Job Creation Slows for 2025

We now have job and unemployment numbers through September. Unemployment is steadily ticking up. Average job creation over the last 5 months is 39,000. (To compare, in the same 5 months in 2024, the average was 136,000, nearly 100,000 more.)

Reasons?
1. Random changes. It's a wonder that the national economy is as steady as it is. Lots going on any given month.

2. Immigration. Fewer people coming into the country and more people going out. (These aren't just people at your local taco shop. Remember that Hyundai had people in an American factory who were training American workers who were arrested by ICE.)
3. Tariffs. Trump's policies have created uncertainty, which can cause businesses to hesitate before hiring. And tariffs themselves disrupt trade flows and existing business partnerships, triggering layoffs and hiring freezes.
4. Fed continuing with higher interest rates (in order to suppress inflation) which can depress hiring and investment.
5. AI. There are some reports that organizations' senior people are turning to AI rather than junior hires to complete certain kinds of tasks.

The good news is that the courts may yet scuttle Trump's tariffs and Powell and the Fed could be lowering interest rates within the next few months. The bad news? We have a president who likes a little chaos with his breakfast and there doesn't seem to be any serious policy discussions about what AI might mean for employment policies.

Miss Information

Tomorrow we finally get job numbers for .... September.

If this administration could generate data at even 1% the rate at which it generates nonsense we would be so well informed.

Wonder how long it'll be before Trump has a beauty contest for Miss Information.

BIG returns from TINY changes COMPOUNDING over time

A reminder of how little it takes when you are compounding returns ...

If the market went up about:

0.02% every day → you get 5% annually

0.04% every day → you get 10% annually

0.07% every day → you get 20% annually

So, not 7%. Not 7/10th of a percent. But 7/100th of a PERCENT every trading day would yield a 20% annual return.

What Global Consciousness Has Done to Local Politics

I’m curious about your perspective on something.

Over the last few decades, Americans have lived through a massive widening of horizons — the Cold War “free world,” globalization, the rise of the internet, and an everyday awareness of life far beyond our borders. It feels like our idea of who “we” are has stretched from 50 states to an audience of 8 billion.

I wonder whether that expanding global consciousness changed how we think about the general welfare at home.

LBJ’s Great Society was built on the idea of one national community taking care of its own. By the 1980s, Reagan talked in terms of a larger “free world” — a moral circle bigger than any single country. And now the internet places us in a global conversation every day.

My question is simple:

As our sense of “we” has expanded globally, did our willingness to support fellow citizens shrink?
Did the mental shift from 340 million Americans to 8 billion humans make domestic solidarity feel thinner or more complicated?

What do you think?

The Lack of Civility in the Trump Administration

For centuries in the West, a “community” meant the people who shared communion — literally. You lived near the same church, worshipped the same God in the same way, and believed that those outside your fold were in spiritual danger. Unity was enforced by ritual, habit, and - if needed - by force.

Then came the Protestant Reformation, and the unity shattered. The wars that followed were brutal, personal, and theological. Neighbors weren’t just “wrong”; they were heretics. Europe spent more than a century discovering how vicious a disagreement can become when people believe their salvation hangs in the balance.

Out of that exhaustion, something new emerged: civility. Not agreement. Not mutual admiration. Just the simple, radical practice of not attacking one another — verbally or physically — in the public square. To be a “civilian” was to be civil: to refrain from violence, to coexist with people whose beliefs you considered misguided, dangerous, or even damned.

It was a hell of a shift, but it made the modern world livable.
You no longer have to argue theology with your grocer. You don’t need to warn your insurance agent they’re going to hell. (Today that’s more of a heat-of-the-moment suggestion than a community service announcement.)

Civility didn’t eliminate disagreement; it allowed society to survive it.
It remains one of the great inventions of the post-religious-war West.

And now we have an administration of people whose salaries we're paying who are such true believers in their mission that they've abandoned civility.
This lack of civility, like the anti-vax movement, is medieval.

Trump's Presidency as Evidence of Poor Quality Civics Classes

I would love to see stats on what portion of Trump supporters were either home schooled or had gym teachers teach their civics class. 

There is such a profound ignorance of the cost of demolishing our institutions of justice and regulations among his supporters who apparently have always realized that Trump is a con man but felt that they'd be included as beneficiaries of his grift.

How to be Miserable

Two surefire ways to be miserable:

1. Live your life like you’re running for office—poll-tested, platform-safe, and passion-free without regard for any of what uniquely defines you.
2. Vote like you’re starring in a one-person democracy—gloriously authentic, utterly unelectable without regard for any of what so defines your community.

Prayer, Politicians, and Lies

The Western tradition of believing in a God who answers prayers has shaped an odd expectation in our politics: that we can elect leaders who will grant us prosperity, safety, and comfort as if by divine intervention.

We pray for lower prices, higher wages, less crime, and better parks—and expect politicians to deliver them without cost, effort, trade-offs or effort on our part. This mindset rewards those who promise miracles over those who explain realities.

Why do politicians lie to us?
Because when they tell the truth—that fixing one problem usually means accepting another, that “more of this” (healthcare, for instance) requires “more of that” (taxes)—we punish them at the polls. We tell prospective candidates, If you don't lie to us, we won't vote for you and then act surprised when we find that they've been lying to us. 

The Scale of Tragedy in WWII

The war between Germany and Russia lasted about 1,400 days. Each day, on average, 17,800 people were killed. At that pace, the United States would have equaled its entire Vietnam War death toll in less than four days.

Amplified Intelligence

For the longest time they thought that AI stood for artificial intelligence. It did not. It stood for amplified intelligence. So it was not just insight, analysis and calm perspective that was amplified, but so was paranoia and madness.

Let Us Pretend We Are Orchestrating Them

“Since we don’t understand these events, let us pretend that we are orchestrating them.”

- Jean Cocteau, the French poet, playwright, and filmmaker, commenting in the wake of the upheavals of the early 20th century in Europe.

Inflation Reporting Has Lost the Plot

Economic reporting has devolved into the worst kind of inflation coverage — one that sets impossible expectations.

First: Prices are always rising on some things. Out of hundreds of tracked items, you can always find a handful up 5%, 10%, or 15%. That’s not inflation; that’s how markets send signals. When rice price goes up and potatoes go down, consumers buy fewer of one and more of the other, while farmers shift what they plant. Those shifting prices are how markets adapt — not signs of crisis.

Second: You don’t want prices to fall overall. Deflation — a general drop in prices — sounds pleasant but is economically toxic. When people expect prices to keep falling, they delay purchases, businesses lose sales, production slows, and jobs disappear. The goal isn’t falling prices; it’s stable prices — low inflation, around 2%.

So when people complain that prices today are higher than in 2020 or 2015, they’re missing how the economy works. Prices don’t — and shouldn’t — roll back to earlier years. If they did, we’d be in a recession.

Two reminders:

Some prices will always rise — that’s not inflation.

Price levels will never return to the past — that’s stability, not failure

The Importance of Miscalculating How Long a Project Will Take

People often overlook the importance of miscalculation in any worthwhile project.

“We should be able to complete this within a year.”
Four years later:
“We should be able to complete this within a few months.”

When I used to start with new product development teams, I’d sometimes ask, “How long did it take to build the Great Pyramids?”
No one ever knew.

Then I’d tell them, “Exactly. Nobody knows. And it doesn’t matter how long it took. They’re great.”

The point is simple: if you’re doing something that matters, there will come a time when how long it took—two months or two decades—will matter far less than whether it mattered … whether it’s great.

Or, as Shigeru Miyamoto - game director at Nintendo - put it, “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.”