Thursday, June 18, 2026
Most Americans Support An Amendment To Elect Presidents By Popular Vote
The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between June 13th and 15th of a nationwide sample of 1,549 adults (including 1,403 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.5 points for adults and 3.4 points for registered voters.
Most Voters Opposed Having A UFC Fight At The White House
The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between June June 13th and 15th of a nationwide sample of 1,403 registered voters, with a 3.4 point margin of error.
"SpaceX Is Essentially All About Hype. It Is, In Effect, A $2.75 Trillion Meme Stock.
Economist Paul Krugman has a warning for those who think Space X is a good investment:
While I don’t know anyone who loves Microsoft or its products, it’s a wildly successful company with a long track record. Last year Microsoft earned $125 billion in profits on $318 billion in revenue.
In that same year SpaceX lost $4 billion on $19 billion in revenue. Robin Wigglesworth, editor of the Financial Times blog Alphaville, memorably described Elon Musk’s company as a
very successful but fairly small satellite launch company, bolted onto a stagnant money-losing social media company [X, formerly Twitter] and a money-incinerating AI company [xAI, operator of the widely despised model Grok], and then sprinkled with a lot of hype about humankind going interplanetary.
And yet at the end of trading yesterday the stock market placed almost as high a value on SpaceX, which went public last Friday, as it did on Microsoft, and slightly more than it placed on Amazon, which made $78 billion in profits last year.
What can explain this valuation? Many investors appear to believe that Musk is a wizard who can conjure up world-conquering inventions on a regular basis. But while Musk has done some impressive things, his track record for more than a decade has been one of failed venture after failed venture. And his current big ideas, like data centers in space, fundamentally don’t make sense. A recent Government Accountability Office report is carefully worded, but as I read it basically says “this is another Hyperloop [Musk’s absurd, failed attempt to reinvent public transportation].”
Granted, Musk has enormous political influence through his close ties to Donald Trump. So might SpaceX’s valuation be justified, not by Musk’s technological prowess, but by his access to the fruits of crony capitalism?
Nobody should doubt the Trump administration’s willingness to tilt the playing field in favor of its friends, especially those who enrich Trump personally. But there are limits to what even blatant favoritism can deliver.
Consider the current fate of the crypto industry. Trump, who once called Bitcoin a “scam,” became a passionate booster of cryptocurrency once it became clear that it was a channel through which he could profit from the presidency. The fighting cage he had erected on the White House lawn was “wrapped in cryptocurrency advertisements.” And cryptocurrency valuations soared after he won in 2024.
But the Trump bump for crypto has now vanished. Here’s the total market capitalization of Bitcoin over the past two and a half years:
At its peak, Bitcoin had a market capitalization similar to that of SpaceX now. Yet the fact that Bitcoin is economically useless for anything other than money-laundering meant that its soaring valuations rested on the belief that the crypto-friendly Trump administration would subvert regulations in its favor, for example by allowing crypto companies to effectively operate as unregulated banks. Hence, as I wrote last year, crypto became a Trump trade, operating under the belief that Donald Trump’s patronage would overcome both economic logic and the opposition of the banking industry and many Democrats in Congress.
Sure enough, as Trump’s poll numbers began to sink, along with his political leverage, so did the value of Bitcoin. But those who got in on the Trump trade early, and sold their holdings to the Trump believers, made big money.
The particulars of SpaceX are different from those of Bitcoin – SpaceX does have one profitable division, Starlink, which was touted as the money-engine behind the SpaceX IPO. Only incredible growth in Starlink can justify SpaceX’s valuation. Yet an analyst who has dug deep into the numbers has shown that the Starlink valuations in the SpaceX IPO imply that Starlink will eventually dominate 80% of the global internet service market. That’s not remotely possible,
So the moral here is that SpaceX is essentially all about hype. It is, in effect, a $2.75 trillion meme stock. The only winners will be those who got in early, stoked a market frenzy, and exit before the bottom inevitably falls out.
Wednesday, June 17, 2026
Voters Still Think Trump/GOP Are Focused On The Wrong Issues
The chart above is from the Navigator Poll -- done between June 4th and 8th of a nationwide sample of 1,000 registered voters, with a 3.1 point margin of error.
The Vast (And Growing) Wealth Inequality Must Be Fixed Before It Destroys Our Democracy
Economist Paul Krugman warns about the huge wealth gap in the United States and its danger to our democracy:
On Sunday Donald Trump celebrated his 80th birthday with a cage match on the White House lawn. The match and the events that surrounded it — especially the press conference with UFC fighters, shown above, held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial — were a desecration of America’s capital, whose monuments and buildings have always endeavored to represent small-r republican virtues. The whole affair was an affront to the values on which this nation was founded and also unspeakably vulgar.
That last criticism may strike some readers as elitist and trivial. Yet the vulgarity that is the hallmark of Trump and his surrounding circle of oligarchs is a symptom of something not at all trivial: The collapse of social norms. As I argued yesterday, these norms historically played a key role in mitigating abuses of power and privilege during the Gilded Age, the last time America suffered from extreme income and wealth inequality (though not nearly as extreme as what we have now).
Norms matter. In his classic book The Theory of the Leisure Class — published in 1899, at the apogee of the Gilded Age — Thorstein Veblen famously argued that much of the behavior of his era’s elite was driven not by the desire to enjoy life but by the desire to impress others. Partly they did this through conspicuous consumption. Thus they built lavish mansions staffed by legions of servants.
However, members of the Gilded Age elite didn’t solely aim to display their wealth. They also tried to appear respectable. There were surely many private affairs and betrayals we will never know about. But the important point is that the super-wealthy of that era presented to the American public an image of being responsible members of society.
The contrast with the public behavior of Trump’s band of uber-wealthy is startling.
In addition to modeling upstanding behavior, the extremely rich of the Gilded Age were expected to have, or pretend to have, some virtues that were part of the aristocratic ideal, including a sense of noblesse oblige displayed by good works.
Today’s oligarchs, by contrast, have largely given up on the old norms of social and individual responsibility. They give very little money to good causes and their vulgar taste reflects their in-your-face attitude towards the public. In our current hyper-Gilded Age, extreme vulgarity and the decline of philanthropy are really different aspects of the same phenomenon: the rise of an elite so disconnected from ordinary Americans that it feels no need to even appear to be honorable.
So in a real sense we are living in the midst of a reenactment of the decline and fall of the Roman Republic, not a second American Gilded Age. No, I’m not one of those men who thinks about ancient Rome all the time. But there are some obvious parallels.
While the causes of the decline of republican government and Rome’s eventual transition to one-man rule were doubtless complex, there is broad consensus among historians that a key factor was the emergence of extreme inequality. A handful of men became incredibly wealthy from the spoils of Rome’s eastern conquests, and their wealth and power eventually became too great for the rules of constitutional, republican government to contain. Sound uncomfortably familiar?
The death throes of the Republic went on for many years. Politicians declared their rivals enemies of the state, deployed violent gangs to disrupt the rule of law, established temporary dictatorships, and more. The installation of Augustus as emperor in 27 BC was just the final act.
And during this long twilight of constitutional government, one of the ways the extremely wealthy and powerful sought both to demonstrate their wealth and to curry favor with the mob was by sponsoring gladiatorial games.
Why Is Trump Being So Secretive About The Agreement With Iran?
For months now, Donald Trump has been claiming that he's only days away from reaching an agreement with Iran that would end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Finally, it looks like some kind of agreement (or memo of understanding) may have been reached.
Trump says the agreement has been digitally signed, and a formal signing will happen on Friday.
However, we must understand that this is not a final agreement that will end the war. It is only an agreement to extend the ceasefire another 60 days (and hopefully open the Strait of Hormuz) while talks continue to reach a final solution. Still, it is good news if it can accomplish at least that.
But it bothers me that Trump is being so secretive about what is in the agreement. Trump has always been very open about things that he thinks make him look good. That tells me that he is not at all sure that Congress (or the American people) will like what he's agreed to.
Has Trump, in his desperation to get out of this mess, given Iran the super hand? Has he surrendered while claiming victory?
He keeps claiming the contents of the agreement will be released, but so far, they haven't been. Why?
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