The Consistently Erratic Pattern of Job Gains and Losses During Trump's Second Term

May of 2025 through March 2026 the pattern for job creation literally alternates between positive and negative every month.

The most consistently erratic president has a most consistently erratic pattern of job gains and losses.

John Wick 21

 2053 — John Wick 21. It's just Keanu Reeves in a motorized wheelchair with a Gatling gun. He spins for 45 minutes, continuously firing, achieving his highest body count yet — with mumbled, vague assurances that at least some of them had it coming.

Perhaps.

Post Information Economy Emergent Potential

The emergent properties of 8 billion people collaborating, with millions of technologies potentially coming together in some kind of synthesis, are just so rich in potential.

We were single-celled organisms — and entirely new possibilities emerged when that reality evolved into multicellular life. We were little tribes — and entirely new possibilities emerged with the rise of nation-states. I still don't think we properly appreciate what new realities have yet to unfold from the emergence of the internet, which literally opens up the possibility of collaboration between anyone, anywhere, with anyone else.

Things like nationalism are pushbacks against this move toward global coordination — but that resistance is likely temporary.

The potential here defies any reasonable calculation. It's as if single-celled organisms were trying to predict what multicellular life would become.

Random Walk Theory Paradox

Abendroth: If we take the random walk theory seriously, we can't take it seriously.
Me: What?
Abendroth:. The idea behind the the random walk theory is that everything we know about a stock is reflected in today's price ... so the only thing that can change that price is new information which we don't yet know. Stocks will randomly move - or walk - up or down, by a lot or by a little, based only on that new information.
Me: So you're saying that even conspiracy theories are as effective as financial analysis?
Abendroth: No. I'm saying that in finance, they are all conspiracy theories. Even the random walk theory.
After a long pause.
Me: So you're saying that the random walk theory could be true if it is false but must be false if it is true?
Abendroth: Yes.
Me: Because the random walk theory suggests that any theories about the stock market - including the random walk theory - are nonsensical?
Abendroth: Yes.
Me: That sort of makes sense.
Abendroth: But mostly doesn't.
Me: Did Lewis Carrol manage an investment fund?
Abendroth: Why do you think the Rabbit was so smartly dressed? He was the fund manager.

Americans Do Not Like Trump

The five states that have a net positive approval of Trump have a population of 12.5 million. (Wyoming, Idaho, West Virginia, North Dakota, and Tennessee.)

The two states where his net approval is zero (Oklahoma and Montana) have a population of 5.2 million.

The states in which Trump's net approval rating is negative - reaching as high as negative 44% - have a population of about 324 million, representing nearly 95% of the population of these United States.

Approval levels per The Economist

Americans do not like Trump.

The Deep Roots of Wealth Distribution

There's a play area at SeaWorld — bouncy surface, maybe 50 oversized stuffed shapes scattered around. The kids can't quite figure out what they're for, so rather than build rooms or towers, they just hoard. Forty kids, 50 objects — and four of them have claimed 45.

If you had no economic data but had merely observed this dynamic, you might just be able to predict wealth distribution in these United States.

Favorite William James' Quotes

Williams James (1842 - 1910) is one of my favorite Americans. Here are some quotes from him that might give you some idea of why.

“My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.”

“Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events.”

"The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will."

“The world is a pluralism, not a universe.”

"All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits — practical, emotional, and intellectual — systematically organized for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny."

“If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals.”

“The moral test of a civilization is how it treats its weakest members.”

“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”

“Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”

"The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives."

"The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it."

Economic Market Data for No Kings Protest March 2026

The two most defining markets for how Americans judge any administration are the stock market and labor markets. Not only is Trump engaged in self-enrichment at a scale never before witnessed by any American president but the performance of these two markets is miserable under his presidency.

This first graph shows the average monthly job creation rate for each president since Jimmy Carter. In this you can see that only Trump's previous term and George W. Bush's administration presided over worse job markets.

Stock market performance is - prior to market opening Monday morning 30 March 2026 - the worst of any president since George W. Bush's administration.

Trump's understanding of how the economy works is not just deeply flawed - it is demonstrably flawed. 

Action Figure

As a little boy, he'd dreamed of becoming a superhero but Bobble head Bob's unfortunate condition became the inspiration for a very different kind of action figure.

Baseball is back.

Stock Market Movement

Every stock sale involves one person convinced this is a good time to sell and another convinced this is a good time to buy. Market equilibrium depends not just on differing opinions but perfectly opposing ones.

The NASDAQ is down 6.66% YTD.

Investors agree on the number. They just have very different ideas about what happens next.

The Yin, the Yang, and the Dow.

Dow. Such a precarious index. Just one key stroke away from down.

Victor Hugo on an Idea Whose Time Has Come

"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come," 

- French poet and novelist Victor Hugo.

Historian Barbara Fields On Frustration with Congress and Reality

"The criticism of Congress that says, in essence, Congress has a way of making situations complicated, of making it harder to do things of-- of making it impossible to move in a streamlined fashion. This is a way of saying that democracy is a pain in the neck, which, of course, it is. And that style of criticism of Congress is not so much a criticism of the individuals who are there now, many of whom deserve even more criticism than they have received so much as it is a criticism of the whole idea of a government by as well as for the people. And that is a criticism of democracy. I wonder whether the ideal of democracy lives in a real sense in our country today."

- Historian Barbara Fields from Columbia University in Ken Burns' documentary, Congress

Dictatorship remains alluring even to people who should know better because it is so much less complicated than democracy — with all its debates and divisions. But reality, too, is complicated. The desire for a strong leader stems from fantasizing that reality could be as simple as our opinions of it. Democracy is messy, contentious, and frustrating in no small part because reality is.

One Way Jensen Huang's Token Economy Will Accelerate the Emergence of the Entrepreneurial Economy

Jensen Huang predicts that his employees will have a salary (e.g., $300k) and a budget for tokens (e.g., $150k). These tokens will be used at the employees discretion to create programs, machines, processes and what - in my mind - is essentially a business.

At that point, on a scale from 1 to 10 where a 1 is an employee filling a clearly defined role and a 10 is an entrepreneur who might get financing from elsewhere but is launching a business ... we are entering a world in which the 1 to 10 score for the typical "employee" is steadily moving from 1 to 10 on the scale. Essentially morphing into a network of entrepreneurs rather than a pool of employees.

What Huang is describing dissolves one of the most fundamental distinctions in economic history — the one between labor and capital. The employee has always sold time and skill. The entrepreneur has always deployed capital to organize resources toward an opportunity. Those were different roles, different risk profiles, different relationships to the organization.

The token budget changes that equation structurally. The employee is no longer just selling time — they're deploying capital, making allocation decisions, building things that have a life beyond their individual effort. The line between "I work here" and "I'm building something here" starts to blur and then disappear.

The movement is unlikely to be gradual — it's likely to feel slow and then sudden, the way most threshold shifts do. A few early adopters figure out how to use token budgets entrepreneurially, produce dramatically outsized results, and then the organizational norm shifts rapidly toward expecting that. The employee who treats their token budget like an expense account rather than a venture fund will look as anachronistic as the secretary who refused to learn the word processor.

This will become a popular mechanism by which the entrepreneurial economy becomes universal rather than exceptional. Entrepreneurship stops being a personality type or a risk tolerance and becomes a basic competency — the way literacy did, the way numeracy did.

Which means the institution that figures out how to cultivate entrepreneurial judgment at scale — not just tolerate it in outliers — becomes the dominant institution of the next economy.

Huey Long - Smartest Lunatic Ever

When a fellow congressman told Louisianan Huey Long "You are the smartest lunatic I have ever seen in my whole life," Long took it as a compliment. Arthur Schlesinger said of Long, "He was a comedian, of sorts, but a comedian of sinister purposes."

From Ken Burns documentary on Huey Long.

Money Saving Tip

Here's a money-saving tip. Next time you see an ad for an enticing product, just re-enact the ad. Skip the product altogether and go straight for the joy the product delivers.

"Should we go shopping?"
"No. Just smile more."

The Barber's Poll

Talked to a friend of mine who is a barber and asked him what was the topic of conversation of late. He's a very easy going guy who doesn't volunteer his opinions much but is instead more inclined to listen.

He offered two things he's hearing about frequently. The Iranian war. Apparently it makes no sense to anyone who mentions it. And the job market. People cannot find work.

Not exactly the equivalent of a poll but ... it is something. And makes me think that perhaps there should be an informal poll taken of barbers and manicurists to get their sense of what is on Americans' minds.

The Rise and Fall of Civilizations

The most dangerous internal contradiction any civilization can have isn't inequality or political conflict per se — it's the loss of the capacity to imagine and attempt its own transformation.

There is a crucial tension between learning how to live life as past generations have and learning to imagine life as only future generations can live it.

Tired, Wired

Tired: telephone.

Wired: teleporter.