Christian Nationalists - People Who Would Like You To Think They Understand Christianity More Than Christ and Government More Than the Founding Fathers

In the four Gospels, Jesus doesn’t mention abortion or homosexuality—not once.

But in three of the four, He gives the same advice to a rich young man who wants eternal life: sell everything you have and give it to the poor. Also, in three of the four, He says it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Bill of Rights has 10 amendments, and the very first begins with, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

So, if you don’t want to sell all your possessions—despite the fact that Jesus explicitly taught it—the First Amendment suggests you don’t have to. And if you don’t want to lose your right to decide whether or not to have a child, not only does the Constitution forbid others from legislating their religion onto you, but the religion they want to impose on you isn’t one Christ taught anyway.

I suppose it’s possible that Christian nationalists who want to legislate their beliefs understand politics better than the Founding Fathers who gave us the First Amendment and understand Christianity better than Christ. Possible—but unlikely. Because if they did, the real Christian nationalists would be out here pushing for a 100% wealth tax. And I guarantee you, when that happens, these faux Christian nationalists will be waving the First Amendment faster than you can say, “seize the means of reproduction!”

How Trump Uses Nonsense to Distract From His Nonsense

Let's talk nonsense this morning. Or, more specifically, let’s talk about why Trump talks so much nonsense. He does it to distract reasonable people from his unreasonable policies.

Let's start with some facts.
The number of children living in poverty doubled from 5 million to 10 million between 2021 and 2023. Why? Because the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) expired at the end of 2021.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has 800 billionaires. This morning the five richest Americans are worth a combined one trillion dollars.

Trump’s policy is simple: He sees 10 million children in poverty and believes we should cut their benefits. He sees 800 billionaires and thinks we should cut their taxes.

Trump believes that the rich and powerful should be richer and more powerful, and that the poor should be poorer.

That is nonsense.

So, how does he distract you from this nonsense? With other nonsense.

"I'm still gonna call them an illegal alien," JD Vance recently said about Haitian migrants who are in Ohio legally. This echoes Trump's rhetoric, who claimed during his one debate with Harris that immigrants were eating people’s pets —a claim that originated from a false Facebook post and has no basis in reality.

When Trump pushes this nonsense about Haitians eating pets, it does two things: First, it excites racists and fuels racial division. Second, and more importantly, it distracts voters from his agenda based on his conviction that poor children are not poor enough and the wealthy are not wealthy enough.

He spouts nonsense about immigrants eating your pets or claims that children are coming home from school to unsuspecting parents surprised to learn that their child has had transgender surgery between classes. He spouts nonsense to distract you from the fact that the combined wealth of the five richest Americans is one trillion dollars, and he plans to give these men even more tax breaks.

In short, he’s distracting you from his nonsensical policies with nonsensical lies - his hope apparently that we will be made numb, or senseless with all of his nonsense.

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Here fact checker Daniel Dale of CNN lists some of the completely fictional stories Trump has been recently telling.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/19/politics/fact-check-donald-trump-fictional-stories/index.html

2 Reckless but Potentially Valuable Forecasts for This Week

I'm going to make a couple of reckless forecasts for this week.

On Wednesday, September 18, Fed Chair Jerome Powell will announce a 50 basis point rate cut, signaling the end of an aggressive rate-hiking cycle that began in 2022. This will be the first cut in over four years.

As a result, the NASDAQ will rise more than 1%, maybe as as high as 3% by week's end. With inflation moderating and further rate cuts probable, investors could flock back to tech stocks, pushing the index higher. The NASDAQ has historically responded positively to rate cuts, with the index rising an average of 2.4% in the month following similar announcements.

2 Ways to Define Conservative and Liberal and How R&D Spending Predicts How Communities Vote

In America, we use "conservative" in two main ways. One, to describe those who want less government. And two, for those who protect traditions and reject change.
Similarly, "liberal" covers both people who distrust wealth and corporations, and progressives who want society to evolve and improve, prioritizing quality of life and individual freedom over tradition.

New data on R&D spending as a percentage of state GDP supports the idea that conservatives resist novelty while progressives embrace it. States investing more in R&D, aiming to change the world, voted overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020. Conversely, states spending less on R&D favored Trump. The contrast is striking: the 10 states with the highest R&D spending voted for Biden by an average margin of 19 points, while the 10 states with the lowest R&D spending backed Trump by 18 points.

Data on the 10 states with the most and least R&D spending below.

Source for data here:
https://www.bea.gov/news/blog/2024-05-09/experimental-rd-value-added-statistics-us-and-states-now-available

Trump of McCain - I Like People Who Weren't Captured. McCain of Trump - I Like People Who Weren't Shot

In July 2015, during a campaign event in Ames, Iowa, Donald Trump made controversial remarks about John McCain. Trump said, "He's not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured"

John McCain was not drafted during Vietnam. He enlisted.

McCain was held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam for 5 years and 10 months, from October 26, 1967, until his release on March 14, 1973.

After being captured and enduring severe injuries and torture, McCain was offered early release by his captors in 1968. This offer came because his father, Admiral John S. McCain Jr., was a high-ranking naval officer and had been named Commander-in-Chief of Pacific Command.

However, McCain refused the offer of early release, adhering to the military code of conduct, which stipulates that prisoners should be released in the order they were captured. McCain believed it was important to maintain solidarity with his fellow prisoners and to prevent the enemy from using his release for propaganda purposes. He insisted that those captured before him be released first​​. This decision resulted in McCain enduring additional years of brutal treatment and torture until his eventual release in 1973.

The reason McCain was unable to lift his arms over his head was due to the torture and harsh treatment he endured during his captivity. After being shot down and captured, McCain was subjected to severe beatings, torture, and was often kept in solitary confinement. His injuries included broken arms and a broken leg, and the inadequate medical treatment he received exacerbated his condition. The physical abuse led to lasting damage, particularly to his shoulders, which is why he had difficulty lifting his arms above his head.

Imagine dismissing all that with the comment, "He's not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured" It would be as if McCain were still alive and said of Trump, "I like candidates who weren't shot." The idea that someone would dismiss an assassination attempt should horrify you - nearly as much the idea that any candidate aspiring to be Commander of Chief would dismiss the ordeal of a POW.

For the MAGA crowd, enduring years of torture by a military enemy is to be dismissed. Shot at by a deranged teenager is to be reverenced.

And of course when you're in a cult, you can't trust your own judgement about whether something is to be ridiculed or reverenced until you know what the cult leader thinks. So now Republicans know - one is supposed to dismiss the suffering of a Prisoner of War but show sympathy and outrage for someone attacked by a would-be assassin. Well, they are half right. Pity that echoing Trump's mood and philosophy doesn't quite allow someone to be fully human.

Kamala Harris, Immigration, Progress and Trump's Internment Camps

Kamala Harris is a product of a very different immigration policy than the one that came before LBJ and the one that will come after Trump.

Prior to LBJ, immigration was essentially proportionate to countries already represented in the US. Lots of Americans of British and German descent, for instance, was matched by lots of immigrants from Britain and Germany. LBJ changed that, making immigration increasingly dependent on academic achievement or potential, understanding the importance of knowledge workers and diversity in the information economy.

Kamala Harris's parents met at grad school at UC Berkeley - he from Jamaica and her from India. Once they graduated they became part of the academic and research professionals who define the leading edge of progress in developed nations. Her father taught economics at Stanford. Her mother was a cancer researcher at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The Bay Area where they worked and Kamala lived before moving east for work has an immigration rate that is nearly triple that of the US as a whole. (And, of course, plenty of children of immigrants as well.)

Quite a few Americans were thrown by the fact that these immigrants were less likely to look like the folks who'd previously immigrated here from places like Northern Europe. LBJ's new immigration policy also resulted in immigrants who are generally more productive, innovative, and entrepreneurial.

The Bay Area, for example, has levels of entrepreneurship that has led to the creation of more wealth than anywhere else in the world - a rate of entrepreneurship enhanced by the portion of immigrants it has. The 12 most valuable companies in the Bay Area alone have a combined value that is 6X the value of Germany's entire stock market, 4X the value of France or the UK's entire stock market, and 2X the value of Japan's. There is no place or time in history that has even come close to the Bay Area's ability to create wealth, an ability enhanced by its diversity.

Of course most Americans are far more interested in taking power from women over their own bodies and lowering the portion of immigrants in their communities than they are in creating wealth and prosperity.

And the American leading in the polls for president thinks that state legislatures rather than individual women should have control over women's bodies, and actually thought that the country's first African-American president was literally from Africa ... and because of that won the affection of nearly half of Americans for whom such a claim seemed sensible and brave. In the eyes of some, Kamala Harris is a wonderful success story: in the eyes of most Americans she is alarming.

Biden - and presumably Harris - will win the Bay Area by a 4 to 1 vote but will lose rural Mississippi and quite possibly Ohio, Georgia and other states that value "tradition" more than progress, places that find immigrants alarming.

How alarming? Trump is leading in the polls, a majority of Americans delighted with his promise to deport about 15 to 20 million immigrants. To put the scale of this roundup, internment and deportation in context, only 4 states have populations greater than 15 million. Trump has expressed a willingness to to create internment camps to hold these immigrants. We could have a total internment camp population greater than the population of all but 36 states. And Americans who got angry about wearing face masks are very excited by the prospect of armed immigration officers busting into homes and businesses across the US to roundup people without proper documentation. (And of course this will mean millions of children born here, with citizenship, who presumably have a choice between orphanages or being deported from a country in which they have citizenship, causing the numbers who will be rounded up to swell.)

Hitler's was the last administration in the West to attempt internments at this scale.

But Joe Biden is old so we'll have to go with the much younger (by more than 2 years) Donald who promises us chaos and violence that will dwarf his last presidency. (How violent was his last presidency? His own VP had his life threatened on January 6 and now refuses to endorse the president he served with. Only one other time in all of American history has a VP turned against the president he served under. In 1832 - nearly a century ago - Calhoun resigned as Jackson's VP.)

It is doubtful that we'll have Harris as VP next year - and certainly won't have a minority woman as president. Not in a country where nearly half of Americans are convinced that if only history gave some nation a second chance at internment camps they could get it right. We have millions of angry Americans because, you know, egg prices went up last year. Polls now suggest that most Americans prefer the prospect of immigrant roundups and internment camps with populations greater than Ohio's to a president who stutters. It's a curious set of values we have.

Americans. We're not interested in creating wealth or in progress. We just don't want to be around people who look different.

The Transformation in Trade Has Made Tariffs More Terrible Since the Time of David Ricardo in the Early 1800s

I don't think that enough is made of the inflation impact of Trump's tariffs.

When David Ricardo introduced the concept of comparative advantage in trade in 1817, he explained it using the example of Portugal trading wine for England's cloth. He demonstrated that even if one country could produce both goods more efficiently, it still benefits from specializing in the good it can produce at a relatively lower cost and trading for the other.

Today, trade is much more complex. Products like cars, computers, smartphones, and TVs involve hundreds of parts and multiple production steps across different countries.
In Ricardo's time, tariffs would typically be applied once to a simple finished product, like a bottle of wine. Today, with global supply chains, each part of a product might cross several borders before the final product is assembled. Each crossing could incur a tariff, leading to multiple tariffs on a single product.

With multiple border crossings for complex products like TVs, cars, and smartphones, a world with tariffs could mean prices 10 to 100 percent higher. In Ricardo's world, a tariff would impact a single product once. In our world, tariffs can affect each component multiple times, significantly increasing costs. This makes modern tariffs a much more expensive proposition, as they add up with each border crossing.

High tariffs in such a world are a curious proposal from a party that has incessantly complained about inflation that is now about 2 to 3 percent and quickly falling.

AI Writes About My Book The Fourth Economy and The Transformation of Church, State, Bank and Corporation

The concept from "The Fourth Economy" posits that since the Dark Ages, major societal transformations have been driven by shifts in defining institutions, shaping how these institutions serve individuals. Here’s an evaluation and explanation of this idea:

Historical Transformations of Defining Institutions:

The Protestant Reformation:
Transformation: The Protestant Reformation in the 16th century fundamentally altered the religious landscape of Europe.
Outcome: It challenged the authority of the Catholic Church, leading to religious freedom and pluralism. The church's role shifted from a monolithic authority to a tool that individuals could use to explore their faith.
Impact: This laid the groundwork for individual rights and freedom of conscience, influencing modern concepts of religious liberty.

The Democratic Revolution:
Transformation: The democratic revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries (e.g., the American Revolution, the French Revolution) redefined the role of the state.
Outcome: These revolutions established democracy, transforming the state from a sovereign entity into a mechanism of governance that serves the people.
Impact: This shift empowered individuals with political agency and rights, institutionalizing concepts of citizenship and representative government.

The American Dream:
Transformation: The notion of the American Dream in the 20th century democratized finance and credit.
Outcome: Access to credit and investment opportunities expanded, allowing a broader segment of the population to participate in economic growth and wealth creation.
Impact: This economic democratization contributed to a burgeoning middle class and widespread prosperity, emphasizing the individual's potential for upward mobility.

Prediction: Transformation of the Corporation:
The Fourth Economy:
Prediction: The book predicts that the next major transformation will involve the corporation, shifting it to become a tool for individuals who work within it.
Rationale: This prediction is based on emerging trends where employees seek more autonomy, purpose, and a stake in their organizations.
Possible Outcomes:
Employee Empowerment: Corporations could evolve to offer more democratic work environments, profit-sharing, and collaborative decision-making processes.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): A greater emphasis on CSR could align corporate goals with the broader interests of society and the environment.
Innovation and Flexibility: Empowering employees could lead to greater innovation and adaptability, essential in the rapidly changing global economy.
Evaluation:
Historical Continuity: The notion aligns with historical trends where transformative periods redefined major institutions to better serve individual needs and rights.
Current Trends: There is evidence supporting this prediction. For instance, the rise of employee-owned companies, the gig economy, and increased focus on workplace culture and values suggest a shift towards more inclusive and employee-centric corporate models.
Challenges: The transition may face resistance from entrenched corporate interests and require substantial changes in corporate governance, legal frameworks, and cultural attitudes towards work and employment.
Conclusion:
The Fourth Economy’s notion is a compelling framework for understanding societal transformations. By drawing parallels with historical shifts, it provides a coherent narrative for the potential future evolution of corporations. If corporations do transform as predicted, the change could herald a new era where businesses not only drive economic growth but also enhance individual well-being and societal progress.

Is the Fourth Economy Still Valid? - What Chat GPT Has to Say About My First Book, the Fourth Economy (Part One)

Part One:

"Is the Fourth economy still valid?"

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The validity of the "Fourth Economy" theory can be evaluated based on its relevance to current economic trends, technological advancements, and societal impacts. Here’s an analysis of its ongoing relevance:

*1. Technological Advancements*
- *Still Relevant:* The theory's emphasis on technology as a key driver of economic change remains valid, particularly with the rise of AI, machine learning, blockchain, and other cutting-edge technologies.
- *Current Examples:* AI is transforming industries, enhancing productivity, and creating new markets, consistent with the Fourth Economy's focus on innovation.

*2. Innovation and Entrepreneurship*
- *Still Relevant:* The importance of fostering innovation and entrepreneurship continues to be a cornerstone of modern economies.
- *Current Examples:* Startups, especially in tech, continue to disrupt traditional industries, and innovation hubs like Silicon Valley remain vital economic engines.

*3. Globalization and Competition*
- *Still Relevant:* The interconnectedness and competition on a global scale, as highlighted in the Fourth Economy, are more pronounced than ever.
- *Current Examples:* Global supply chains, international trade, and multinational corporations thrive, driven by technological advancements and digital platforms.

*4. Impact on the Workforce*
- *Still Relevant:* The shift in skill requirements, job displacement, and creation of new roles align with current trends.
- *Current Examples:* The need for digital literacy, AI expertise, and continuous learning are evident in today’s job market.

*5. Flexible Work Arrangements*
- *Still Relevant:* The trend towards remote work and gig economy jobs predicted by the Fourth Economy has accelerated.
- *Current Examples:* The COVID-19 pandemic has further entrenched remote work and freelance opportunities, supported by digital tools.

*6. Education and Training*
- *Still Relevant:* The call for changes in education systems to prepare for a rapidly evolving job market remains pertinent.
- *Current Examples:* Increasing emphasis on STEM education, coding boot camps, and lifelong learning programs.

*7. Urban and Rural Transformation*
- *Still Relevant:* The growth of tech hubs and the transformation of urban and rural areas continue.
- *Current Examples:* Smart cities, tech parks, and digital infrastructure projects are expanding globally.

*8. Income Inequality*
- *Still Relevant:* Addressing potential income inequality remains a critical issue.
- *Current Examples:* The disparity between high-skilled tech jobs and low-skilled jobs is growing, necessitating inclusive policies.

*9. Sustainability and Inclusivity*
- *Still Relevant:* The focus on sustainable and inclusive growth is increasingly important.
- *Current Examples:* Growing emphasis on green technologies, corporate social responsibility, and inclusive economic policies.

*10. Proactive Measures*
- *Still Relevant:* The need for proactive measures by governments, businesses, and individuals to navigate economic changes remains crucial.
- *Current Examples:* Regulatory frameworks for AI, public-private partnerships, and individual reskilling initiatives.

*Conclusion*
The "Fourth Economy" theory remains a valid and insightful framework for understanding contemporary economic trends and preparing for future challenges. Its emphasis on technology, innovation, globalization, workforce transformation, and proactive measures continues to resonate with the current and evolving economic landscape.

2024 Lost Perspective in Politics

History books in 50 years:

One candidate had tried to violently overthrow democracy when he lost his last election, shrugged his shoulders at the mob's attempt to assassinate his VP, was found guilty of 32 felony counts, told NATO allies he would do nothing to stop Putin from invading their countries and proposed tariff policies that would cause inflation to surge, and only gained an endorsement from 4 of the 44 cabinet members from his presidency.

The other candidate looked old and didn't finish a few sentences in a debate.

Pundits across the spectrum called for the other candidate to drop out of the race.

Mellon's $50 Million MAGA Donation Sets New Record for Single Donation to a Political Campaign

Andrew Mellon, a financier who served as Treasury Secretary, faced investigation by the Roosevelt administration for alleged tax evasion starting in 1933. Mellon had a vast collection of art. For years, after his tax bill was calculated, Mellon would “donate” art to a nonprofit institution he had formed, a donation each year equal in value to his tax bill. The art would not move, most continuing to hang in one of his homes. By the time of the trial, he had donated some $40 million worth of art, yet he had done nothing to suggest that the paintings would be used for public good.
In 1936, amidst the scrutiny, Mellon announced his plan to donate his collection to the nation, and he provided funds for a national gallery. This donation led to the establishment of the National Gallery of Art, which opened on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 1941. Mellon's collection formed a significant part of the museum's initial holdings.

Related, Timothy Mellon - an heir of Andrew Mellon’s – recently made the largest political donation on record - $50 million to Trump’s campaign through the MAGA PAC. No word as to whether any art was included.