their tactics. These campaigns of nonviolent resistance, she said, can take several different forms, including boycotts. The backlash against Tesla and Elon Musk is a case in point. Since the “Tesla Takedown” began, organizers have encouraged consumers to boycott Tesla by selling their cars, as well as their stock, while protesters have staged demonstrations at factories and showrooms to condemn Musk and his political activities, contributing to a plunge in Tesla sales in key markets. Protesters seem to agree that Musk’s politics are bad for America. We need to continue to make them bad for his business.
The 3.5% estimate isn’t a magic number. Campaigns will lose steam quickly if they attempt to hit the target without a clear strategy to sustain their momentum. Resistance movements must go beyond street demonstrations (which are often difficult to coordinate and risky) and shift to the business and economic realm. Chenoweth pointed to boycotts in apartheid-era South Africa, which created an economic crisis that contributed to the end of segregation in the early 1990s. “The most important thing that nonviolent movements are able to do,” she said, “is build enough political power and influence — and sometimes economic, social, and cultural power and influence — that they begin to elicit defections from opponents’ pillars of support.”
When it comes to taking on the administration, protesters could use some help from business leaders, many of whom have remained quiet for fear of retaliation. The protest movement will need to persuade companies that Trump’s actions, including his tariff policies, are harming their businesses and threatening the economy. I believe this is one of the biggest opportunities in the consumer market in a decade: The first business leaders to join the cause could reap significant reputational — and commercial — benefits.
The first stage-managed displays of military prowess date back to ancient times. Mesopotamian emperors decorated their palaces with friezes depicting their victories, while portraits showed rulers leading their troops into battle or crushing their opponents’ skulls, according to the Guardian. Roman generals also famously loved military parades. In recent decades, Cuba’s Fidel Castro held parades to commemorate the revolution he led in 1959. And North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, who bonded with Trump in 2018, used a 2023 military parade featuring weapons and goose-stepping soldiers to flaunt parts of his country’s nuclear arsenal — and introduce his daughter and potential successor. Earlier this year, China’s Xi Jinping joined Vladimir Putin in Red Square for Russia’s annual “Victory Day” parade. Beijing’s one-party government holds its National Day Parade every 10 years, showcasing trucks carrying nuclear missiles and other weaponry.
It’s not just authoritarian states that throw themselves parades. Just last Saturday, in Britain, King Charles III and members of the royal family appeared at Trooping the Colour, an annual parade and troop inspection to mark the monarch’s official birthday.
The chihuahua barking at his own reflection may provide a torrent of fodder for comedians, but it shouldn’t be dismissed as a joke. It’s another sign of a country descending into kleptocracy and fascism. The military parade — the first of its kind since U.S. troops returned from the Gulf War in 1991 — capped an unsettling week in which Trump deployed the Marines not to a foreign country but to the streets of Los Angeles, to quell “protests.” God, what bullshit. The autocrats’ playbook is to manifest an “enemy within”: immigrants, the media, and academics. Before invading Poland in 1939, Hitler invaded the freedoms of his own citizens. Democracy is under siege and at risk of unraveling as the U.S. slides toward “competitive authoritarianism,” a system in which elections remain important, but the incumbents manipulate the rules, abuse their power, and tilt the playing field against their rivals.
Despite the “toxic uncertainty” in the economy, threats to American values and rule of law, cruel/weird immigration policies, tax cuts for the rich, and unprecedented grift, you might still believe American democracy is inevitable. Don’t bank on it.
Scholars have worried about a global rise in “democratic backsliding,” as leaders with autocratic tendencies curtail freedoms and consolidate power. One study found that more than two-thirds of the 96 countries which experienced those backsliding episodes between 1900 and 2019 completely broke down into authoritarian rule.
There are signs of hope. Research also shows that over the past three decades about 70% of the countries that descended into autocracy managed to mount a democratic turnaround. In many cases, those fights to reverse the damage led to restored, or even stronger, levels of democracy. I’m aligned with historian Timothy Snyder, who told me last month on the Prof G pod that he’s optimistic about the American protest movement. The No Kings rallies bode well for the next stages of the resistance. Dictators and aspiring autocrats who roll out tanks on their own streets may be dangerous. But history shows they’re no match for a united, organized, and creative opposition campaign. Trump spent his birthday trying to cosplay as a strongman, while millions of Americans demonstrated what actual strength looks like. This was the desperate performance of a man who confuses attention with respect. The marches proved Trump may be able to rent tanks, but he can’t buy legitimacy. In sum, America showed up.
Life is so rich,
P.S. The Prof G Markets pod now provides analysis (and cringe jokes) every Monday through Friday. Keep up with the news and tell everyone you know to subscribe.
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2025-06-13 21:19:39
Instead of deploying a multinational force to Gaza or tanks to Ukraine … let’s have our troops descend on the Home Depot in Westlake, California. Let’s cosplay authoritarians so people look away from the speedballing wealth transfer from young to old, poor to rich, future to the past — the tax bill. Throw in tariffs that purposefully create market volatility to (insider) trade against and make billions. Exhausting …
I know: Let’s talk about streaming.
The last streaming war was Netflix vs. Hollywood. Spoiler alert: Netflix won. It reduced production costs by globalizing production, leveraging broadband and cheap capital to make Amazon-like investments that nobody could compete with. The result was a transfer of value from Hollywood studios and talent to Netflix shareholders and subscribers.
The next streaming war? A: YouTube takes on the world. This year, more people in the U.S. watched YouTube on TVs than on mobile devices — a first. YouTube is now the No. 1 distributor of TV content, according to Nielsen. And for the past three months, YouTube registered the largest share of TV viewing (12%) among media companies; Netflix accounted for 7.5%. As one anonymous streaming executive told Vulture, “[YouTube] already has the crown. Most networks have essentially thrown up their hands in response.” Last month, I asked the Prof G research team to calculate YouTube’s valuation independent of Google. They estimated YouTube’s market cap would be approximately $550 billion. Netflix, the most valuable streamer, currently has a market cap of $520 billion.
When I look at YouTube, I see public access television (Google it) at internet scale with exponentially better production values. According to my Markets co-host Ed Elson, Gen Z views YouTube as an algorithm-driven “pendulum swinging power away from brands and toward individuals.” The individual who’s levied the greatest damage on Hollywood is not Reed Hastings, but YouTuber MrBeast, who mastered the art of the parasocial relationships. In 2023 he racked up 1 billion-plus hours of viewing time, more than any of the top shows on Netflix.
But just as individual content creators disrupted Hollywood, AI may disrupt content creators. Netflix will spend an estimated $18 billion on content this year. YouTube’s content budget is effectively zero, and it therefore splits revenue with creators. According to MrBeast, a typical video costs him $2.5 million to produce. This month, an AI muzak channel overtook him, becoming the fastest-growing channel on YouTube.
A handful of animals can change their appearance to defend against predators or stealthily hunt prey. The aptly-named mimic octopus, however, takes gold, silver, and bronze in the metamorphosis category, with shape-shifting capabilities that let it emulate 18 different species. Netflix is the mimic octopus of the media ecosystem. The company began life as a mail-order DVD startup and disrupted an 800-pound gorilla called Blockbuster. Later it shape-shifted into a streaming service and disrupted an 800,000-pound gorilla called Hollywood. Now, after its first redesign in a decade, Netflix is shape-shifting again, with AI-powered content recommendations, vertical video on mobile, and an updated aesthetic to compete with YouTube and TikTok. As Netflix chief of product Eunice Kim said, “Our current TV experience was built for streaming shows and movies. This one is designed to give us a more flexible canvas now and in the future.” Translation: Netflix is content-agnostic, attention-obsessed.
The latest iteration of Netflix isn’t a pure subscription service, but a hybrid subscription-advertising company. Around 94 million subscribers have opted for Netflix’s ad tier since it launched less than three years ago. Despite the growth, I believe ads are a mistake, breaking Netflix’s core brand promise of an uninterrupted alternative to legacy media and levying the time tax known as commercials. Last year, Netflix reported $1.4 billion in ad revenue, compared to $7.4 billion for Disney, spread across broadcast, cable, and two streaming services. But Netflix has always defined competition on an impossible scale — Hastings, the founder and former CEO, used to say the company’s real competition was sleep. Netflix’s attention economy rivals include Meta ($160 billion in ad revenue last year), YouTube ($36 billion), and TikTok ($18 billion). Digital media pits all against all, resulting in a winner-take-most/all scenario where ad dollars increasingly consolidate around the small number of companies that have captured nearly all of our attention. For its next act, Netflix is reportedly focused on reaching a trillion-dollar market cap. “In the previous five years, we have doubled our revenue, grew profits 10 times, and we grew our market cap three times,” co-CEO Ted Sarandos said. “So there’s a path.”
When a company has a profitable but declining business (cable) and a growth business (streaming), investors don’t know who they’re waking up next to — Jekyll or Hyde. Because they don’t know how to value the asset, they assign the multiple of the worst business to the entire company. The divestiture of assets in different life cycle stages provides greater investor clarity and ultimately creates a smaller whole greater than the sum of its parts. Last year, Comcast went good bank/bad bank, spinning its linear assets into a legacy portfolio called Versant, while consolidating the studio, theme parks, NBC, Bravo, and Peacock into a growth company. This week, Warner Bros. Discovery followed suit, announcing it would spin off its linear assets into a new company called Global Networks.
The key question, however, isn’t who controls which assets, but how much of WBD’s $35 billion debt will fall to Global Networks. Much of WBD’s debt is long-dated, low-interest, as it was issued when Fed rates were near zero. Now that rates are much higher, WBD bonds are trading at a discount. As part of the spinoff, WBD announced a $17.5 billion committed bridge facility from JPMorgan Chase that will allow it to capture the discount by buying its outstanding debt and retiring it for less than the face amount. If it assumes a serviceable debt load — business writer Bill Cohan puts the threshold at $27 billion — Global Networks will be in a position to merge with Comcast’s Versant, and/or whatever linear assets Paramount and/or Disney ultimately spin off. (Note: Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC the spinoffs give Disney an advantage, as it plans to further integrate its linear assets.)
As for Warner Bros., the stock popped 13% on the news of the spinoffs, but ended the day down 3%, as investors realized the company remains in CEO David Zaslav’s hands. Since merging Warner Bros. with Discovery three years ago, Zaslav has presided over a 60% collapse in share price, committed brand malpractice against HBO, and gone full mogul, purchasing the Beverly Hills mansion owned by legendary producer Robert Evans. If the president hadn’t become the biggest grifter in modern history, people might notice a CEO paying himself a third of a billion dollars over five years in exchange for halving shareholder value. But alas … we have a president engaged in the largest grift in modern history. Small consolation: Last week, shareholders rejected Zaslav’s $51.9 million 2024 pay package — 3x the average comp for an S&P 500 CEO — in a nonbinding “say on pay” vote.
In Succession, the HBO show loosely based on Rupert Murdoch’s family and media empire, Logan Roy tells his kids, “I love you, but you’re not serious people.” Looking at Paramount’s real-life succession shit show, Sumner Redstone’s ghost might say to his daughter, Shari, “I love you, but we are seriously fucked.” In a Puck column this week, Cohan pointed out that if Shari Redstone doesn’t close the deal to sell Paramount to Skydance and RedBird Capital soon, it could bankrupt National Amusements, the family’s holding company. To close, Redstone needs FTC approval, but a $20 billion lawsuit filed by President Trump over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris stands in the way. If the lawsuit, i.e. shakedown, can’t be settled and the deal doesn’t close, former FCC Commissioner Rob McDowell said Paramount Global would be “a melting ice cube.”
A decade ago, consumers were eager to cut the cord, as local cable monopolies, contracts, equipment rentals, and service windows that made it feel like autonomous Teslas would show up before the cable guy paved the way for streaming. But now that U.S. streaming households have an average of five subscriptions, the bundle looks attractive again. Bundling may also be a lifeline for legacy media’s streaming platforms. According to analytics firm Antenna, the Disney+/Hulu/Max bundle has an 80% retention rate — compared to 74% for Netflix. A Netflix subscription ranges from $7.99 to $24.99 a month, depending on the plan, while the Disney+/Hulu/Max bundle, i.e. cable without the cord, costs between $16.99 and $29.99.
Still, churn is the Achilles’ heel of any subscription business, and streaming is no exception. As Antenna CEO Jonathan Carson told the Wall Street Journal, “The consumer experience around managing subscriptions is one of the areas that still needs a lot of settling.” That settling is likely years away, as there are nearly two-dozen U.S. streaming services with at least 500,000 subscribers, and more streamers are on the way, including Fox’s direct-to-consumer offering, CNN’s second swing at a subscription service, and a new ESPN streamer. Meanwhile, consumers have become accustomed to “churn and return” — the practice of timing a subscription for a specific content offering, then canceling before moving on to the next streamer. Put simply, there are too many players and too few chairs. When the music stops, streamers will face a choice: consolidate via mergers and acquisitions or bundle up.
Last year, Netflix paid $150 million for the right to air two NFL games on Christmas Day and at least one Christmas Day game in 2025 and 2026. The first two games averaged 24 million domestic viewers — a streaming record. Netflix also struck a 10-year $5 billion deal with WWE to stream its weekly wrestling show, Raw. The beauty of live sports is they’re a content offering that drives subscriptions, plus a coveted advertising product, i.e., their audience can’t skip the commercials. The challenge of live sports is that the leagues lock up rights in expensive, long-term contracts that are staggered so that no single media company can achieve a monopoly. For Netflix, sports is a foothold in the ad business, but for legacy media companies, especially Disney, Comcast, and Fox, sports is a moat.
We lost something in the streaming wars: a shared culture. Neil Postman warned in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death that we were becoming a society obsessed with entertainment over enlightenment. He was right, but only glimpsed half the problem — we’re still amusing ourselves to death, but we’re doing it alone. In 1983, 106 million Americans — nearly half the country — watched the final episode of M.A.S.H. Last year’s most-watched scripted television finale, Yellowstone, drew 13 million viewers, or 4% of the nation. We’ve traded appointment television for on-demand everything, and in the process, atomized the American experience. This isn’t nostalgia, but a recognition that America has lost two pillars of society: shared experiences and a collective.
Without shared stories, we don’t laugh together, love/hate the same heroes/villains, or believe in the same facts when we argue. We lose our empathy, our ability to see each other as human. It’s hard to demonize someone you watched Cheers with every Thursday night; it’s easy to hate someone whose cultural references are completely foreign to your feed. Living in the U.K., I’m struck by how angry Americans are. Our rage obviously goes deeper than what we watch, but shared stories are how we might come together again. That’s the optimistic take on the tsunami of on-demand content washing over us.
Another take is that the key to a slow burn into authoritarianism is distraction from … the slow burn into fascism. In America, we’ve been trained to stay docile and distracted with cheap calories, manufactured chaos, and fear-mongering about the “enemy within”: immigrants, academics, media, the deep state. There’s multiple big tents, endless distractions, and less fellowship.
Life’s so rich,
P.S. The Prof G Markets pod is now five days a week. That’s 5x the news, analysis, and cringe jokes for the same price: zero. Tell everyone you know to subscribe.
The post Stream On appeared first on No Mercy / No Malice.
2025-06-06 23:18:35
In the war between Trump & Musk, I’m rooting for the bullets. However, the whole thing is (again) a distraction from the significant damage being levied on the country. It’s tempting to believe America will emerge from the Trump chaos unscathed. It won’t.
The defining features of this presidency are cruelty and chaos — but chaos with a purpose. Share prices plunge following tariff threats, only to rally when he backs down. The White House attempts to bar Harvard from enrolling international students, then gets blocked by the courts. Trump calls for Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to be fired, then insists days later he has “no intention” of terminating him. Even if most of his promises go unfulfilled, the long-term damage will be severe.
If Trump were a poker player, he’d swagger to the table talking shit, go all in, then fold before his opponents respond. It’s easy to dismiss this behavior as crazy or incompetent. But it raises a troubling question: Is this a deliberate effort — straight out of an autocrat’s playbook — to create volatility that the autocrat and his acolytes can exploit? What if this isn’t incompetence, but a strategy?
Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong coined the perfect term: the TACO trade — Trump Always Chickens Out. But Armstrong told us on Prof G Markets that chaos may be the point: Trump and his team have such contempt for the system, they don’t see any downside risk in burning the village to save it.
These policy gyrations have created an association of “toxic uncertainty” with brand USA. Announcing more than 50 new or revised tariff policies in a matter of months makes no sense, until it does. Trump’s market manipulation operates like a carnival game — it’s rigged. The house always wins, as it knows when the music is about to stop.
Trump’s ability to trigger wild swings in stock prices has created an environment ripe for insider trading, undermining trust in U.S. markets and eroding a pillar of American prosperity — the rule of fair play. When Trump shocks the market and then retreats, it gives his inner circle, both in Washington and on Wall Street, an opportunity to place trades with asymmetric upside. They have information the other players (whether they’re buying or selling) don’t possess.
Trump’s tariff proclamations have created some of the most extreme market volatility in decades:
Multi-trillion-dollar swings happening within hours of his statements aren’t market forces — they’re signs of manipulation with a presidential seal. The markets are essentially reacting in real time to his policy announcements and reversals, creating unprecedented uncertainty for investors … and opportunity for those who are inside.
A string of incredibly prescient trades has sparked concern that Trump’s allies may be trading on material nonpublic information. ProPublica reported that more than a dozen high-ranking officials made well-timed trades following Trump’s inauguration — most selling stock before markets tanked.
Attorney General Pam Bondi sold $1 million to $5 million in Trump Media stock on April 2, the same day the president announced his Liberation Day tariffs. The timing of her trades that day is unclear. But think about that: The nation’s top cop is selling stocks the day an announcement by the president ignites a crash in prices. Trump Media slipped 13% in the following days, before recovering.
Wow. What. Luck.
Most damaging: On April 9, Trump posted a message to followers on Truth Social: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.” Less than four hours later, he announced a tariff pause, sending stocks soaring. Billionaires tracked by Bloomberg enjoyed their best day ever, adding more than $300 billion to their combined net worth.
Maxine Waters, the California Democrat, zeroed in on suspicious call option trading in the 10 minutes before Trump’s announcement. “No rational investor would have purchased these options unless they had prior knowledge of the president’s impending reversal on tariff policy,” she and her House colleagues wrote in an April 10 letter to Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins requesting an investigation.
Less than two weeks later, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, speaking at a closed-door investor summit hosted by JPMorgan Chase, said he expected a “de-escalation” in Trump’s trade war with China. Stocks, which had already started recovering after a sharp drop the previous day, soared after Bessent’s comments were reported.
Elizabeth Warren demanded an explanation. The Massachusetts senator argued in a letter to Bessent that Trump’s opaque tariff decisions and “frequent, seemingly random changes of course have created a scenario where wealthy investors and well-connected corporations can get special treatment, receiving inside information they can use to time the market, or obtaining tariff exemptions that are worth billions of dollars — while Main Street, small businesses, and America’s families are left to clean up the damage.”
In late May, stocks dropped again after Trump threatened to raise tariffs to 50% on goods from the EU. But when the president subsequently said those tariffs would be delayed until July, his comments triggered a global rally over the next two days.
The White House has announced a flurry of new and revised tariff policies since Inauguration Day in January. But I’m willing to bet that very little will change over the next year or two when it comes to trade policy. I also predict that Trump will fail to follow through on most of his threats, on everything from tariffs to Harvard, as he backpedals or gets stymied by the courts.
The country’s top securities cop will get to the bottom of it … at least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. But at a time when suspicious trading activity is mounting, the SEC is being defanged. Trump earlier this year signed an executive order to “rein in” independent regulators, including the SEC, and make them accountable to the administration. The order forces the agency to report to the White House for approval.
At the same time, thanks to buyout and retirement programs offered by the administration, the SEC workforce is being slashed. SEC divisions reportedly lost up to 19% of their staff over a period of just several weeks. The fox isn’t just in the henhouse — now he is the farmer.
And don’t expect a strongly worded letter from Senators Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren to light a fire under Atkins, the pro-business crypto enthusiast Trump picked to head the SEC. You can bet Atkins will take a lighter regulatory approach than his predecessor, Gary Gensler.
Insider trading has long been a scourge. James B. Stewart chronicled the 1980s insider trading scandals in his book Den of Thieves. Sheelah Kolhatkar’s 2017 book, Black Edge, tells the story of billionaire hedge fund investor Steven A. Cohen, his former firm, SAC Capital Advisors, and the largest insider trading investigation in history. SAC pleaded guilty in 2013 to fraud charges and agreed to pay a record $1.2 billion penalty. While Cohen wasn’t charged, he agreed to a two-year ban on managing outside money. In 2014, his firm was reborn as Point72. Six years later, he bought the New York Mets.
But the conditions today threaten to usher in a golden age of insider trading, inviting well-connected investors to cheat. I predict that the next set of results from the nation’s hedge fund managers will show that some of them have made a killing, raising questions about whether they’ve capitalized on insider information to achieve those gains.
The collateral damage happens to the people on the other side of these trades. They are losing fortunes. As Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Applebaum argues, American policy is “being transformed, not to benefit Americans but to benefit the president, his family, and his friends.”
In our conversation last month, she said that fighting corruption depends on connecting it to ordinary people’s lives, showing “they are poor because the Trump family is rich.” She noted that Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who stood up to Putin and died in a remote prison above the Arctic Circle, successfully linked Russia’s kleptocracy to bad roads and poor healthcare.
Ensuring America has a fair playing field is key to its success — that’s why we have five times Europe’s risk capital for startups. It’s why our companies garner $26 in value for every $1 dollar in profit. Russia is a kleptocracy. The total value of its stock market is around $80b, vs. $52t for the U.S. The erosion of faith has disastrous consequences. Corruption is contagious. It starts with one infected trade, spreads to cabinet members, then metastasizes through Congress and the donor class. America under Trump hasn’t just caught the disease — it’s becoming a superspreader event that will infect global capitalism.
Mean girls breaking up makes for good reality TV, but it’s a misdirect from the grift that will reduce our prosperity and limit our ability to protect others at home and abroad.
Life is so rich,
P.S. I’m sitting down with Microsoft’s chief scientist, Jaime Teevan, to discuss the topic on everyone’s minds: AI’s impact on our jobs. RSVP to AI and the Future of Work for free. Hosted by Section.
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2025-05-30 22:18:19
Last week, the fiscal lunatics proved they are still running the asylum. The last fit of congressional sanity broke out during the Clinton administration. This week, House Republicans sent the Senate a budget that adds $3.8 trillion to the deficit. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” pairs unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy with a combined $1.1 trillion reduction in spending on programs including Medicaid and SNAP. The math isn’t mathing: Older/wealthier Americans are running up younger/poorer Americans’ credit cards to maintain their lifestyle. One especially offensive provision: a permanent increase in the estate tax exemption to an inflation-indexed $15 million, per person — letting couples pass $30 million to their heirs tax-free while slashing food stamps.
The budget’s fastest-growing line item isn’t defense, or healthcare, but the interest on our debt. Even if this $3.7 trillion middle finger to future generations doesn’t pass, net interest payments on the debt will total $13.8 trillion over the next decade. We’re basically cosigning a subprime mortgage for our grandchildren while giving the wealthy a trust fund top-off.
As interest payments increase, they crowd out any discretionary spending critical for growth (e.g., the internet, medical research, education), and curb our ability to respond to future crises. Nations typically aren’t conquered but go broke. According to historian Niall Ferguson, there’s a redline where debt service exceeds defense spending. In fiscal year 2024, we hit it. The federal budget earmarked $877 billion for defense and $878 billion to pay the interest on our debt. As Ferguson wrote, “America’s fiscal position is far more constrained today than ever before,” adding that the U.S. faces a debt crisis similar to the ones that contributed to the downfalls of the Spanish, French, and British empires. We’re now spending more to service rich people’s tax cuts than to defend the country. So, raise taxes or cut spending? The answer is yes. Note: Both parties engage in this consensual hallucination — taxes went down during the Biden administration and spending (YTD) has gone up under Trump.
The oldest Baby Boomers turn 79 this year. Despite medical advances, exercise, better nutrition, and an industry devoted to anti-aging, biology remains undefeated. Delusions aside, nobody is getting out of here alive or taking anything with them. History’s greatest generational wealth transfer is underway. One research firm projects that the wealth transferred through 2048 will total $124 trillion. That inheritance tsunami won’t be evenly distributed. The 2% of American households that are considered high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth are expected to pass half of that ($62 trillion) to their heirs. The majority of Americans won’t see any wealth transfer, however, as only 1 in 5 American households inherits anything at all.
Thirty years ago, pollster Frank Luntz argued that Republicans should rebrand the estate tax as the “death tax,” advising GOP lawmakers to hold press conferences at local mortuaries. It worked. Here’s the con: Americans fear a tax that affects fewer than 1 in 1,000 estates while cheering cuts to programs they actually use.
Smart taxation policy raises revenue with the least collateral damage. This is the foundation of a progressive tax policy: Levying the highest rates on the poor would create massive anxiety and unrest among the most vulnerable. With an estate tax, the collateral damage is small, but the rhetorical damage is significant. Americans understandably recoil at the idea of a “death tax,” even though the vast majority of them are not subject to it. Americans’ optimism can be a policy weakness, as we idolize the wealthy, believing one day we may enjoy their asymmetrical advantage. What we’re taxing, however, isn’t an estate but dynastic wealth. For too long, the death tax misdirect has obscured an elegant (see above: little collateral damage) solution.
Critics argue that the estate tax amounts to double taxation. I’m sympathetic, but only to a point, as unrealized capital gains account for 55% of the value of the wealthiest estates, meaning the wealthy are essentially avoiding nearly all taxes. In addition, the cartoon of the family store or farm being put out of business falls flat: Fewer than 100 family businesses per year owe any estate tax. In 2023 the estate tax generated $24 billion in revenue. Speaking to Bloomberg, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers observed that an estimated “$2.5 trillion passing, and the vast majority of that being among 5% or 1% of the people who die, and only collecting 1% of it in taxes? I do think we can do better.” The current plan, however, is to do worse. It’s estimated that the Big Beautiful Bill’s estate tax provision will cost the government more than $200 billion in lost revenue over the next decade, or nearly two-thirds of the projected cuts to SNAP. We’re literally taking food from poor kids to give rich kids bigger trust funds.
My proposal: The U.S. should drop its exemption to $1 million and tax inheritances above that threshold at 40%, without loopholes. According to Brookings, that would raise an estimated $118 billion in annual revenue, or more than $1 trillion over a decade — enough to cover proposed cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. The cost to the families that pay the estate tax? Wealthy kids would no longer be as wealthy, but they’d still be wealthy.
I believe wealthy people have the right to transfer economic security to their descendants. But there’s no free lunch, and an inheritance can become an albatross. As William K. Vanderbilt, a descendant of Cornelius Vanderbilt, explained, inheritance is “as certain a death to ambition as cocaine is to morality.”
Still, the third-generation curse makes for good drama. (See: HBO’s Succession.) And anecdotally, the fear of the curse is real. Case in point: Paramount. Just before a deal to sell the company was announced, my Markets co-host Ed Elson asked, “Is there anything more American than the children of three billionaires — Shari Redstone, David Ellison, and Edgar Bronfman Jr. — vying for control of a failed Hollywood studio?”
In 2010, Daniel Kahneman and another Nobel winner, Angus Deaton, published a study which appeared to show that income was strongly correlated with happiness at low income levels, but that earning more than $75,000 had no impact on happiness. Later, another academic at Wharton, Matt Killingsworth, challenged that finding. Working together, along with a third academic neutral to the dispute, Kahneman and Killingsworth found that the original study had measured the decrease in unhappiness but hadn’t captured the upside high-income people enjoyed. When more carefully measured, happiness continued rising with income. However, there were dramatically diminishing returns. There were real gains to happiness in moving from $100,000 in income to $200,000, but to see that same gain again required another doubling of income, to $400,000. Extend the curve, and it flattens further.
I believe this finding should influence tax policy. A more progressive tax code that levies inherited wealth is a net positive: It raises revenue; holds happiness steady; and motivates the most privileged to strive. As I’ve said many times, greatness is in the agency of others. Most people work their entire life to achieve economic security for their family. Those who receive that security as a birthright owe it to themselves, their families, and society to transform unearned privilege into earned purpose. There is no tax that’s not taxing. But estate taxes come close.
Growing up, I was the kid being raised by a single mom who didn’t have money. I was reminded of this when my friends bolted from our newly integrated public school (Emerson) for a private school (Windward). I was left behind, wearing fake top-siders (real Sperrys cost $32) and being devastated when I lost the Vuarnets my mom had given me for Christmas. But this isn’t a sob story. We were never hungry or afraid, and being the kid who was always late on his fraternity bill ignited embers of desire and grit that have served me well. Also, now that I have some money, I just plain enjoy it more than people born with it.
As I get older, I drink more but am also more sober. In fits of sobriety I recognize a lot of my success is not my fault. (Note: I am not humble, but among my many skills is basic pattern recognition.) No one thing, but an amalgam of blessings: being born in America a white, heterosexual male in the sixties; having a mother irrationally passionate about my well-being; benefiting from government-funded technologies (e.g., the internet, GPS); beginning my career in a risk-aggressive, entrepreneurial culture; having access to deep pools of capital; and getting admitted to the University of California. That affordable and accessible higher education, funded by California taxpayers, illuminated a path of upward prosperity. Key to my ability to access this path was affirmative action, specifically Pell Grants.
The GOP’s small-minded, ugly bill would cut Pell Grants by $67 billion through 2034, reducing grants to low-income students by more than one-fifth from 2027 through 2034. More than half of Pell students would have their aid reduced in some way. The math is simple: My kids inheriting a few million less so we can offer millions wider paths to education, jobs, wealth, and more tax revenue is a no-brainer trade-off. The whole point of, and reward from, prosperity is to protect. As the Greek proverb says, “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” My generation is full of old men who are in the business of clear-cutting. It needs to stop.
Life is so rich,
P.S. The Prof G Markets Pod now has a newsletter edition. Sign up here to receive it every Monday. You can thank me later.
The post Rich Kids appeared first on No Mercy / No Malice.
2025-05-23 23:16:24
The 0.1% have insulated themselves from the general public with their own schools, health care, transportation, security, and justice system. The members of this rarefied class are unfazed by the chaos unfolding outside their gated properties. They’re indifferent to Roe v. Wade’s demise, immigration roundups, and rising prices at Walmart. If a family member has an unwanted pregnancy or mobs arrive with pitchforks, they’ll always have access to mifepristone and residency in Dubai, London, or Milan. They’re invested in hedge funds and fine art, not in the future of America. With the means to hire shrewd defense attorneys and aggressive PR firms that weaponize social media bots, the superrich are protected by the law, but not bound by it. The lower 99% are bound by the law, but not protected by it.
Living in their bubble, the extremely rich express shock and horror, but opt not to rock the $300 million boat. Along with prominent Republicans, Democrats, and corporate CEOs, they’re brothers in the disarmament … of our democracy. They’re forging an unholy alliance, tolerating the descent into kleptocracy and the slow burn toward fascism. If the heat pierces the shields they’ve erected, these Transnational Oligarchs, or Toligarchs, as I’ve labeled them, can grab their bags, write a check, and purchase a “golden visa” to Greece or Portugal.
With vast wealth comes enormous influence. Money is a proxy for power. The top 0.1% have more than five times as much wealth as the bottom 50%. Just 100 billionaire families invested a record $2.6 billion in federal elections last year, 1 of every 6 dollars spent overall. These wealthy individuals could galvanize politicians and push back against policies that undermine American values, but they’re largely quiet. When you fail to speak out against threats to democracy, equality, and the rule of law, you turn your back on the people and country that elevated you to the iron throne of prosperity. Even the Lannisters always paid their debts.
There’s a clear pattern: As wealth concentrates, political spending capacity increases, which secures policy outcomes that further concentrate wealth, creating a self-reinforcing cycle that undermines democratic equality. The most dramatic acceleration of this trend occurred after Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that opened the doors to unlimited spending on American elections.
Consider the following stats:
In sum, as wealth inequality gets worse … it gets (even) worse.
In his first 100 days as president in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt moved swiftly to lift the country out of the Great Depression, building the foundation for his New Deal. As historians have observed, he had another objective: to prove democracy works. But the president’s programs sparked criticism from rich Americans, who regarded him as a traitor to his class. A powerful group, including the DuPonts, the founders of General Motors, and assorted oil millionaires, launched the American Liberty League to fight back.
Today we again need some bold class traitors to address America’s worsening inequalities. Over the past two decades, the top 0.1% of American households have seen their share of the country’s wealth rise from about 10% to 14%, according to Federal Reserve data. During the same period, the bottom 50% of Americans have watched their stake go from about 2.5% to …. 2.5%. More than $22 trillion (and counting) is in the hands of the 0.1%, while just $4 trillion is spread out across the bottom half of the country.
New data last month showed that $1 trillion of wealth — more than the value of Switzerland’s economy — was created for the 19 richest American households in 2024. It would take 726,000 years for 10 typical American workers to earn the $365 billion the country’s 10 richest billionaires made in the past 12 months.
The rapidly-expanding class of Toligarchs remains silent. Not because they’re content with the disorder, disruption, and erosion of American values, but because they continue to get richer. They lack the courage to make any noise, and their rights are largely portable. And the gap would only widen with Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill, which would take from the poor and give to the rich. The top 0.1% on average would reportedly gain more than $389,000 in after-tax income in 2026.
Just a few decades ago, when the rich felt more invested in America, such stats would have triggered a greater outcry. However, things have changed. Rather than using its platform to strengthen America, the country’s aristocracy is focusing more on its exit strategy if shit gets real. When the wealthiest 0.1% talk about diversification today, there’s a good chance they’re thinking about passports, not private equity.
One part of the escape plan are those golden visas, which allow foreigners to live and work in another country by making a large investment — starting at around $280,000 and stretching into the millions — and often offer a path to a second passport. Among the most attractive destinations are Greece, Italy, Malta, Panama, Portugal, and Thailand. One investment migration adviser (no doubt a growing business) said in January that it had registered a 1,000% increase in interest in second residencies and citizenships over the past five years. Bloomberg has chronicled how rich Americans are “flex-working” on the French Riviera, preparing to “swoop in” if New Zealand relaxes its ban on foreigners buying homes, and “flocking to Spain,” despite the end of its golden visa.
In Britain, meanwhile, record numbers of Americans applied for citizenship in 2024, especially in the months leading up to the start of President Trump’s term. The surge in interest in getting another passport was attributed to the president’s reelection bid and victory in November, as well as tax changes in the U.K. that have pushed rich Americans to obtain British passports before they leave the country.
The number of Americans buying prime London real estate in Knightsbridge, Mayfair, and other expensive neighborhoods surpassed Chinese purchasers for the first time last year. A story in the Guardian earlier this month quoted a chef and business owner in the Cotswolds saying the region was becoming the “Hamptons of England.”
Globally, a record 135,000 millionaires are projected to migrate to a new country this year. In the U.K., where I’ve been living for a few years, not a day goes by without a story about millionaires fleeing the country in search of lower-tax jurisdictions or greater economic stability. A record number of British citizens have applied for Irish passports, five years post-Brexit, as they strive to gain “backdoor” access to the European Union.
At the same time, the U.S. is hoping to attract Toligarchs moving in the opposite direction. While America carries out a wave of arrests and visa revocations of students, it’s moving forward with a new “gold card” visa program that could lead to permanent residency for wealthy individuals who are willing to pay a fee of about $5 million. Anybody who is willing (i.e., needs to) pay $5 million for a visa to a Western country is not moving but fleeing.
American prosperity and rights blessed me with the opportunity to move to the U.K. These included access to family planning that staved off poverty for my single mom; the free and accessible education I got at UCLA/Berkeley, thanks to affirmative action programs (i.e., Pell Grants); and the country’s culture of entrepreneurship. The U.S. also offered the rule of law and consistency, which created the deepest pools of capital in the world (I’ve raised close to $1b for my startups and projects), an unrivaled talent pool of citizens and the best and brightest from abroad (immigrants), numerous European and Asian clients who enjoyed working with “the good guys” (Americans), and sane fiscal management that enabled massive investments in the technologies that have made me and hundreds of my colleagues wealthy. Those factors opened many doors for my family, including this one allowing me to cross the Atlantic for a spell.
This is not a time to plan an exit, or stay abroad, but to return home.
When I head back next year, I’ll use my voice and proximity to money and power to push for change to Make America America Again. And BTW, for those suffering from TDS (Trump devotion syndrome), hope is on the way. EBA (evidence-based analysis) or BPR (basic pattern recognition) should eventually pry people away from the criminality and stupidity of this administration.
For now, the Toligarchs are aligned with Fortune 500 CEOs, who privately believe the country is on a dangerous course but publicly cower. Just as the first corporate titans to stand up for what’s right will reap reputational and commercial rewards, Toligarch class traitors will earn a place in the history books as American patriots. At a minimum, if your blessings have not translated into the courage and obligation to use your power and platform to publicly voice concern, then do us all a favor and privately shut the fuck up.
Life is so rich,
The post Rise of the Toligarchs appeared first on No Mercy / No Malice.
2025-05-16 23:35:31
This week, President Trump signed an executive order to lower drug prices, demanding the U.S. receive most favored nation status from pharmaceutical companies — that they charge Americans the lowest price paid abroad. Trump said his policy would cut drug prices by 59%: “Whoever is paying the lowest price, that’s the price that we’re going to get.” One issue though: It’s bullshit. Pharma stocks fell initially, but they more than recovered once the market realized the executive “order” is voluntary. The markets saw the order as a Mack Truck sees an insect — barely. The announcement is laughable when set against the regulatory capture of the U.S. healthcare industry.
In the Wall Street Journal, historian Niall Ferguson wrote, “any great power that spends more on debt service than on defense risks ceasing to be a great power.” Sooner or later, the interest on the debt crowds out a nation’s capacity to do anything else — fight wars, survive pandemics, build infrastructure, fund social safety nets, etc. In fiscal year 2024, the federal budget earmarked $877 billion for defense and $878 billion to pay the interest on our debt. As Ferguson explained, “America’s fiscal position is far more constrained today than ever before.” In fact, he argued, we’re facing a debt crisis similar to the ones that contributed to the downfalls of the Spanish, French, and British empires. As I previously wrote, countries typically are not conquered — they go broke. America is up against it.
Reigning in our debt should be a national priority, but it isn’t. Congressional Republicans are working to make Trump’s tax cuts permanent, which would add $9 trillion to the debt — 3x the national debt of Germany. During the campaign, Elon Musk said he’d cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. More recently, DOGE claimed to have saved $160 billion, but a nonpartisan analysis determined those cuts came at a cost of $135 billion, netting savings of $25 billion. The GOP refuses to acknowledge math and believes the nation will grow if we cut taxes to zero. Meanwhile, nearly all Democrats oppose entitlement cuts, and most also oppose cutting defense spending, believing instead that we can tax our way out of debt. This bipartisan Kabuki dance is juvenile. Just as parents tell themselves their kid “doesn’t need college in today’s world,” we’ve decided there is a free lunch, governments with their own reserve currency don’t risk default, and we’re not headed toward a cliff.
Modern Monetary Theory is the latest consensual hallucination between policymakers who want to excuse their past behavior and those who want an excuse to spend more. They believe a perpetual motion machine does exist. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t. I received a degree in economics (weak flex, as I graduated with a 2.27), taught macro- and microeconomics in grad school (better flex), worked in fixed income for Morgan Stanley (getting weaker again), and have written several books on economics and finance (you decide). It’s dangerous to be certain, and I’m not an economist. But I am … certain that MMT is fucking stupid, and any economist espousing this intellectual traif makes RFK Jr. seem like Jonas Salk.
Anyway, when the adults show up we should have a serious sit-down re closing the fiscal gap — the amount the government needs to raise taxes and / or cut spending, as a share of GDP, to stabilize our fiscal health. The Treasury estimates the current fiscal gap is 4.3% of GDP. Stanley Druckenmiller, famous for betting against the British pound and delivering 30% annual returns over three decades, puts the gap at 7.7%.
U.S. debt-to-GDP currently stands at 120%, with the CBO projecting it could rise to 160% by the 2050s. But in a presentation that should be required viewing for Congress, Oakcliff Capital CEO Bryan Lawrence points out that the CBO projections include a number of unrealistic assumptions: no recessions, no wars, no pandemics, 4% interest on Treasuries, 2% inflation, a birth rate of 1.9, the addition of 1.9 million immigrants per year, and Trump’s tax cuts expiring. What we should focus on, Lawrence argues, is the 2% real growth in healthcare costs per capita. A 1 percentage point reduction in the growth of healthcare costs per capita translates to 3% of GDP. According to Lawrence, that gets us halfway to our goal of eliminating the fiscal gap, which he estimates to be 6% of GDP. In sum, reducing healthcare costs isn’t the best option, it’s the only option.
Every election cycle, candidates tell Americans their healthcare system is expensive and broken. Yes, Americans know this. Incomprehensible insurance bills, medical and dental debt haunting 40% of U.S. households, and trips to Canada or Mexico for cheaper prescription drugs have turned our healthcare system into one of our biggest sources of emotional distress. U.S. healthcare is a $4.9t corrupt cop. In a report that looked at costs and outcomes across 10 industrialized nations, researchers at the Commonwealth Fund wrote, “The U.S. continues to be in a class by itself in the underperformance of its healthcare sector.” For those in the back of the class, that’s the wrong kind of exceptionalism.
According to the most recent data, the U.S. spends $13,432 per capita on healthcare — more than twice what the average comparable nation spends. We pay 8x what Germany and Switzerland pay for Ozempic and 7x what they pay for Humira. Insulin, which has been in mass production since the 1930s, costs 8x more in the U.S. than it does in Greece. The median cost of a coronary bypass in the U.S. is $89,000, approximately 8x and 5x what the procedure costs in Spain and Australia, respectively. In the U.S. a childbirth with a C-section costs 4x what it does in South Africa. An appendectomy in the U.S. costs 3x what it does in the U.K. For what we spend, we should be the healthiest nation among our peers. We aren’t; we pay significantly more for dramatically poorer outcomes.
This week, House Republicans floated $880 billion in Medicaid cuts over the next decade to help pay for Trump’s $4.5 trillion tax cut. Even by Washington standards, the math doesn’t math. But considering the GOP’s slim Congressional majority and the political fallout from throwing an estimated 8 million people off the health insurance rolls, the proposal likely won’t go anywhere. These aren’t serious people.
A serious person would ask a simple question: Where does the money the U.S. spends in excess of what other nations spend on healthcare go? Answer: 30% of it goes to administrative costs, split evenly between providers and insurers. Another 10% goes to prescription drugs. Higher salaries for U.S. doctors and nurses and investments in medical equipment account for the rest.
There’s no silver bullet to lowering costs, but Bryan Lawrence identified our two most powerful tools: Pricing transparency and negotiating prescription drug costs. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (worst name ever) granted Medicare the power, for the first time, to negotiate drug prices. Based on a complicated formula, Health and Human Services selected 10 drugs covered under Medicare Part D. The discounts range from 38% to 79%. When these prices take effect next year, Medicare will save an estimated $6 billion, and Medicare beneficiaries will save $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs. In the final days of the administration, Biden’s HHS secretary announced another 15 drugs, including Ozempic, would be eligible for Medicare negotiation. Q: Why isn’t the largest purchaser of pharmaceuticals on the planet able to negotiate costs — like everyone else — on all drugs? A: Fuck if I know.
The insurance industrial complex imprints two ideas into the zeitgeist. First, you’re irresponsible if you don’t have health insurance. Second, the best companies offer employees gold-plated plans as a point of differentiation. As an entrepreneur, I noticed that my firm’s health insurance premiums increased by two or four points above inflation every year. Those costs were effectively nonnegotiable, so when I had the means to do so, I went naked, saving my family $50,000 per year in premiums. Note: I’m not suggesting you do this — I’m fortunate to be able to absorb any healthcare costs.
Total U.S. healthcare expenditures were $4.9 trillion in 2023. Think about the previous sentence: The U.S. healthcare industrial complex is bigger than the entire German economy. Private businesses accounted for 18% of total expenditures, with three-quarters of that money going toward insurance premiums. American households, two-thirds of which have employer-sponsored plans, picked up another 27% of total expenditures via employee contributions to premiums, co-pays, and out-of-pocket expenses. In a functioning market, consumers would allocate their dollars toward lower costs and better outcomes. In the U.S. healthcare market, however, consumers are left in the dark while insurers and providers maximize profits.
More than 90% of Americans support greater healthcare price transparency. I don’t know what the other 10% of Americans are thinking, but I do know that roughly the same share of Americans work in healthcare. Probably just a coincidence. Injecting price transparency into healthcare could save an estimated $1 trillion annually, as employers and consumers could harness the power of markets to lower costs and inspire better outcomes. Senate Republicans, Democrats, and even the chamber’s lone socialist support the Health Care PRICE Transparency Act 2.0. So why hasn’t it become law? Because money is speech, and the healthcare industry and its lobbyists have told Congress, “Give us America’s wallet, or we will fucking kill you (get you booted out of office).”
In 2024, U.S. businesses spent $4.4 billion on lobbying. It may be the greatest ROI in economic history. One study found that lobbying connected to a 2004 law that created a one-time tax holiday for repatriated profits delivered a 22,000% return. In 2013, Amgen spent $5 million lobbying Congress for a two-year reprieve from Medicare price controls on a single drug. That effort resulted in $500 million of Medicare payments to Amgen. No other industry embodies regulatory capture like the healthcare industrial complex.
I’m watching Season 2 of Andor. It’s the best television show so far in the Star Wars franchise, but even if the Force isn’t strong with you, Andor is an illuminating case study in how revolutions begin. When we meet Cassian Andor, he’s a petty thief, but as the Empire steps up pressure across the galaxy, our hero and others like him evolve into revolutionaries.
Luigi Mangione, who allegedly murdered a health insurance CEO, isn’t a revolutionary, but he’s become a folk hero. His crowd-funded legal defense fund recently topped $1 million, with an average donation of $20. That a murderer would be seen as a hero is depraved — and revealing. Given everything America has lived through — deindustrialization, two forever wars in the Middle East, the Great Recession, an opioid epidemic, the highest per capita pandemic death rate among comparable industrialized nations, the largest generational wealth transfer in history, and millions of young men failing to launch — it’s not surprising that voters chose a felon who promised that he alone could fix it. He can’t, but if we don’t fix it, the wealth inequality at the root of America’s pain will self-correct via war, famine, or revolution.
A story that haunts me: For the first time, the New York Times announced the wedding of a young couple who weren’t legally getting married — just having a ceremony. The bride was suffering from terminal brain cancer and didn’t want her husband to inherit her medical debt when she died. We live in the most prosperous nation in history. We shouldn’t be asking our kids to borrow money to support their parents’ and grandparents’ lifestyle. And our daughters, every one, should be able to get married.
Life is so rich,
P.S. Did you know I have another newsletter? The Prof G Markets Pod now has a newsletter edition. Sign up here to receive it every Monday. What a thrill.
The post The Fix appeared first on No Mercy / No Malice.
