‘Millionaires Tax’ Finds Seattle is Far Richer Than Anyone Knew

Seattle’s new mayor was speaking to a roomful of supporters the other day when she dropped a rather blunt assessment of our city.

“You know what?” Katie Wilson said. “This city is filthy rich.”

The crowd laughed a bit. Can you say that when you’re mayor? Should you say that?

It bears some examination, because of what was announced next.

The city’s new social housing tax, levied on lofty pay packages to pay for public housing, was due Jan. 31. The startling news was that it blew the projections out of the water.

When the 5% tax on salaries and compensation above $1 million passed a year ago, its backers estimated it would bring in $50 million annually. Later the city’s finance department used state employment data for a more rigorous finding, and came up with $65.8 million.

But it looked precarious.

“The increase to the payroll expense tax … could cause businesses to change their hiring behavior to avoid taxation — such as moving existing employees to locations outside Seattle,” a report to the City Council said.

Conclusion: There’s “a large amount of uncertainty,” said the office of economic and revenue forecasts. The tax could collect anywhere from $39.2 million to $80 million, “but even larger variance cannot be ruled out.”

“Larger variance” is once again the story of just how rich we are. Because tax collections came in at $115 million — 75% higher than the estimate. And 44% over the top of the range.

It means several things about our city — all of which inform the debates currently raging about tax-the-rich efforts in our state.

One is that Seattle’s plutocrats are wealthier than anyone imagines. This keeps getting revealed, where a scheme is developed to tax wealth, and then the amounts the tax brings in wildly overshoot even the most optimistic forecasts...

Another thing is that Seattle businesses obviously did not flee.

This is interesting because the social housing tax should be one of the easier taxes to avoid. You only have to work at least half the time outside the city — in an office across the lake in Bellevue, for example.

If you make, say, $1.1 million, the social housing tax paid by your company would be $5,000 (5% of the $100,000 above $1 million). It’s probably not worth moving an executive due to five grand.

But one making $10 million? The tax on that is $450,000. $30 million? The tax hits $1.45 million.

As I wrote last year, it’d be cheaper for Amazon to fly its top execs to Bellevue in a helicopter three days a week.

They did not take me up on this strategic advice, apparently. In fact, the 5% tax is being paid by 170 Seattle companies, according to the social housing agency. (The tax is paid by companies, not individual workers.)

So are the rich set to bolt the city or the state to get away from tax-the-rich schemes? Last week at a hearing on a proposed state “millionaires income tax,” Redmond hedge fund manager Brian Heywood, who himself fled California’s taxes, testified he knows of “about 50 couples who are already in the process of, or soon to be changing, their domicile, out of this state.”

That is a lot. I’m not sure I know 50 couples period, let alone 50 couples capable of taking such decisive action. Another way the rich are different than you or me.

The press has been filled with anecdotes of wealthy people decamping. Yet someone’s got to be hanging on here paying all these taxes — the totals of which keep racking up dramatically higher than expected.

One tech exec finally emerged to argue the fleeing-from-Seattle talk is bogus.

“The math doesn’t math,” wrote Jacob Colker, a Seattle AI venture capitalist. “Should we be thoughtful about tax policy? Heck yeah. Should it be tied to better stewardship of spending? Darn right. But the breathless narrative that Seattle is one bill from collapse is not serious analysis.”

My sense is taxes work when rates are reasonable. Single digits, like the 5% social housing tax, are not killer rates. Maybe the rich say “ugh, I don’t like it but oh well, it’s not worth uprooting my life.” So far, it hasn’t been worth even driving across the bridge.

On the other hand, Democrats last year jacked the top estate tax rate for the super-wealthy, to a gouging 35% for wealth north of $12 million. Some of those are said to be fleeing Washington, and who can blame them? There’s no good to come from fleecing people. This extreme rate situation has set off enough alarms that state Democrats now have a “tail between their legs” bill to unwind that rate back to where it was set for years, 20%.

Point is, keep it cool, lawmakers, and the rich can abide. 

by Danny Westneat, Seattle Times |  Read more:

Image: Dean Rutz

[ed. I'm all for taxing the super rich, but c'mon, get serious liberals. The solution to every problem is not taxing everyone and everything in sight (or immediately jumping to extremes on public issues, like 'Defund the Police' - one of the dumbest initiatives imaginable). Washington is one of the taxingest states in country, mitigated only by the fact that there's no state income tax (although there's continual chattering about 'fixing' that), with some of the most regressive sales taxes in the country as well. Fortunately, some people seem to be coming to their senses - see also: WA Democrats consider retreat on estate tax, fearing wealth exodus (ST):]

Democrats in the state Legislature have generally dismissed warnings that new taxes on the very wealthy might lead multimillionaires to flee to lower-tax states.

But some are now acknowledging that one tax-the-rich policy they approved last year — a big increase in Washington’s top estate tax rates — may have backfired...

The problem for Washington isn’t just a single shift like the estate tax, Carlyle said, but an “aggregation of taxes” adopted swiftly in recent years, including new business and payroll taxes.

“What people I think are failing to recognize is that tipping-point scenario,” he said, which would lead the state to lose the entrepreneurial advantages that have led to the growth of companies like Amazon, T-Mobile and Starbucks.

The NFL Franchise Tag: What It Is and Isn't

Tuesday morning’s news that the Seahawks are “unlikely” to use the franchise tag on running back Kenneth Walker III might sound ominous for the team’s chances to keep the reigning Super Bowl MVP.

It’s not.

That same report could basically be written about the Seahawks in every year — and increasingly about every NFL team.

The Seahawks have applied the franchise tag on a player only twice since general manager John Schneider arrived in 2010, and they actually used it only once. Just two NFL teams applied the tag last year.

In other words, the news says more about how players don’t like the franchise tag and how it comes with complications and unhappy consequences, compelling teams to avoid using it.

How franchise tags work

That may you leave wondering: just how does a franchise tag work?

At the most basic, it’s a designation (introduced in 1993) that an NFL team can place on one player per year who is set to become an unrestricted free agent, essentially keeping him for the upcoming season at a predetermined salary. Walker can become an unrestricted free agent when the new league year begins March 11.

There is a set period each season when teams can enact the franchise tag before free agency hits.

This year’s period began Tuesday and runs through March 3. If the tag is applied, the sides can continue to negotiate a long-term deal until July 15.

If no deal is reached, the tag takes effect for that season (some negotiating of amounts or incentives is allowed, but the length cannot be changed).

There are two types of franchise tags — exclusive and nonexclusive.

A nonexclusive tag is the most commonly used.

As described on the league’s website, a nonexclusive tag “is a one-year tender of the average of the top five salaries at the player’s position over the last five years, or 120 percent of his previous salary, whichever is greater. The tagged player can negotiate with other teams, but the current club owns the right to match any offer or receive two first-round draft picks as compensation if he signs with another team.”

The exclusive tag differs in that the tender “averages the top five salaries at the player’s position for the current year or 120 percent of his previous salary, whichever is greater,” and prevents the player from negotiation with other teams.

Official figures won’t be set until the NFL releases the final salary-cap number for 2026 (that number arrived last year on March 1).

The website OvertheCap.com, which tracks NFL financial issues, estimates that the tag number for running backs will be $14.536 million.

That would be a hefty raise for Walker, who made $8.4 million total over the past four seasons on his original rookie contract.

But the tag presents a few issues:

The player

Though the above number would be a good one-year salary for Walker, it doesn’t give him long-term security and means he would again face the same situation next year along with uncertainty all season about his future.

If there was already a lot of conjecture about his future this season, there would be even more in 2026 given Walker’s higher visibility as a Super Bowl MVP.

The one-year nature of the tag also has led to players feeling as if they are walking a tightrope through that season to avoid injury, or to avoid simply having a down season, before they can hit free agency again.

The tag can be rescinded at any time before the player signs it, putting both sides back at square one, and it could mean the player missed his best window to negotiate with other teams.

The team

One drawback for the team is that the entire salary counts toward the cap for that season. A tag for Walker would take up almost a quarter of the roughly $60 million in effective cap space that Seattle has, via OvertheCap.com.

A more amenable conclusion for each side is something along the lines of what Pro Football Focus recently estimated as his value — a three-year deal worth up to $27 million with $20 million guaranteed.

Such a deal would surely be structured to have a far lower cap hit than the overall $9 million average — say $6 million or so — and then increase steadily the final two years when the cap itself will also increase.

That would create more room for the Seahawks as they navigate what will be a challenging offseason.

While Seattle has ample cap space, there are also plenty of objectives on the to-do list. Other potential unrestricted free agents include cornerbacks Josh Jobe and Riq Woolen, safety Coby Bryant, receiver Rashid Shaheed and edge rusher Boye Mafe.

The Seahawks also can now offer extensions to every member of the 2023 draft class, which includes receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba, cornerback Devon Witherspoon and edge rusher Derick Hall.

The Seahawks are likely to try to lock up JSN and Witherspoon for the long haul and avoid them entering the final year of their rookie contracts with some uncertainty about their future.

But both will likely command deals at the top of their positional wage scale, potentially taking a large chunk of cap space (and immediate cash in the form of big bonuses, as well).

The drawbacks of the tag are why they are often viewed as a “lose-lose” scenario. [...]

There is also what’s called a transition tag, which is a one-year tender for the average of the top 10 salaries at the position as opposed to the top five, which for Walker this year is estimated at $11.72 million.

But that tag guarantees teams only the right to match any offer the player receives and no potential compensation if he signs elsewhere. It’s been used only six times in the past 10 years throughout the league.

To be sure, Seattle faces a challenge in re-signing Walker. He’s rightfully going to want to get the best deal possible at a time when his market is the most heated — PFF rates him as the No. 6 free agent available overall and the top running back...

But Tuesday’s news does nothing to change the basics of the situation — that Seattle hopes to re-sign Walker to a long-term deal, and that Walker hopes to get life-changing security.

by Bob Condotta, Seattle Times | Read more:
Image: Nick Wagner/Seattle Times
[ed. I've never understood the franchise tag, just figured it was a way to keep a valuable player from being lost to free agency. Obviously it's a lot more complicated than that, but still not sure I understand all the finer details (and don't even start with cap space decisions).]

The Jim Irsay Collection: Auction

Eric Clapton: The Martin 000-42 Acoustic Guitar Used For His Acclaimed Appearance on MTV Unplugged, 1992.
C.F. Martin & Company, Nazareth, Pennsylvannia, 1939

via: Christies Jim Irsay Collection: Hall of Fame

[ed. Insane music memorabilia auction.]

Something Surprising Happens When Bus Rides Are Free

Free buses? Really? Of all the promises that Zohran Mamdani made during his New York City mayoral campaign, that one struck some skeptics as the most frivolous leftist fantasy. Unlike housing, groceries and child care, which weigh heavily on New Yorkers’ finances, a bus ride is just a few bucks. Is it really worth the huge effort to spare people that tiny outlay?

It is. Far beyond just saving riders money, free buses deliver a cascade of benefits, from easing traffic to promoting public safety. Just look at Boston; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Richmond, Va.; Kansas City, Mo.; and even New York itself, all of which have tried it to excellent effect. And it doesn’t have to be costly — in fact, it can come out just about even.

As a lawyer, I feel most strongly about the least-discussed benefit: Eliminating bus fares can clear junk cases out of our court system, lowering the crushing caseloads that prevent our judges, prosecutors and public defenders from focusing their attention where it’s most needed.

I was a public defender, and in one of my first cases I was asked to represent a woman who was not a robber or a drug dealer — she was someone who had failed to pay the fare on public transit. Precious resources had been spent arresting, processing, prosecuting and trying her, all for the loss of a few dollars. This is a daily feature of how we criminalize poverty in America.

Unless a person has spent real time in the bowels of a courthouse, it’s hard to imagine how many of the matters clogging criminal courts across the country originate from a lack of transit. Some of those cases result in fines; many result in defendants being ordered to attend community service or further court dates. But if the person can’t afford the fare to get to those appointments and can’t get a ride, their only options — jump a turnstile or flout a judge’s order — expose them to re-arrest. Then they may face jail time, which adds significant pressure to our already overcrowded facilities. Is this really what we want the courts spending time on?

Free buses can unclog our streets, too. In Boston, eliminating the need for riders to pay fares or punch tickets cut boarding time by as much as 23 percent, which made everyone’s trip faster. Better, cheaper, faster bus rides give automobile owners an incentive to leave their cars at home, which makes the journey faster still — for those onboard as well as those who still prefer to drive.

How much should a government be willing to pay to achieve those outcomes? How about nothing? When Washington State’s public transit systems stopped charging riders, in many municipalities the state came out more or less even — because the money lost on fares was balanced out by the enormous savings that ensued.

Fare evasion was one of the factors that prompted Mayor Eric Adams to flood New York City public transit with police officers. New Yorkers went from shelling out $4 million for overtime in 2022 to $155 million in 2024. What did it get them? In September 2024, officers drew their guns to shoot a fare beater — pause for a moment to think about that — and two innocent bystanders ended up with bullet wounds, the kind of accident that’s all but inevitable in such a crowded setting.

New York City tried a free bus pilot program in 2023 and 2024 and, as predicted, ridership increased — by 30 percent on weekdays and 38 percent on weekends, striking figures that could make a meaningful dent in New York’s chronic traffic problem (and, by extension, air and noise pollution). Something else happened that was surprising: Assaults on bus operators dropped 39 percent. Call it the opposite of the Adams strategy: Lowering barriers to access made for fewer tense law enforcement encounters, fewer acts of desperation and a safer city overall.

by Emily Galvin Almanza, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Brian Blomerth

Your Job Isn't Disappearing. It's Shrinking Around You in Real Time

You open your laptop Monday morning with a question you can’t shake: Will I still have a job that matters in two years?

Not whether you’ll be employed, but whether the work you do will still mean something.
Last week, you spent three hours writing a campaign brief. You saw a colleague generate something 80% as good in four minutes using an AI agent (Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT…). Maybe 90% as good if you’re being honest.

You still have your job. But you can feel it shrinking around you.

The problem isn’t that the robots are coming. It’s that you don’t know what you’re supposed to be good at anymore. That Excel expertise you built over five years? Automated. Your ability to research competitors and synthesize findings? There’s an agent for that. Your skill at writing clear project updates? Gone.

You’re losing your professional identity faster than you can rebuild it. And nobody’s telling you what comes next.

The Three Things Everyone Tries That Don’t Actually Work

When you feel your value eroding, you do what seems rational. You adapt, you learn, and you try to stay relevant.

First, you learn to use the AI tools better. You take courses on prompt engineering. You master ChatGPT, Claude, whatever new platform launches next week and the week after. You become the “AI person” on your team. You think that if I can’t beat them, I’ll use them better than anyone else.

This fails because you’re still competing on execution speed. You’re just a faster horse. And execution is exactly what’s being commoditized. Six months from now, the tools will be easier to use. Your “expertise” in prompting becomes worthless the moment the interface improves. You’ve learned to use the shovel better, but the backhoe is coming anyway.

Second, you double down on your existing expertise. The accountant learns more advanced tax code. The designer masters more software. The analyst builds more complex models. You will have the same thought as many others, “I’ll go so deep they can’t replace me.”

This fails because depth in a disappearing domain is a trap. You’re building a fortress in a flood zone. Agents aren’t just matching human expertise at the median level anymore. They’re rapidly approaching expert-level performance in narrow domains. Your specialized knowledge becomes a liability because you’ve invested everything in something that’s actively being automated. You’re becoming the world’s best telegraph operator in 1995.

Third, you try to “stay human” through soft skills. You lean into creativity, empathy, relationship building. You go to workshops on emotional intelligence. You focus on being irreplaceably human. You might think that what makes us human can’t be automated.

This fails because it’s too vague to be actionable. What does “be creative” actually mean when an AI can generate 100 ideas in 10 seconds? How do you monetize empathy when your job is to produce reports? The advice feels right but provides no compass. You end up doing the same tasks you always did, just with more anxiety and a vaguer sense of purpose.

The real issue with all three approaches is that they’re reactions, not redesigns. You’re trying to adapt your old role to a new reality. What actually works is building an entirely new role that didn’t exist before.

But nobody’s teaching you what that looks like.

The Economic Logic Working Against You

This isn’t happening to you because you’re failing to adapt. It’s happening because the economic incentive structure is perfectly designed to create this problem.

The mechanism is simple, companies profit immediately from adopting AI agents. Every task automated results in cost reduction. The CFO sees the spreadsheet, where one AI subscription replaces 40% of a mid-level employee’s work. The math is simple, and the decision is obvious.

Many people hate to hear that. But if they owned the company or sat in leadership, they’d do the exact same thing. Companies exist to drive profit, just as employees work to drive higher salaries. That’s how the system has worked for centuries.

But companies don’t profit from retraining you for a higher-order role that doesn’t exist yet.

Why? Because that new role is undefined, unmeasured, and uncertain. You can’t put “figure out what humans should do now” on a quarterly earnings call. You can’t show ROI on “redesign work itself.” Short-term incentives win. Long-term strategy loses.

Nobody invests in the 12-24 month process of discovering what your new role should be because there’s no immediate return on that investment.

We’re in a speed mismatch. Agent capabilities are compounding at 6-12 month cycles. [ed. Even faster now, after the release of Claude Opus 4.6 last week]. Human adaptation through traditional systems operates on 2-5 year cycles.

Universities can’t redesign curricula fast enough. They’re teaching skills that will be automated before students graduate. Companies can’t retrain fast enough. By the time they identify the new skills needed and build a program, the landscape has shifted again. You can’t pivot fast enough. Career transitions take time. Mortgages don’t wait.

We’ve never had to do this before.

Previous automation waves happened in manufacturing. You could see the factory floor. You could watch jobs disappear and new ones emerge. There was geographic and temporal separation.

This is different, knowledge work is being automated while you’re still at your desk. The old role and new role exist simultaneously in the same person, the same company, the same moment.

And nobody has an economic incentive to solve it. Companies maximize value through cost reduction, not workforce transformation. Educational institutions are too slow and too far removed from real-time market needs. Governments don’t understand the problem yet. You’re too busy trying to keep your current job to redesign your future one.

The system isn’t helping because it isn’t designed for continuous, rapid role evolution; it is designed for stability.

We’re using industrial-era institutions to solve an exponential-era problem. That’s why you feel stuck.

Your Experience Just Became Worthless (The Timeline)

Let me tell you a story of my friend, let’s call her Jane (Her real name is Katřina, but the Czech diacritic is tricky for many). She was a senior research analyst at a mid-sized consulting firm. Ten years of experience. Her job was provide answers to the client companies, who would ask questions like “What’s our competitor doing in the Asian market?” and she’d spend 2-3 weeks gathering data, reading reports, interviewing experts, synthesizing findings, and creating presentations.

She was good, clients loved her work, and she billed at $250 an hour.

The firm deployed an AI research agent in Q2 2023. Not to replace her, but as they said, to “augment” her. Management said all the right things about human-AI collaboration.

The agent could do Jane’s initial research in 90 minutes, it would scan thousands of sources, identify patterns, generate a first-draft report.

Month one: Jane was relieved and thought she could focus on high-value synthesis work. She’d take the agent’s output and refine it, add strategic insights, make it client-ready.

Month three: A partner asked her, “Why does this take you a week now? The AI gives us 80% of what we need in an hour. What’s the other 20% worth?”

Jane couldn’t answer clearly. Because sometimes the agent’s output only needed light editing. Sometimes her “strategic insights” were things the agent had already identified, just worded differently.

Month six: The firm restructured. They didn’t fire Jane, they changed her role to “Quality Reviewer.” She now oversaw the AI’s output for 6-8 projects simultaneously instead of owning 2-3 end to end.

Her title stayed the same. Her billing rate dropped to $150 an hour. Her ten years of experience felt worthless.

Jane tried everything. She took an AI prompt engineering course. She tried to go deeper into specialized research methodologies. She emphasized her client relationships. None of it mattered because the firm had already made the economic calculation.

One AI subscription costs $50 a month. Jane’s salary: $140K a year. The agent didn’t need to be perfect; it just needed to be 70% as good at 5% of the cost. But it was fast, faster than her.

The part that illustrates the systemic problem, you often hear from AI vendors that, thanks to their AI tools, people can focus on higher-value work. But when pressed on what that meant specifically, they’d go vague. Strategic thinking, client relationships, creative problem solving.

Nobody could define what higher-value work actually looked like in practice. Nobody could describe the new role. So they defaulted to the only thing they could measure: cost reduction.

Jane left six months later. The firm hired two junior analysts at $65K each to do what she did. With the AI, they’re 85% as effective as Jane was.

Jane’s still trying to figure out what she’s supposed to be good at. Last anyone heard, she’s thinking about leaving the industry entirely.

Stop Trying to Be Better at Your Current Job

The people who are winning aren’t trying to be better at their current job. They’re building new jobs that combine human judgment with agent capability.

Not becoming prompt engineers, not becoming AI experts. Becoming orchestrators who use agents to do what was previously impossible at their level. [...]

You’re not competing with the agent. You’re creating a new capability that requires both you and the agent. You’re not defensible because you’re better at the task. You’re defensible because you’ve built something that only exists with you orchestrating it.

This requires letting go of your identity as “the person who does X.” Marcus doesn’t write copy anymore. That bothered him at first. He liked writing. But he likes being valuable more.

Here’s what you can do this month:

by Jan Tegze, Thinking Out Loud |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. Not to criticize, but this advice still seems a bit too short-sighted (for reasons articulated in this article: AI #155: Welcome to Recursive Self-Improvement (DMtV):]

***

Presumably you can see the problem in such a scenario, where all the existing jobs get automated away. There are not that many slots for people to figure out and do genuinely new things with AI. Even if you get to one of the lifeboats, it will quickly spring a leak. The AI is coming for this new job the same way it came for your old one. What makes you think seeing this ‘next evolution’ after that coming is going to leave you a role to play in it?

If the only way to survive is to continuously reinvent yourself to do what just became possible, as Jan puts it? There’s only one way this all ends.

I also don’t understand Jan’s disparate treatment of the first approach that Jan dismisses, ‘be the one who uses AI the best,’ and his solution of ‘find new things AI can do and do that.’ In both cases you need to be rapidly learning new tools and strategies to compete with the other humans. In both cases the competition is easy now since most of your rivals aren’t trying, but gets harder to survive over time.

***

[ed. And the fact that there'll be a lot fewer of these types of jobs available. This scenario could be reality within the next year (or less!). Something like a temporary UBI (universal basic income) might be needed until long-term solutions can be worked out, but do you think any of the bozos currently in Washington are going to focus on this? And, that applies to safety standards as well. Here's Dean Ball (Hyperdimensional): On Recursive Self-Improvement (Part II):

***

Policymakers would be wise to take especially careful notice of this issue over the coming year or so. But they should also keep the hysterics to a minimum: yes, this really is a thing from science fiction that is happening before our eyes, but that does not mean we should behave theatrically, as an actor in a movie might. Instead, the challenge now is to deal with the legitimately sci-fi issues we face using the comparatively dull idioms of technocratic policymaking. [...]

Right now, we predominantly rely on faith in the frontier labs for every aspect of AI automation going well. There are no safety or security standards for frontier models; no cybersecurity rules for frontier labs or data centers; no requirements for explainability or testing for AI systems which were themselves engineered by other AI systems; and no specific legal constraints on what frontier labs can do with the AI systems that result from recursive self-improvement.

To be clear, I do not support the imposition of such standards at this time, not so much because they don’t seem important but because I am skeptical that policymakers could design any one of these standards effectively. It is also extremely likely that the existence of advanced AI itself will both change what is possible for such standards (because our technical capabilities will be much stronger) and what is desirable (because our understanding of the technology and its uses will improve so much, as will our apprehension of the stakes at play). Simply put: I do not believe that bureaucrats sitting around a table could design and execute the implementation of a set of standards that would improve status-quo AI development practices, and I think the odds are high that any such effort would worsen safety and security practices.

The Economics of a Super Bowl Ad

In 2026, Ro is running our first Super Bowl ad. It will feature Serena Williams and her amazing journey on Ro — her weight loss, her improved blood sugar levels, her reduction in knee pain, and the overall improvement in her health.

As I’ve shared the news with friends and family, the first question they ask, after “Is Serena as cool in person?” (the answer is unequivocally yes), is “How much did it cost?”.

$233,000 per second, minimum, for the air time — excluding all other costs. When you first hear that a Super Bowl ad costs at least $233,000 per second, it’s completely reasonable to pause and question whether that could ever be a good use of money. On its face, the price sounds extravagant — even irrational. And without context, it often is.

But once you break down the economics, the decision starts to look very different. The Super Bowl is not just another media buy. It is a uniquely concentrated moment where attention, scale, and cultural relevance align in a way that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the media landscape. That alone changes the calculus. This leads us down a fascinating discussion of the economics behind DTC advertising, brand building, and the production of the spot.

After having the conversation a few times, my co-founder Saman and I thought it would be helpful to put together a breakdown of how we thought about both the economics of and the making of our Super Bowl ad. To check out “The making of Ro’s Super Bowl Ad,” head over to my co-founder Saman’s post here.

Of course, some brands will approach it differently, but I think this could be a helpful example for the next Ro that is considering running their first Super Bowl ad.

Let’s dive in.

WHAT MAKES A SUPER BOWL AD SO UNIQUE?

1. Ads are part of the product

For most advertising, it is an interruption. Viewers want to get back to the product (e.g., a TV show, sporting event, or even access to the wifi on a plane!). Even the best ads are still something you tolerate on the way back to the content you actually want.

There is exactly one moment each year when the incentives of advertisers and viewers are perfectly aligned. For a few hours, on a Sunday night in February, more than 100 million people sit down and are excited to watch an ad. They aren’t scrolling TikTok. They aren’t going to the bathroom. They are actively watching…ads.

People rank Super Bowl ads. They rewatch them. They critique them. They talk about them at work the next day. The Today Show plays them…during the show as content, not as ads!

That alone makes the Super Bowl fundamentally different from every other media moment in the year. It’s an opportunity, unlike any other, to capture the hearts and minds of potential (and sometimes existing) customers.

2. Opportunity to compress time

No single commercial builds a brand. Advertising alone doesn’t create a brand. The best brands are built over time. They are built by the combination of a company making a promise to a customer (e.g., an advertisement) and then delivering on that promise time and time again (i.e., the product).

Commercials are one way to make that promise. To share with the world what you’ve built and why you think it could add value to their life. To make them “aware” of what you do. This takes time. It takes repetition. It often takes multiple touch points. Again, this is why the first takeaway about people paying attention is so important — they might need fewer touch points if they are “actively” watching.

The Super Bowl can compress the time it takes for people to be “aware” of your brand. Of course, you still have to deliver on that promise with a great product. But in one night, you can move from a brand most people have never heard of to one your mom is texting you about.

There is no other single marketing opportunity that can accomplish this. With today’s algorithms, even what goes “viral” might be only in your bubble.

During the Super Bowl, we all share the same bubble.

The NFL accounted for 84 of the top 100 televised events in 2025 (including college football, it was 92). The NFL and maybe Taylor Swift are the only remaining moments of a dwindling monoculture.

Last but not least, the Super Bowl is the only moment where you can speak to ~100 million people at the same time. In 30 seconds, you can reach an audience that would otherwise take years—this is what it means to compress time.

3. There is asymmetric upside

While the decision to run a Super Bowl commercial is not for every company, for the universe of companies for which running an ad could make sense, the financial risk profile is misunderstood. This is not a moonshot. It’s a portfolio decision with a capped downside and asymmetric upside. [...]

Initial Ad Cost

On average, every 30 seconds of advertising time in the Super Bowl costs ~$7M-10M (
link) . This can increase with supply-demand dynamics. For example:

• The later in the year you buy the ad, the more expensive it can be (i.e., inventory decreases)
• The location of the spot in the game can impact the price someone is willing to pay
• Given that viewership in the Super Bowl is not even across the duration of the game, premiums may be required to be in key spots early in the game, or adjacent to the beginning of Halftime when viewership is often at its highest
• If a brand wishes to have category exclusivity (i.e., to be the only Beer brand advertising in the game), that would come at a premium
• First time or “one-off” Super Bowl advertisers may pay higher rates than large brands who are buying multiple spots, or have a substantial book of business with the broadcasting network

Note: if companies run a 60 second ad, they will have to pay at least 2x the 30-second rate - and may even pay a premium. There is typically no “bulk discount” as there is no shortage of demand. Any company that wants to pay for 60 seconds needs to buy two slots because the second 30-second slot could easily be sold at full price to another company.

Production cost

A high-level rule of thumb for production costs relative to ad spend is to allocate 10-20% of your media budget towards production. The Super Bowl, however, usually breaks that rubric for a myriad of reasons.

A typical Super Bowl will cost ~$1-4M to produce, excluding “celebrity talent.” This cost bucket would cover studio/site costs, equipment, production staff, travel, non-celeb talent, director fees and post-production editing and sound services. Again, this is a range based on the conversations I’ve had with companies that have run several Super Bowl ads. [...]

Last year, 63% of all Super Bowl ads included celebrities (link). There are a variety of factors that will influence the cost of “talent.”

• How well known and trusted is the celebrity?
• How many celebrities are included?
• What’s the product? Crypto ads now might have a risk-premium attached after FTX
• What are you asking them to do / say in the ad?

For Ro, our partnership with Serena stems far beyond one commercial. It’s a larger, multi-year partnership, to share her incredible journey over time. From a pure cost perspective, we assigned a part of the deal to the production cost to keep ourselves intellectually honest.

Based on 10+ interviews with other brands who have advertised in the Big Game, talent for a Super Bowl ad ranges from $1-5M (of course there are outliers).

by Z. Reitano, Ro, X |  Read more:

Image: Ro

World War AI

How's that whole golden age thing going for you so far? That golden age of human leisure and wealth awaiting us in a world optimized for the thinking machines.

Are you working a bit less today, enjoying the early fruits of all this 'AI productivity'? Or are you somehow working longer, more stressful hours than ever?

Is it your sense that life is getting a little bit easier for the poor or the middle class or anyone other than the very rich as the 'AI revolution' arrives? Is it your sense that young people are a bit more hopeful about the future now that it's an 'AI economy'? Is it your sense that 'AI friends' are beginning to enrich our social lives? Is it your sense that goods and services are becoming more plentiful and cheaper as 'AI deflation' kicks in? Is it your sense that news is more informative and shows are more entertaining as 'AI content' spreads? Is it your sense that job prospects are improving as we enter an 'AI employment boom'?

Yeah. Same.

Honestly, I don't see how the carrot was ever going to work. It's just too at-odds with our actual lived experience, even here in Fiat World where our reality is declared and announced to us. They're going to need the stick. They're going to need to tell us that national survival is at stake, that our enemies will triumph if we don't make the 'necessary sacrifices' to win this 'AI arms race'.

They're going to need a war.

Oh, maybe not an actual war, but the functional equivalent thereof, full of threats real and imagined and adversaries foreign and domestic. They're going to need World War AI...

The United States spent $296 billion over a roughly four-year period to fight World War II, which would translate to about $4 trillion in today's dollars.

At its peak (1943), the war effort accounted for 37% of US GDP, and no aspect of American life was untouched or unconstrained by the US government's reallocation of the three basic building blocks of economic activity -- labor, capital and energy (energy being my shorthand for all physical resources as well as the core input to mining, farming, manufacturing and transportation) -- and the enormous expansion of government's role in American society to carry out this reallocation. In particular, every aspect of consumer behavior was subordinated to the political will required to execute the war effort, a political will which created extreme shortages in the labor, capital and physical resources available to the consumer economy.

I think it's hard for Americans today to grasp both the level of consumer sacrifice that was required during World War II and the level of government propaganda 'nudge' involved in enforcing that consumer sacrifice. (...)

I mean, I'm guessing that the mother and child in the poster above, dressed in their perfectly matching frocks and radiating Stepford Wives aura, maybe did not have enough food the winter before? And if you think that it's 'encouraging political violence' to call someone a Nazi today for supporting fascist policies ... in 1943 the government would call you a Nazi if you didn't carpool.

I find these posters and broadsides from World War II pretty funny, like they're from some cartoon world, and I bet you do, too. But when you read the memoirs and economic histories of the WWII homefront, there's nothing cartoonish about it. These were hard times! Shortages of food, energy and labor created extreme cost-push inflation, like our Covid-era supply chain inflation but on steroids, to which the government responded with draconian price controls on EVERYTHING. And when price controls didn't work, meaning that when even a suppressed market failed to distribute enough calories to enough people to prevent widespread hunger if not starvation, the government abandoned market mechanisms altogether and instituted outright rationing on food, energy and other necessities.

At the same time, every bit of available domestic investment capital and savings (which are the same thing) was absorbed by the federal government and unavailable for the consumer economy. That meant that in addition to the extreme inflationary pressures from widespread shortages, there was ZERO economic growth from small and medium businesses, which were an even larger portion of American GDP back then than they are today. The only thing that kept the American economy from collapsing into a stagflationary disaster was the $4 trillion that the US government spent on manufacturing war materiel and -- hold this thought! -- the enormous number of new jobs created from that.

The same amount of inflation-adjusted money we spent on World War II -- somewhere between $4 trillion and $5 trillion -- is scheduled to be spent on AI and datacenter buildouts in the United States over the next four years.

Yes, our economy is proportionally bigger today, so this is 'only' something like 15% of US GDP ($30 trillion in 2025), but an economic mobilization of this magnitude will require a similarly massive reallocation of our fundamental economic building blocks -- labor, capital and energy -- especially capital and energy.

On the capital side, it's difficult to communicate how much money this is over such a short period of time. As JPMorgan puts it in their magisterial research note on AI Capex financing, "The question is not which market will finance the AI-boom. Rather, the question is how will financings be structured to access every capital market.” Here's their chart for where they think the money will come from (slightly apples to oranges as this is global spend, not just US, but I figure 70-80% of this datacenter build is going to happen in the US, so it's essentially the same), and I'd call your attention in the $1.4 trillion attributed to "Need for Alternative Capital / Governments", which combines both our favorite financial topic du jour -- private credit -- with direct government subsidy/investment.

AI Capex - Financing The Investment Cycle (J.P.Morgan North America Fundamental Research, Nov. 10, 2025)

This is the necessary context for understanding OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar's recent comments at a Wall Street Journal conference that the company would 'welcome' a federal government 'backstop' on private debt financings of this datacenter buildout, as well as Sam Altman's unintentionally hilarious 5,000 word tweet to 'clarify' Friar's very clear and very correct and very intentional words...

Sarah Friar didn't 'misspeak' when she called for a federal backstop -- by which everyone means and intends a US Treasury guarantee -- on AI datacenter debt issuance, and she didn't need to 'phrase things more clearly'. She used exactly the right word to describe exactly the policy that OpenAI and Wall Street and every other participant in this $10 trillion ouroboros ecosystem desperately wants and frankly requires for this massive reallocation of capital to have a chance of succeeding.

I mean, a federal debt backstop is just the start. Within a couple of years -- and this is the point of the $1.4 trillion "Alternative Capital / Governments" item on the JPMorgan chart! -- the US government will need to allocate hundreds of billions of dollars directly to the AI buildout, maybe through defense appropriations, maybe through equity stakes, maybe through whatever. Otherwise, we're a good trillion dollars short in the funding required to make this work here in the US. All from additional borrowing and deficit spending, of course, just like in World War II when the federal debt skyrocketed to an amount that was 100% of GDP. What's different today, of course, is that the federal deficit is already at World War II debt-to-GDP levels before the additional borrowing for the AI buildout support. Bottom line: whatever you think the future path of US debt-to-GDP looks like, you're too low.

The economic term for the impact of capital reallocation at this enormous scale is 'crowding out'. The public and private capital that is invested in or lent to the AI hyperscalers and their counterparties over the next four years is that much less public and private capital available to be invested in or lent to the rest of the economy. And while I'm sure most large B2B enterprises will find a way to at least get a taste of what's being poured into the AI buildout, small and medium enterprises will be mostly shut out and consumer-facing enterprises are going to be completely shut out.

The inevitable impact of a massive reallocation of capital away from the consumer economy is that consumer credit becomes more expensive (if it's available at all), capital-intensive consumer services like health insurance and homeowners insurance become more expensive (if they're available at all), consumers stop spending (especially the bottom 50%), and consumer-facing businesses stop hiring (if they're not actively cutting back).

Sound familiar? That's because what I'm describing isn't some maybe-projection of some hypothetical future. This is all happening already. This is all happening NOW.

by Ben Hunt, Epsilon Theory |  Read more:

Image: JP Morgan; US Govt.

[ed. Very much enjoy Mr. Hunt's essays. Unfortunately, only for subscribers these days. See also: This is the Great Ravine (ET):]

***

This is all going to get much worse before it gets any better.

In The Dark Forest, volume 2 of the Three-Body Problem science fiction trilogy, Cixin Liu mentions almost in passing a 50-year period of immense social upheaval, destruction and (ultimately) recovery across the globe. He never goes into the details of this period that he calls the Great Ravine. He basically just waves his hands at it and writes “yep, that happened”.

Why? Because the Great Ravine does not advance the plot.

It’s there. It happens. But there’s nothing to be gained by examining its events. Like the Cultural Revolution of Cixin Liu’s real-world history, the Great Ravine is ultimately just a tragic waste. A waste of time. A waste of wealth. A waste of lives. There is nothing to be learned from our time in the Great Ravine; it must simply be crossed.

And cross it we will.

What if Labor Becomes Unnecessary

The leading A.I. labs aren’t making hundred-billion-dollar bets because they expect A.I. to have minor effects on the labor market. They are betting on achieving artificial general intelligence (A.G.I.), which could substitute for human labor across much of the economy. And the investment numbers are staggering. In the past year alone, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon have collectively spent more than $300 billion, primarily on A.I. infrastructure. This is more than triple what they spent just a few years ago.

As I think about the eventual employment effect, I’m struck that this huge spending isn’t creating many jobs even at the A.I. companies themselves. It is notable how few people work at these labs. OpenAI has roughly 4,000 employees and is valued around $500 billion. Anthropic has about 2,300 employees at a $350 billion valuation. Either way, that’s roughly seven or eight employees per billion dollars of market capitalization. Compare that to Walmart, which has 2,200 employees per billion dollars of value. The equivalent number at Ford is about 3,000.

So I think we may be asking the wrong question. The employment effects we are looking for may simply be lagging indicators of a transformation that’s already locked in by the capital being deployed. A.I. may ultimately be beneficial by revolutionizing scientific discovery, health care and human well-being. But we should be preparing now for the possibility of significant labor market disruption, rather than waiting for it to show up conclusively in the statistics...

For two centuries, labor has been the scarcest factor in our economy, leading to wages that have risen far above preindustrial levels. Human workers were the bottleneck, and being the bottleneck made us valuable. But if labor itself becomes optional for the economy, that would be very different.

When a machine can do a worker’s job, the worker’s wage eventually falls toward the machine’s cost. Yes, new jobs will emerge as they always do. But the machines will learn them faster and do them more cheaply. The reassuring historical patterns depended on humans being needed to run the economy. Remove that bottleneck, and we are facing something qualitatively different: a permanent shift in who, or what, captures the gains from economic growth.

The good news is that artificial general intelligence would generate enormous economic gains. The same forces that may diminish the value of labor would also dramatically increase total output. The challenge is ensuring that humans share in that abundance when our labor is no longer required to generate it. Historically, wages have been the primary mechanism for broadly distributing the benefits of economic growth. We may soon need new mechanisms that decouple income from labor: broad-based capital ownership, universal basic income or approaches we haven’t yet imagined. We need to start building those institutions now.

by David AutorAnton Korinek and Natasha Sarin, NY Times | Read more:
Image: NYT

AI: Practical Advice for the Worried

A Word On Thinking For Yourself

There are good reasons to worry about AI. This includes good reasons to worry about AI wiping out all value in the universe, or AI killing everyone, or other similar very bad outcomes.

There are also good reasons that AGI, or otherwise transformational AI, might not come to pass for a long time.

As I say in the Q&A section later, I do not consider imminent transformational AI inevitable in our lifetimes: Some combination of ‘we run out of training data and ways to improve the systems, and AI systems max out at not that much more powerful than current ones’ and ‘turns out there are regulatory and other barriers that prevent AI from impacting that much of life or the economy that much’ could mean that things during our lifetimes turn out to be not that strange. These are definitely world types my model says you should consider plausible.

There is also the highly disputed question of how likely it is that if we did create an AGI reasonably soon, it would wipe out all value in the universe. There are what I consider very good arguments that this is what happens unless we solve extremely difficult problems to prevent it, and that we are unlikely to solve those problems in time. Thus I believe this is very likely, although there are some (such as Eliezer Yudkowsky) who consider it more likely still.

That does not mean you should adapt my position, or anyone else’s position, or mostly use social cognition from those around you, on such questions, no matter what those methods would tell you. If this is something that is going to impact your major life decisions, or keep you up at night, you need to develop your own understanding and model, and decide for yourself what you predict. (...)

Overview

There is some probability that humanity will create transformational AI soon, for various definitions of soon. You can and should decide what you think that probability is, and conditional on that happening, your probability of various outcomes.

Many of these outcomes, both good and bad, will radically alter the payoffs of various life decisions you might make now. Some such changes are predictable. Others not.

None of this is new. We have long lived under the very real threat of potential nuclear annihilation. The employees of the RAND corporation, in charge of nuclear strategic planning, famously did not contribute to their retirement accounts because they did not expect to live long enough to need them. Given what we know now about the close calls of the cold war, and what they knew at the time, perhaps this was not so crazy a perspective.

Should this imminent small but very real risk radically change your actions? I think the answer here is a clear no, unless your actions are relevant to nuclear war risks, either personally or globally, in some way, in which case one can shut up and multiply.

This goes back far longer. For much longer than that, various religious folks have expected Judgment Day to arrive soon, often with a date attached. Often they made poor decisions in response to this, even given their beliefs.

There are some people that talk or feel this same way about climate change, as an impending inevitable extinction event for humanity.

Under such circumstances, I would center my position on a simple claim: Normal Life is Worth Living, even if you think P(doom) relatively soon is very high. (...)

More generally, in terms of helping: Burning yourself out, stressing yourself out, tying yourself up in existential angst all are not helpful. It would be better to keep yourself sane and healthy and financially intact, in case you are later offered leverage. Fighting the good fight, however doomed it might be, because it is a far, far better thing to do, is also a fine response, if you keep in mind how easy it is to end up not helping that fight. But do that while also living a normal life, even if that might seem indulgent. You will be more effective for it, especially over time. (...)

On to individual questions to flesh all this out.

Q&A

Q: Should I still save for retirement?
Short Answer: Yes.
Long Answer: Yes, to most (but not all) of the extent that this would otherwise be a concern and action of yours in the ‘normal’ world. It would be better to say ‘build up asset value over time’ than ‘save for retirement’ in my model. Building up assets gives you resources to influence the future on all scales, whether or not retirement is even involved. I wouldn’t get too attached to labels.

Remember that while it is not something one should do lightly, none of this is lightly, and you can raid retirement accounts with what in context is a modest penalty, in an extreme enough ‘endgame’ situation - it does not even take that many years for the expected value of the compounded tax advantages to exceed the withdraw penalty - the cost of emptying the account, should you need to do that, is only 10% of funds and about a week in the United States (plus now having to pay taxes on it). And that in some extreme future situations, having that cash would be highly valuable, none of which suggests now is the time to empty it, or to not build it up.

The case for saving money does not depend on expecting a future ‘normal’ world. Which is good, because even without AI the future world is likely to not be all that ‘normal.

Q: Should I take on a ton of debt intending to never have to pay it back?

Short Answer: No, except for a mortgage.

Long Answer: Mostly no, except for a mortgage. Save your powder. See my post On AI and Interest Rates for an extended treatment of this question - I feel that is a definitive answer to the supposed ‘gotcha’ question of why doomers don’t take on lots of debt. Taking on a bunch of debt is a limited resource, and good ways to do it are even more limited for most of us. Yes, where you get the opportunity it would be good to lock in long borrow periods at fixed rates if you think things are about to get super weird. But if your plan is ‘the market will realize what is happening and adjust the value of my debt in time for me to profit’ that does not seem, to me, like a good plan. Nor does borrowing now much change your actual constraints on where you run out of money.

Does borrowing money that you have to pay back in 2033 mean you have more money to spend? That depends. What is your intention if 2033 rolls around and the world hasn’t ended? Are you going to pay it back? If so then you need to prepare now to be able to do that. So you didn’t accomplish all that much.

You need very high confidence in High Weirdness Real Soon Now before you can expect to get net rewarded for putting your financial future on quicksand, where you are in real trouble if you get the timing wrong. You also need a good way to spend that money to change the outcome.

Yes, there is a level of confidence in both speed and magnitude, combined with a good way to spend, that would change that, and that I do not believe is warranted. One must notice that you need vastly less certainty than this to be shouting about these issues from the rooftops, or devoting your time to working on them.

Eliezer’s position, as per his most recent podcast is something like ‘AGI could come very soon, seems inevitable by 2050 barring civilizational collapse, and if it happens we almost certainly all die.’ Suppose you really actually believed that. It’s still not enough to do much with debt unless you have a great use of money - there’s still a lot of probability mass that the money is due back while you’re still alive, potentially right before it might matter.

Yes, also, this changes if you think you can actually change the outcome for the better by spending money now, money loses impact over time, so your discount factor should be high. That however does not seem to be the case that I see being made.

Q: Does buying a house make sense?

A: Maybe. It is an opportunity to borrow money at low interest rates with good tax treatment. It also potentially ties up capital and ties you down to a particular location, and is not as liquid as some other forms of capital. So ask yourself how psychologically hard it would be to undo that. In terms of whether it looks like a good investment in a world with useful but non-transformational AI, an AI could figure out how to more efficiently build housing, but would that cause more houses to be built?

Q: Does it make sense to start a business?

A: Yes, although not because of AI. It is good to start a business. Of course, if the business is going to involve AI, carefully consider whether you are making the situation worse.

Q: Does It Still Make Sense to Try and Have Kids?

Short Answer: Yes.

Long Answer: Yes. Kids are valuable and make the world and your own world better, even if the world then ends. I would much rather exist for a bit than never exist at all. Kids give you hope for the future and something to protect, get you to step up. They get others to take you more seriously. Kids teach you many things that help one think better about AI. You think they take away your free time, but there is a limit to how much creative work one can do in a day. This is what life is all about. Missing out on this is deeply sad. Don’t let it pass you by.

Is there a level of working directly on the problem, or being uniquely positioned to help with the problem, where I would consider changing this advice? Yes, there are a few names where I think this is not so clear, but I am thinking of a very small number of names right now, and yours is not one of them.

You can guess how I would answer most other similar questions. I do not agree with Buffy Summers that the hardest thing in this world is to live in it. I do think she knows better than any of us that not living in this world is not the way to save it.

Q: Should I talk to my kids about how there’s a substantial chance they won’t get to grow up?

A: I would not (and will not) hide this information from my kids, any more than I would hide the risk from nuclear war, but ‘you may not get to grow up’ is not a helpful thing to say to (or to emphasize to) kids. Talking to your kids about this (in the sense of ‘talk to your kids about drugs’) is only going to distress them to no purpose. While I don’t believe in hiding stuff from kids, I also don’t think this is something it is useful to hammer into them. Kids should still get to be and enjoy being kids. (...)

Q: Should I just try to have a good time while I can?

A: No, because my model says that this doesn’t work. It is empty. You can have fun for a day, a week, a month, perhaps a year, but after a while it rings hollow, feels empty, and your future will fill you with dread. Certainly it makes sense to shift this on the margin, get your key bucket list items in early, put a higher marginal priority on fun - even more so than you should have been doing anyway. But I don’t think my day-to-day life experience would improve for very long by taking this kind of path. Then again, each of us is different.

That all assumes you have ruled out attempting to improve our chances. Personally, even if I had to go down, I’d rather go down fighting. Insert rousing speech here.

Q: How Long Do We Have? What is the Timeline?

Short Answer: Unknown. Look at the arguments and evidence. Form your own opinion.

Long Answer: High uncertainty about when this will happen if it happens, whether or not one has high uncertainty about whether it happens at all within our lifetimes. Eliezer’s answer was that he would be very surprised if it didn’t happen by 2050, but that within that range little would surprise him and he has low confidence. Others have longer or shorter means and medians in their timelines. Mine are substantially longer and less confident than Eliezer’s. This is a question you must decide for yourself. The key is that there is uncertainty, so lots of difference scenarios matter.

by Zvi Mowshowitz, Don't Worry About the Vase |  Read more:

Image: via Linkedin Image Generator

[ed. See also: The AI doomers feel undeterred (MIT).]

Elizabeth Warren’s Plan for a Revived Democratic Party

This is a dangerous moment for America and for the world.

A global contest is escalating between democratic institutions governed by the rule of law and lawless dictators who seek to enrich themselves and their cronies.

Here at home, President Trump’s tariffs are driving up costs for families. Millions of Americans have lost their health insurance so that Republicans could fund tax breaks for rich people. ICE is sowing chaos and terror in our communities, resulting in the tragic killing of Renee Good in Minnesota. And Donald Trump’s view of the First Amendment is that he gets to say whatever he wants, AND he gets to use the power of government to silence, extort, bankrupt, or even prosecute anyone who criticizes him. Acting like the wannabe dictator he is, Trump is trying to push out the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and complete his corrupt takeover of America’s central bank – so it serves his interests, along with his billionaire friends. And he has invaded Venezuela to boost the profits of oil companies and announced that he will “run the country.”

None of this would be happening if Democrats hadn’t been wiped out in 2024. According to some self-described experts, Democrats lost power because we were too progressive. For a lot of powerful people—wealthy people from Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and Washington—“too progressive” is code used to undermine any economic agenda that favors working people. They put it more politely, but those movers and shakers want the Democratic Party to respond to the 2024 losses by watering down our economic agenda and sucking up to the rich and powerful, claiming that a less progressive Democratic Party will win more elections.

They are wrong. Americans are stretched to the breaking point financially, and they will vote for candidates who name what is wrong and who credibly demonstrate that they will take on a rigged system in order to fix it. Revising our economic agenda to tiptoe around that conclusion might appeal to the wealthy, but it will not help Democrats build a bigger tent, and it definitely will not help Democrats win elections. A Democratic Party that worries more about offending big donors than delivering for working people is a party that is doomed to fail—in 2026, 2028, and beyond.

Let’s start with some basic math. By definition, the top 0.1% of the economic ladder doesn’t have a lot of votes. So when the question is raised whether Democrats should build our tent by sucking up to the rich, it’s sure not about attracting their votes. It’s about attracting their money.

There are, of course, extremely wealthy people who are also deeply public-minded. For some, it’s about living their values. For others, it’s recognition that massive economic instability is ultimately bad for business. Either way, these very wealthy people advocate for better health care and universal childcare. They embrace sensible regulations to stop corporate scammers. They press the government to raise taxes—including on themselves and their businesses. Over and over, they push for an economy that works for everyone.

But there is a different, and frankly much larger, group of extremely wealthy people trying to influence policy. This group might align with the Democrats on some social issues. They certainly are not MAGA Republicans. But they’re also not interested in changing an economic game that is already rigged in their favor. In exchange for their financial support, they insist that the Democratic Party turn its economic agenda in a direction that mostly benefits the wealthy and further undermines the economic stability of tens of millions of families all across this country.

These people push Democrats to embrace candidates who will slow-walk popular economic policies. They lobby for deregulation and special tax breaks that will pad their own bottom lines. They promote making big-time corporate lawyers federal judges. They pressure presidents to appoint tepid leaders at regulatory agencies—people who, once in office, seem positively allergic to enforcing the law when that might make life uncomfortable for big business interests.

In their effort to shape the Democratic agenda, the ultra-wealthy wield outsized power. And we all know why.

● Rich people can fund super PACs to prop up political campaigns for their chosen candidates.

● They can fund their own lobbying efforts.

● They can build or simply buy whole media empires in order to bend the news to their liking.

● And, as we’re seeing right now with AI and crypto, they can try to crush anyone who gets in the way of their business interests.

Over the past generation, the wealthy have avoided accountability time and again. Regular Americans must play by every rule or face real consequences. You don’t need to read every news article about Jeffrey Epstein and his good buddies like Larry Summers and Donald Trump to understand how consistently rich and powerful insiders protect each other, regardless of politics and regardless of how obscene the situation has become. The Epstein scandal is real and enormous, but the slew of white-collar pardons issued in recent months by President Trump reflects the same the-rules-only-apply-to-someone-else mentality that pervades Washington.

So how does this affect winning elections?

After the 2024 election, pundits sliced and diced demographic groups—across race, age, religion, and geography—to show how Democrats need to grow our coalition in order to win again. Yes, we need support from rural voters, men, and voters without a college degree. And yes, in 2025 we won back some of those folks, partly because Democratic candidates from every wing of the party ran against Trump’s betrayal of working people on affordability issues.

But in the long run, to build a strong Democratic party with a sturdy big tent, it is not enough to simply attack Trump. Democrats need to earn trust—long-term, durable trust—across the electorate. Trust that we actually understand what’s broken, and trust that we have the courage to fix it—even when that means taking on the wealthy and well-connected.

Democrats weren’t always just the default option when the other guys were worse. Once, we were trusted by working people to fight for their interests. And we delivered—even against tough Republican opposition. Social Security, strong unions, the 40-hour workweek, overtime, Medicare, Medicaid, homeownership for veterans and first-time homebuyers, the Affordable Care Act. Over and over, we showed that we could fight and we could deliver.

I understand the temptation—in this moment of national crisis—to sand down our edges to avoid offending anyone, especially the rich and powerful who might finance our candidates. But we can’t win unless we rebuild trust. And we can’t rebuild trust by excommunicating Biden administration law enforcers who, for the first time in decades, actually fought to hold corporations accountable for driving up prices. We can’t rebuild trust by calling up Elon Musk when he tussles with Trump and offering him whatever he wants if he’ll come back to our side and kick in a few nickels to our candidates. We can’t rebuild trust by staying silent about abuses of corporate power and tax fairness simply to avoid offending the delicate sensibilities of the already-rich and powerful.

I understand that, because of our broken campaign finance laws, Democrats need to raise a lot of money, and I don’t believe in unilateral disarmament against the Republicans. But money is not the only ingredient for a successful election. When Democrats water down their economic platform to appeal to wealthy donors, whether the transaction is explicit or subtle, we squander trust with working people and the money just isn’t worth it.

Yes, Democrats need a big tent. But there are two visions for what a big tent means. One vision says that we should shape our agenda and temper our rhetoric to flatter any fabulously rich person looking for a political party that will entrench their own economic interests. The other vision says we must acknowledge the economic failures of the current rigged system, aggressively challenge the status quo, and chart a clear path for big, structural change.

If we are going to pick up the broken pieces from the 2024 election and build a durable big tent, we must acknowledge a hard truth: The Democratic Party cannot pursue both visions at the same time. Either we politely nibble around the edges of change, or we throw ourselves into the fight. Either we carefully craft our policies to ensure that the rich keep right on getting richer, or we build a party that ferociously and unapologetically serves the needs of working people. Democrats have a choice to make—and the first step in rebuilding trust is to admit that we have to choose. (...)

So what does it mean to focus our agenda on an aggressive economic vision? At its core, the goal is simple and easy to measure.

● It means boosting pay and making life more affordable for working people.

● Building more affordable homes and cracking down on corporate landlords.

● Increasing the size of Social Security checks.

● Providing universal child care.

● Passing price gouging laws with real teeth.

● Guaranteeing the right to repair your own cars, machines, and business equipment.

● Strengthening unions.

● Building universal health care.

● Taxing the wealthy and giant corporations.

● Increasing the minimum wage.

I could go on and on—and in fact I have, with detailed plans and legislative proposals. We are not short on good ideas. (...)

I believe in markets and a market economy, and I have spent my entire career trying to make them work better so our economy works for everyone. I celebrate success. I don’t think billionaires are bad people just because they are billionaires. Or that corporations are evil because they pursue profit.

And let me say it again: There is a big difference between a billionaire who spends his fortune to advance the interests of working people and a billionaire who uses his money to entrench a rigged economy. Ideas are not better because they come from a rich person offering to open his wallet and advance his own financial interests—and our leaders should stop acting like they are.

by Elizabeth Warren, The Nation |  Read more:

Image: Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Families Over Billionaires
[ed. Big fan, and always have been. This is what a true populist looks like.]

It's Not Normal

Samantha: This town has a weird smell that you're all probably used to…but I'm not.
Mrs Krabappel: It'll take you about six weeks, dear. 

-The Simpsons, "Bart's Friend Falls in Love," S3E23, May 7, 1992

We are living through weird times, and they've persisted for so long that you probably don't even notice it. But these times are not normal.

Now, I realize that this covers a lot of ground, and without detracting from all the other ways in which the world is weird and bad, I want to focus on one specific and pervasive and awful way in which this world is not normal, in part because this abnormality has a defined cause, a precise start date, and an obvious, actionable remedy.

6 years, 5 months and 22 days after Fox aired "Bart's Friend Falls in Love," Bill Clinton signed a new bill into law: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA).

Under Section 1201 of the DMCA, it's a felony to modify your own property in ways that the manufacturer disapproves of, even if your modifications accomplish some totally innocuous, legal, and socially beneficial goal. Not a little felony, either: DMCA 1201 provides for a five year sentence and a $500,000 fine for a first offense.

Back when the DMCA was being debated, its proponents insisted that their critics were overreacting. They pointed to the legal barriers to invoking DMCA 1201, and insisted that these new restrictions would only apply to a few marginal products in narrow ways that the average person would never even notice.

But that was obvious nonsense, obvious even in 1998, and far more obvious today, more than a quarter-century on. In order for a manufacturer to criminalize modifications to your own property, they have to satisfy two criteria: first, they must sell you a device with a computer in it; and second, they must design that computer with an "access control" that you have to work around in order to make a modification.

For example, say your toaster requires that you scan your bread before it will toast it, to make sure that you're only using a special, expensive kind of bread that kicks back a royalty to the manufacturer. If the embedded computer that does the scanning ships from the factory with a program that is supposed to prevent you from turning off the scanning step, then it is a felony to modify your toaster to work with "unauthorized bread":

If this sounds outlandish, then a) You definitely didn't walk the floor at CES last week, where there were a zillion "cooking robots" that required proprietary feedstock; and b) You haven't really thought hard about your iPhone (which will not allow you to install software of your choosing):

But back in 1998, computers – even the kind of low-powered computers that you'd embed in an appliance – were expensive and relatively rare. No longer! Today, manufacturers source powerful "System on a Chip" (SoC) processors at prices ranging from $0.25 to $8. These are full-fledged computers, easily capable of running an "access control" that satisfies DMCA 1201.

Likewise, in 1998, "access controls" (also called "DRM," "technical protection measures," etc) were a rarity in the field. That was because computer scientists broadly viewed these measures as useless. A determined adversary could always find a way around an access control, and they could package up that break as a software tool and costlessly, instantaneously distribute it over the internet to everyone in the world who wanted to do something that an access control impeded. Access controls were a stupid waste of engineering resources and a source of needless complexity and brittleness:

But – as critics pointed out in 1998 – chips were obviously going to get much cheaper, and if the US Congress made it a felony to bypass an access control, then every kind of manufacturer would be tempted to add some cheap SoCs to their products so they could add access controls and thereby felonize any uses of their products that cut into their profits. Basically, the DMCA offered manufacturers a bargain: add a dollar or two to the bill of materials for your product, and in return, the US government will imprison any competitors who offer your customers a "complementary good" that improves on it.

It's even worse than this: another thing that was obvious in 1998 was that once a manufacturer added a chip to a device, they would probably also figure out a way to connect it to the internet. Once that device is connected to the internet, the manufacturer can push software updates to it at will, which will be installed without user intervention. What's more, by using an access control in connection with that over-the-air update mechanism, the manufacturer can make it a felony to block its updates.

Which means that a manufacturer can sell you a device and then mandatorily update it at a later date to take away its functionality, and then sell that functionality back to you as a "subscription":

A thing that keeps happening:

And happening:

And happening:

In fact, it happens so often I've coined a term for it, "The Darth Vader MBA" (as in, "I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further"):

Here's what this all means: any manufacturer who devotes a small amount of engineering work and incurs a small hardware expense can extinguish private property rights altogether.

What do I mean by private property? Well, we can look to Blackstone's 1753 treatise:

The right of property; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe.

You can't own your iPhone. If you take your iPhone to Apple and they tell you that it is beyond repair, you have to throw it away. If the repair your phone needs involves "parts pairing" (where a new part won't be recognized until an Apple technician "initializes" it through a DMCA-protected access control), then it's a felony to get that phone fixed somewhere else. If Apple tells you your phone is no longer supported because they've updated their OS, then it's a felony to wipe the phone and put a different OS on it (because installing a new OS involves bypassing an "access control" in the phone's bootloader). If Apple tells you that you can't have a piece of software – like ICE Block, an app that warns you if there are nearby ICE killers who might shoot you in the head through your windshield, which Apple has barred from its App Store on the grounds that ICE is a "protected class" – then you can't install it, because installing software that isn't delivered via the App Store involves bypassing an "access control" that checks software to ensure that it's authorized (just like the toaster with its unauthorized bread).

It's not just iPhones: versions of this play out in your medical implants (hearing aid, insulin pump, etc); appliances (stoves, fridges, washing machines); cars and ebikes; set-top boxes and game consoles; ebooks and streaming videos; small appliances (toothbrushes, TVs, speakers), and more.

Increasingly, things that you actually own are the exception, not the rule.

And this is not normal. The end of ownership represents an overturn of a foundation of modern civilization. The fact that the only "people" who can truly own something are the transhuman, immortal colony organisms we call "Limited Liability Corporations" is an absolutely surreal reversal of the normal order of things.

It's a reversal with deep implications: for one thing, it means that you can't protect yourself from raids on your private data or ready cash by adding privacy blockers to your device, which would make it impossible for airlines or ecommerce sites to guess about how rich/desperate you are before quoting you a "personalized price":

It also means you can't stop your device from leaking information about your movements, or even your conversations – Microsoft has announced that it will gather all of your private communications and ship them to its servers for use by "agentic AI": (...)

Microsoft has also confirmed that it provides US authorities with warrantless, secret access to your data:

This is deeply abnormal. Sure, greedy corporate control freaks weren't invented in the 21st century, but the laws that let those sociopaths put you in prison for failing to arrange your affairs to their benefit – and your own detriment – are.

But because computers got faster and cheaper over decades, the end of ownership has had an incremental rollout, and we've barely noticed that it's happened. Sure, we get irritated when our garage-door opener suddenly requires us to look at seven ads every time we use the app that makes it open or close:

But societally, we haven't connected that incident to this wider phenomenon. It stinks here, but we're all used to it.

It's not normal to buy a book and then not be able to lend it, sell it, or give it away. Lending, selling and giving away books is older than copyright. It's older than publishing. It's older than printing. It's older than paper. It is fucking weird (and also terrible) (obviously) that there's a new kind of very popular book that you can go to prison for lending, selling or giving away.

We're just a few cycles away from a pair of shoes that can figure out which shoelaces you're using, or a dishwasher that can block you from using third-party dishes:

It's not normal, and it has profound implications for our security, our privacy, and our society. It makes us easy pickings for corporate vampires who drain our wallets through the gadgets and tools we rely on. It makes us easy pickings for fascists and authoritarians who ally themselves with corporate vampires by promising them tax breaks in exchange for collusion in the destruction of a free society.

I know that these problems are more important than whether or not we think this is normal. But still. It. Is. Just. Not. Normal.

by Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. Anything labeled 'smart' is usually suspect. What's particularly dangerous is if successive generations fall prey to what conservation biology calls shifting baseline syndrome (forgetting or never really missing something that's been lost, so we don't grieve or fight to restore it). For a deep dive into why everything keeps getting worse see Mr. Doctorow's new book: Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025.]