This week in our Members Only Newsletter you missed:
Max Notes on 5 influential books.
The Tuesday Top Five news articles everyone should be reading.
An original essay from News Beatâs Rashed Mian on the police state.
And Ryan Stancoâs âNot for Nothingâ on Boeing, bloviating and Oasis.
So I guess the question isâŠwhat are you waiting for? Sign up today to become a member and level up to unlock a slew of additional perks!
Max Notes
Well, we can all breathe a sigh of relief that the election has already been called for Kamala Harris. Allan Lichtman has famously predicted the winner of the past nine out of ten elections using a system he co-developed called âthe keys to the White House.â If you arenât familiar with Lichtman itâs an interesting story and one that might offer a glimmer of hope to Democrats, as he puts forward a convincing argument. Even set against the backdrop of so many differences between this and prior elections, Lichtman makes compelling arguments to back up his system.
Every election cycle Lichtman makes the rounds on television, and this year heâs getting more attention than ever because of his 2016 call for Donald Trump and 2020 call for Joe Biden. And every election cycle the pundit class presses him on aspects of his system that might not hold up under the current circumstances. At risk of repeating their mistakes (in hindsight) there is only area of his model that I question; not the methodology necessarily, but his perspective.
The âkeysâ are quantitative and qualitative in nature. Some are absolute such as incumbency or midterm results. Others are qualitative and require more nuance such as âcharismaâ or âsocial unrest.â If you go through his presentation youâll spot the differences. The one area I question is his fifth key, âshort-term economy.â On this key, Lichtman definitively states that the economy is not in recession. This is a massively important consideration that should be given more weight than others, in my humble opinion. And Iâm not sure we can squarely land on âno, weâre not in a recessionâ as he concludes.
The reason for this is that recessions are judged technically and in retrospect. Economists make predictions all the time about if and when recessions are coming but theyâre only called in hindsight once enough data has accumulated. Recessions are technically called when there have been two quarters of declining GDP. So it tracks that Lichtman would confidently state that weâre not in a recession because weâve experienced moderate GDP growth. There just wouldnât be time to make that call. However, this time might be different because of the fallout from the pandemic and the subsequent inflation boom, consumer debt crisis, supply chain snarls coming untangled slower than expected and a burgeoning housing and commercial real estate crisis. What Iâm getting at is that people may feel as though theyâre living through a recession even if the scientists arenât prepared to call it that.
This is not to portray doom and gloom or call professor Lichtmanâs strategy into question. Rather, it should be taken as a precaution for Democrats to downplay the economy. I think itâs time for Democrats to abandon the bottom-up, middle-out talking points because they feel patronizing to anyone who is suffering in current economic conditions.
Other things Iâm obsessing overâŠ
More Canadian shit. I binged Shoresy Season 3 on Hulu and actually cried during the finale. 99 asked whether I was inebriated at the time. Next question. âGo tils ya canât go no more.â
OMFG this is delicious. Dave Rubin and Tim Pool (among others) have been accused of taking GIGANTIC sums of money to promote Russian disinformation. There are receipts. How gigantic you might ask? $100,000 per video clip. Yeah. This story is fucking bonkers. Also, it makes complete sense. There are so many places to learn about this but hereâs TMR to break it down gleefully.
This table measures the volume of seated diners from online reservations on a daily/monthly basis in 2024 vs. 2023. For example, in Los Angeles on January 8, 2024, seated diners were up 7% compared to 2023. In the monthly view, data for the current month shows the YoY change in seated diners for the month-to-date. For example, if the date is January 10, 2024, the data compares January 1 â 10, 2024 to the same range in 2023.
Headlines
An American Was Killed in the West Bank
Donât worry. Secretary Blinken and the IDF are looking into the incident where Israeli forces shot and murdered multiple people in a territory that doesnât belong to them and among the murdered were children. And an American. Iâm sure there will be a thorough investigation and that the families will receive justice. I just know it.
From the article:
âAysenur Ezgi Eygi, who was also a Turkish citizen, is reported to have been taking part in a protest against Jewish settlement expansion in the town of Beita near Nablus. Ms Ezgi Eygi was allegedly shot by Israeli troops, according to local media reports. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was âlooking into reports that a foreign national was killed as a result of shots fired in the area.â US Secretary of State Antony Blinken deplored the âltragic loss,â adding: âlWhen we have more info, we will share it, make it available and, as necessary, weâll act on it.ââ
Despite valiant efforts by left-wing coalitions to block the far-right insurgents in the second round of the snap election, Macron backed a smaller right-wing coalition to run the government. It was a short-term defensive maneuver against Marine Le Pen that has long-term consequences for the governing structure in France.
Maybe This Will Work: Charging Parents of School Shooters
Of course it wonât, but it might make us feel a little better about the fact that we have absolutely no answers for the gun crisis in the United States. None.
From the article:
âItâs the latest example of prosecutors holding parents responsible for their childrenâs actions in school shootings. In April, Michigan parents Jennifer and James Crumbley were the first convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting. They were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for not securing a firearm at home and acting indifferently to signs of their sonâs deteriorating mental health before he killed four students in 2021. The Georgia shootings have also renewed debate about safe storage laws for guns and have parents wondering how to talk to their children about school shootings and trauma.â
Have you ever wondered what oligarchs talk about when they think no one is listening? Wonder no more. This week we dissect Eric Schmidtâs recent Q&A at Stanford University where he talks about remote work culture, the future of AI and how big tech intervenes at the highest levels of government. The kicker isâŠhe thought it was private and didnât realize it was being recorded. Some of his comments regarding the laziness of remote workers and the âarroganceâ of the programmer community went viral prompting Schmidt to apologize and scramble to have the video removed. Considering he ran the worldâs biggest internet search engine he should have known that nothing ever really disappears. In fact, we dug up his own words from 2013 when he said exactly that. Beyond the comments that got the most attention in the media (for a minute) the conversation reveals much more about the dark side of oligarchy in the United States.
Hereâs a snippet from the pod:
Max: âThe reality is that these guys arenât trying to curb inequality or even understand the humanity-shredding effects of it. In fact, the book mentions inequality exactly once in the opening paragraph of the first chapter before barrelling through a litany of examples of how technology will erode our privacy, build rogue terror states, change the nature of warfare and improve reconstruction after the devastation resulting from technological warfare. Thereâs a passing mention of economic inequality in places like South America and Africa midway through the book and thatâs about it. The entire work talks about the potential upside of technology while warning of the catastrophic downsides, never once stopping to ruminate on their role in both.â
I finally got around to recording the video version of our most downloaded podcast episode, The Economics of Racism. It gave me a chance to revisit this staggering work that breaks down the history of economic racism in the United States since the Civil War and busts a lot of myths about banking along the way. I canât recommend this highly enough.
âIâm an engineer, i.e., not an economist. But the politics of recent years has raised my interest, not to the point of study, Iâm far too busy trying to save what remains of my business after the ravages of Brexit. But I was beginning to understand the folly of the free markets, at least in some industries. There [is] in the UK, and I believe in the US under the republicans, adherence to politically motivated doctrine that disregards common sense and an eye to the long term future of societies. As a consequence, we in the UK have excrement flowing in our rivers and water bosses paid huge bonuses, we have energy companies profiteering while poverty grows. The ever increasing wealth gap is killing the country. Itâs the result of a market driven system that aims only to attract investment by making rich people and companies richer.â
Hasan Piker, a key leftist voice on Twitch, engages younger voters with relatable political commentary and challenges mainstream media norms.
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