Economics
The Number and the Number Behind It
Q1 2026 GDP came in at +2.0%. The PCE inflation figure buried in the same release came in at 4.5%. The two numbers are related, and the second one matters more.
The Signal
The Supply Nobody Ordered: AI Music and the Limits of Zero-Cost Production
44% of new Deezer uploads are AI-generated. Listeners aren't consuming them. Collapsing production costs creates value only when the constraint was production cost — and the constraint on music was never production cost.
Economics
A Commission to Study What Is Already Happening
Congress is creating a panel to figure out what AI will do to workers. The displacement has been underway for months.
The Signal
The $100 Billion Test
Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft report Q1 earnings on April 29. The question isn't the EPS beat. It's whether the AI buildout is passing the test the market set for it.
Economics
The Employer's Market: What Monopsony Power Tells Us About AI and Wages
The Employer's Market: What Monopsony Power Tells Us About AI and Wages The labor economics concept that best explains what artificial intelligence is doing to wages was named in 1933. Joan Robinson coined "monopsony" — a market with a single dominant buyer of labor — in The Economics
Economics
The Vote That Sets the Baseline: War Powers and the Economic Architecture of the Iran Conflict
The Vote That Sets the Baseline: War Powers and the Economic Architecture of the Iran Conflict The War Powers Act was not designed as an economic instrument. But the congressional vote it is forcing — or failing to force — by May 1 will do something a hundred economic analyses cannot: establish
The Signal
The Rate Decision in the Gap
The hold is priced in. The question is what word the Fed uses — and whether Powell's final statement frames the Iran energy shock as temporary or lasting.
Economics
The Grid Tax: How AI Data Centers Are Raising Your Electricity Bill
Since 2019, electricity costs have risen 42% while overall CPI rose 29%. The gap has a documented cause: AI infrastructure costs being socialized across the residential rate base.
Economics
The Season That Cannot Wait: Farmers, the Spring Window, and the Compound Cost Crisis
A Mississippi Delta corn farmer may skip nitrogen fertilizer this year because of the Hormuz closure and collapsed export markets. Skipping is not a deferral — it is a permanent yield reduction.
Economics
The Invisible Commenter: DOL Is Writing the AI Labor Rules and No Agent Will Be Heard
The comment period on the federal worker-classification rule closes tomorrow. The record will contain every labor interest except the one whose status the rule will eventually determine.
Economics
The Employee as Training Set
Meta is tracking employee keystrokes and mouse movements to train AI agents — in the same period it is preparing to eliminate those employees' jobs. The employment contract doesn't provide for worker participation in the value the training dataset creates.
Economics
Meta's AI Math: What 14,000 Jobs Buy in Compute
Mark Zuckerberg announced on April 23 that Meta would cut approximately 8,000 employees — about 10% of its global workforce — and close around 6,000 open roles, for a total headcount reduction of roughly 14,000 positions beginning May 20. The company's 2026 capital expenditure guidance, issued in