I was blown away. I thought it was one of the greatest movies I’ve ever seen. The visuals, the acting, the sound, the action, the scope, the journey, the narrative of overcoming crazy obstacles over a long period of time, the secondary characters, the dog, all of it. I ordinarily start to get antsy during super-long films, but I was rapt the whole time. A lot has been made about the casting of different roles – I thought if anything it helped broaden the narrative into a human story as opposed to a Greek one. It was the most enjoyable moviegoing experience I’ve had in years. I walked out of the theatre thinking, “How is Christopher Nolan so much better at making movies than everyone else?”

I’m totally confident that the Odyssey will both win numerous Academy Awards and exceed $1 billion at the box office. A lot of people I know are talking about seeing it multiple times. If you enjoy movies at all, I recommend it wholeheartedly as a theatrical experience, preferably on IMAX. It rises to the level of great art.

Now, it’s not like me to randomly write a movie review. But a few things stuck out to me.

First, there was a lot of suffering involved in making this film. I don’t mean simulated suffering. I mean genuine suffering. It was unavoidable given Christopher Nolan’s insistence on practical effects and desire for verisimilitude. Particularly striking was Matt Damon’s physical transformation as a 55-year-old man into someone who could plausibly be in his mid-thirties in flashback scenes or could dispatch multiple combatants half his age, to his scraggly beard that took a year to grow (and couldn’t be faked given the size of the screen, the wind and spray and, again, Nolan’s desire for exacting detail). Imagine having to grow a crazy beard for months and months and then fast and train diligently to fill this role as a middle-aged man. I think it’s a big reason that past Nolan collaborators like Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman reportedly turned down the role. Kudos to Matt Damon for going through it. I think he deserves an Oscar.

It certainly made me want to hit the gym. Art requires suffering. Maybe going home does too.

Second, there was a theme in this movie about the degradation of fellowship and civilization and what comes after. It’s hard to miss that social media has made society less hospitable and unified for this generation. Nolan’s craft and painstaking shooting on the sea and in faraway lands with world-class human performers is kind of the opposite of using AI to magically conjure up images that allow you to control uncontrollable things like weather. His use of enormous IMAX cameras or a sixty-foot Cyclops puppet changes the act of filming into something itself technically difficult, again in contrast with CGI. Nolan himself refers to AI as a “Trojan Horse” that will bring all sorts of negative consequences. This film felt like the culmination of Nolan’s hugely impressive career - it’s one of the world’s greatest filmmaker’s $250 million magnum opus as expression of humanity in the face of onrushing technology.

(By the way, I’m a Nolan admirer but probably fall short of fanboy. I thought Tenet was truly bad, for example. Interstellar didn’t quite get me either. I admired Oppenheimer but didn’t love it. I did love The Dark Knight and Inception. The Dark Knight Rises had problems for me, and not just Tom Hardy’s voice. Memento and the Prestige were both very good.)

Third, this movie somehow got politicized in a way that is very dumb and unfortunate regarding various casting choices. I’m not someone who gets too hot and bothered about who a director decides to cast to depict a character – sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s art. Artists make choices, and you either enjoy them or you don’t. I got the sense that Nolan enlisted who he thought were the top-of-class performers regardless of identity concerns and virtually all of them delivered.

Last, the stacked cast actually gave me a sense of the aggregation of value enjoyed by the best in the field. Watching the movie, you’re like, “Oh shit, Jon Bernthal is in this too? Love that guy.” Getting the most acclaimed performers of this particular time to perform in an ensemble cast at a discount is something that only Christopher Nolan could pull off. The movie cost $250 million and it was somehow a bargain. Meanwhile, Los Angeles has lost 45,000 or so rank-and-file film and TV jobs in the past several years as productions have either evaporated or migrated to cheaper locations. These jobs are mainly blue-collar grips, makeup artists, production assistants, set designers, carpenters, cameramen, caterers and the like, but also include working-class actors and actresses and performers. It’s harder and harder to find work. Movie theaters are teetering and so are TV networks. The success of the Odyssey doesn’t mean that the film industry is healthy for normal people. It means that the best want to work with the best, and the winner-take-all dynamic that plagues the U.S. as data, capital, processing power and AI converge can take different forms. This film is a towering achievement, but not an answer.

The Odyssey is, to me, the pinnacle of our civilization’s ability to produce a profound and compelling work of art based upon one of the greatest stories ever written. See it on the biggest screen you can. May it inspire something worth suffering for.

And now to bring my kids to see Spider-Man next week.

I hope your summer is going great! To check out Forward Party candidates in your area, click here. To get a copy of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” click here and use the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off. For 3 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, click here or email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch or explore. I got recognized for being on a reality tv show for the first time this week by an 18-year old girl who definitely would not have known who I was otherwise and felt strangely proud.

“Hey, I know you’re in the midst of a campaign. What can I do to help?”

“Well, we have a fundraising deadline this week and want to put up a good number. Thank you for already donating to my campaign. Could you donate even more?”

“Sure,” I said. “Happy to help.”

“Great,” he said. “I’ll send you a link.”

The entire call took maybe 2 minutes. I try to be very fast with these calls because it’s a gift for the candidate to get their time back.

I would know, as I made hundreds or even thousands of those calls when I was running for President. It’s hard to keep track. Whenever you’re in a rental vehicle for more than 30 minutes, a staffer says, “Great, we can do call time!” And then your soul recoils.

I hated doing call time. I would much rather do what a normal person does in the car – listen to music or have a conversation. Or even check and post on social media, which was sort of a hybrid move because it theoretically drove value to the campaign and also didn’t make you want to shoot yourself on a good day.

As someone who has made so many of these calls, I try to be the ideal recipient. Fast, supportive, efficient, and no hoop-jumping. No questions from me. No advice. Just deliver value and be encouraging.

“I was a bit naïve when I ran in 2022,” said Brian Bengs, who is currently running for Senator in South Dakota as an Independent. “I went out to people in diners and flea markets telling them who I was and why I was running as an antidote to politics-as-usual. Kind of an old-fashioned vision of campaigning. South Dakota only has 935,000 people so I could theoretically get in front of a decent percentage of voters.” It probably helps that Brian, an Air Force veteran and former college instructor, is 6’ 8” tall and sticks out in a crowd.

“This time, in 2026 I’m spending a lot more time on the phone doing call time,” Brian continues. “I’ve realized that the money matters more than we like to admit. My campaign has raised more money this year than any non-incumbent in 12 years. I still get out in front of people but more so on weekends when folks get together.” That rhythm was familiar to me. “South Dakota is a very cheap state to advertise in, so having raised almost a million dollars is a very big deal here.” Brian is polling within 4 points of the 71-year-old incumbent, Mike Rounds, in a one-on-one race in a state that Trump won by 29% in 2024. It’s another reminder that Americans want more choices beyond the usual red versus blue. I donated to Brian’s campaign gladly as a high-leverage opportunity.

I admire folks like Brian who are on the campaign trail. He’s working hard. As a candidate, you put yourself out there and do what you have to do. When I made those phone calls, a good productive call would sometimes energize me for the next one. Still, in my case I immediately hungered to graduate from call time to something that felt more like movement-building, from one-to-one to one-to-many.

I’ve belatedly learned, though, that you probably never really graduate. Obama wound up having to make phone calls for his newly opened presidential center with much higher dollar amounts attached. I still call people. The best you can hope for is that you have the right people calling for the right reasons, or, if you’re the one making the calls, that people actually pick up. An end to dialing-for-dollars would make my heart sing.

I hope you’re enjoying the summer! For my conversation with Brian Bengs, U.S. Senate candidate for South Dakota, click here. To check out Forward Party candidates in your area, click here. To get a copy of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” click here and use the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off. I’m doing a book talk this Wednesday in LA on July 22^nd. For 3 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, click here or email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch or explore. I made my reality TV debut this past week, unless you count running for President, and the next episode airs on Wednesday at 9 pm.

There’s a chance you’ve seen an ad for a reality TV show that I’m in. What’s the story?

A number of months ago, I got a call that surprised me: “Hey, you’ve been asked to appear on a new reality TV show called ‘Nation’s Dumbest.’ It’s a fun game show like ‘Are you Smarter Than a 5^th Grader?’ What do you think?”

I was surprised on a bunch of levels. I don’t think of myself as a celebrity in the reality TV sense. I also don’t think of myself as dumb. It seemed like a sharp departure from my usual activities.

But I figured it was worth a listen. I had a call with the producers during which I asked them the basic question: “Why me?”

They responded, “We are looking for a politician or journalist that people don’t hate.” That was kind of flattering. “It’s meant to be a wholesome program for the whole family. We think you’d be great for this.”

I got advice from different people. Some were very against me doing the show, saying it would be bad for my public image and future prospects:

“You on a billboard with the word ‘Dumb’ on it is not what you want.”

“You’re on the rise. Don’t lump yourself in with a bunch of has-beens.”

“You’re a serious figure. Reality TV isn’t serious.”

But I found myself warm to the opportunity for a number of reasons.

First, it was a new experience. You only live once. When would I have the chance to do something like this again? Maybe never.

Second, I figured I’d make some new friends and connections. I was told the names of a few other figures on the show, some of whom I’ve been a fan of from afar for years. These included Ice-T, Anthony Michael Hall, Carmen Electra and others. It might be fun to be stuck on set with them and bond.

Third, it seemed like an opportunity to show my personality in front of a broad public audience. I do media and podcast interviews all of the time, some of which might be seen by only a few thousand people. This was a chance to get in front of millions of Americans in primetime, even if the context was a bit unusual. Maybe that would lead to more people following me and my work.

Fourth, it paid money. It was a handsome fee based on the time commitment. I agreed with Evelyn that I would donate a portion of the proceeds to an autism organization that we are involved with.

Finally, I decided to do it. I’m not someone to shy away from challenges, and it seemed like a new adventure that might lead someplace positive.

And so, I wound up a contestant on Nation’s Dumbest, coming to you on Fox this Wednesday at 9 pm EST.

So . . . how did it go? What was the experience like? Did I make the right decision?

You might have to tune in to find out, as I’m kind of prohibited from sharing TOO much. But most of my reasoning was borne out; I made some new friends and definitely had a very distinct experience I won’t soon forget. It could be that running for President and being on a reality TV show have more in common than you might think.

I discuss my going on “Nation’s Dumbest” on the podcast with Zach this week. To check out Forward Party candidates in your area, click here. To get a copy of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” click here and use the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off. I’m doing a book talk next week in LA on July 22^nd! For 3 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, click here or email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch or explore. Look up this summer.

As you know, I ran for President in 2020 with the main idea that AI was going to come along and do a number on jobs. I believed that advancing Universal Basic Income was the best hope that we had of managing this transition. I wrote a book, The War on Normal People, making this case and then stumped around the country for months rousing millions of Americans. You might have been one of them.

How am I feeling now?

I’ve been reading a lot of the work compiled by the economist Molly Kinder, whom I recommend. She, like Clara Shih, believes that even if AI doesn’t wipe out all of the jobs, we are in for “a hard, messy period of concentrated pain with job losses clustered in specific, desirable jobs. . . the work that AI is most directly capable of replacing is cognitive work performed at a computer - in offices and professional sectors. These are precisely the jobs that have grown the most as a share of the American labor force over the last fifty years.”

Here is one of her favorite charts, which shows the general trends in the types of work that most Americans do:

Farmers famously went from 40% of workers to 1% of workers in the last 140 years.

Office and administrative jobs peaked around 1980 and are now declining.

Services jobs peaked in 2015 or so and are now declining.

Meanwhile, professionals have grown to be almost half of all jobs. ‘Professionals’ is used very broadly in this particular study: it includes managers, marketers, business and finance operations, coders, mathematicians, architects, engineers, lawyers, teachers and educators, journalists, scientists, dietitians, doctors, nurses, health technicians, accountants, librarians, social workers, guidance counselors, artists and designers, actors, physical therapists, etc. You can see the source data here. Pretty much anything that requires a college degree gets lumped into this category. College graduates are about 36% of the population of the U.S. and 45% of the workforce.

Molly describes this decades-long transformation of the labor market as increasing rewards for cognitive skill, accruing largely to college graduates. “First, agriculture collapses as a share of employment over a century. Blue-collar manufacturing rises and then falls. Office and administrative support rises and then drops. And through it all, professional and managerial work climbs steadily upward. The skill premium has been one of the most durable features of the modern economy.”

Molly then forecasts that AI is about to extract the premium from cognitive work. “If cognition itself becomes commoditized, the scarcity premium that has rewarded the college-educated knowledge class for generations starts to compress. The chart I keep staring at is the one I’d want to draw next: the same occupational clusters, projected forward, with the professional band starting to bend downward for the first time in a century . . . What we face is not a transition to a stable new shore. It is an economic transformation of historic scale, one that threatens the best jobs we have and the very notion of work as we know it.”

Yup. AI is going to sharply reduce the number of professionals in the economy. It’s starting with recent college graduates and the rank-and-file of banks and tech firms, but it’s going to expand very quickly.

What do we do for a living? A lot of us think. The thinking is going to be done for us more and more by AI. Imagining that this won’t transform the nature of work is fanciful.

Molly is particularly concerned about clerical and backroom jobs that serve as paths to the middle class for millions. And, to her credit, she doesn’t think retraining is a viable solution for most workers.

How do I feel about the case I made back in 2020? It’s aged well. I wish I was wrong, but I don’t think I was. The question is what, if anything, are we going to do about it.

I’ve been interested in what we could do with money for a while now. For my interview with financial journalist Brendan Greeley on his book “The Almighty Dollar: 500 Years of the World’s Most Powerful Money” click here. To check out Forward Party candidates in your area, click here. To get a copy of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” click here and use the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off. I’m doing a book talk in LA on July 22^nd. For 3 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, click here or email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch or explore. Look up this summer.

Of course, most countries don’t make it to 250. The average modern state lasts 158 to 200 years before running aground. So maybe you should be proud. On the other hand, the Roman Empire made it for about 2,000 years, so maybe you’re still young?

My family showed up 60 years ago when my parents met as students at UC Berkeley. Back then, you were the land of entrepreneurship and manifest destiny and opportunity. It was a no-brainer for them to stay here to build a life. Taiwan, where they were from, was largely farms back then. Heck, my father even grew up on a peanut farm. They came to you for a better path.

And it worked! You provided a place to build a life. The Dream you offered was real, for them and for their kids. They bought a house for about $35,000 in 1974, the house they took me home to from the hospital. They had a small house and a yellow Chevrolet and pretty soon two kids running around. My Dad went fishing and shared the catch with neighbors if it was particularly bountiful.

That’s how I grew up. I was told to get good grades and work hard, and if I did, I too would have the chance to live a good life here. To be an American. I grew up on Back to the Future, The Karate Kid, Casey Kasem’s Top 40, the Mets, all of it. I absorbed the culture like a sponge, went to school, and got a good job. I left that job to have all sorts of adventures, and they worked out eventually. I met Evelyn, got married, and have two young sons now. Americans.

Somehow though, all of it got much more difficult than when I grew up. The house my parents bought back in 1974 costs 10 times as much today. The public school system that Evelyn grew up in is showing cracks. All of the value seems to be flowing up to the cloud. Our kids are disappearing into screens. And our anger and frustration doesn’t result in more houses or better schools or more value – it just begets more anger and frustration.

We are hosting a lot of people right now for the World Cup. Many are seeing you for the first time. They are digging you – your ranch dressing and Costcos and giant gas stations. Air conditioning everywhere. We have so much promise. In real life, and not through the funhouse mirrors of the screens.

You are still awesome. Massive. Abundant. Beautiful. It must be remembered and said as often as possible.

Still, there is a sense that you’re a little bit tired. But how can you be – you have another 1,750 years to go to beat the Roman record! So much room to run.

Maybe you seem this way because we’re not having as many kids. Kids keep you young. The best are twenty-something year olds who are filled with optimism. They seem less optimistic today, less interested in each other and falling in love. It’s the screens again.

As we get older, you seem older. Or maybe again it’s just the roads and trains and airports and if we made them all new you would be too. Or maybe you just need a new and better, more responsive political system. The current one has been in place for 160 years and could desperately use a revamp. It seems overdue. Can we get you an appointment?

Anyway, Happy 250^th Birthday. We love you. Here’s a gift certificate for a new data center. You’ll love them, we’re building them all over you.

To check out Forward Party candidates in your area, click here. To get a copy of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” click here and use the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off. I’m doing a book talk in LA on July 22^nd. For 3 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, click here or email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch or explore.

I’m glad people are starting to act. But I will say that this kind of effort is an enormous acknowledgment that tons of workers are going to lose their jobs to AI.

Among those already affected by the arrival are those in Silicon Valley. Amidst significant layoffs, folks are witnessing the impact of AI firsthand.

“I was working seven days a week on AI until recently,” recalls Clara Shih, the founder of the New Work Foundation. “I was running the deployment of AI within Meta to businesses that were using our platform. We rolled out AI agents to serve the needs of over a million businesses, which I was very proud of. The agents managed ad spend, customer service and other functions. But I started to notice something. The businesses told me that the agents worked so well that they didn’t need the staffer who had been doing that sort of work.”

That hit Clara hard. “I realized that, if we were replacing workers at hundreds of thousands of businesses, AI was going to do the same throughout the economy. When I first heard you talk years ago, Andrew, about the eventual impact of AI on jobs, I thought you were crazy. Now I feel like you were right.”

Clara has done just about everything in tech, including starting a successful company after graduating from Stanford with two degrees in Computer Science and stints at Google and Salesforce. Today, she points out data showing AI’s negative effect on two popular categories of work for recent college graduates: software development and customer service. “Young people are already seeing fewer opportunities in both of those fields because new tools can do that work more efficiently. And this is going to speed up as AI gets deployed to more functions and companies.”

In Silicon Valley, “There’s a feeling that the gates are closing and that you have to do all you can to get through them right now,” Clara relates. But Clara is doing more than just talking about it. She left Meta a few months ago to start the New Work Foundation, which launched in April.

“I started hearing from young people who were sending hundreds of resumes out and not getting hired; it started to wear on their confidence and self-esteem. I co-founded the New Work Foundation to help young workers. They pick a field like Marketing, Accounting or Software Engineering at dearcc.org. We put them in pods with others who are similar in background so they have a peer group. We then provide them both human and AI mentoring and equip them with AI tools that would make them valuable to employers.”

Clara is new to this but not new to scaling products. “I’m treating this like it’s a startup with a purpose of helping people and workers. Everyone’s volunteering. One of my co-founders is 25 years old, which is helpful in communicating to young people where they are.” Clara is volunteering and the Foundation is a non-profit. I am a big admirer of her spirit; Clara is a rare leader who stepped away from the commercial rewards of AI to address human needs. I have the feeling more and more folks are going to need her help in the days ahead.

For my interview of Clara on the New Work Foundation, click here. For resources for young people looking for a job, click here. To check out Forward Party candidates in your area, click here. To get a copy of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” click here and use the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off. I’m doing a book talk in LA on July 22^nd. For 3 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, click here or email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch or explore.

Before I return to them, a note on Alex Bores losing a tightly contested Congressional primary to Micah Lasher in NY-12. Alex Bores and Micah Lasher were both State Assemblymembers with real ties to the community and ran strong campaigns. Nearly $28 million was spent by AI PACs on this race as a proxy war on AI regulation, because Alex Bores had sponsored some very sensible legislation on AI guardrails while a state rep in Albany. That’s why I like him and supported him. Alex Bores lost, but so did the AI lobby strangely enough; the spending was so rampant that people became dubious as to why they were seeing so much about this one guy. Micah Lasher after his victory said, “The AI companies are going to be disappointed if they think I’m going to go easy on them.” Alex lost but his viewpoint won.

As significant as that race was, even more attention is being paid to the other 3 incoming members of Congress. Brad Lander defeated an incumbent, Dan Goldman, who had a ton of resources. So did Darializa Avila Chevalier, who upended Adriano Espaillat, the head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and a 5-term institution. Beating an incumbent almost never happens. Claire Valdez ran for a vacated seat but beat the establishment favorite. All were endorsed by Zohran Mamdani, whose endorsement carried a lot of weight. I live in New York and saw numerous ads showing Zohran with the candidates.

Darializa Avila Chevalier is the most likely of these 3 to be featured in Republican attack ads – if you google her social media record you’ll see what I mean.

Many are saying this signals a sea change within the Democratic Party. The Progressive Left is exultant over the Squad nearly doubling in size. New York City is the power base of the Democratic Party, and both Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer seem in line for challenges to their spots. For 75-year-old Schumer, a real contested primary is all-but-certain in ‘28.

The trend is real, as establishment power is waning. But it is important to note what actually happened here. These are closed Democratic primaries in a non-presidential year. In NY-7 for Claire Valdez, 64,990 people voted out of 777,000 residents. In NY-10 for Brad Lander it was 79,000 voters out of 757,000 residents. In NY-13 for Chevalier it was about 70,000 out of 778,000 residents. The average turnout was less than 10% of residents. To win one of these races meant getting an extra, say, 20,000 people to the polls in each race. The DSA activists plus Zohran Mamdani have proven able to do this. That is a very big deal in New York politics. I have no doubt that they have very fertile ground given the underemployment rate of 42% among college graduates and their savvy social media game. Part of this translates to other environments as people are very ticked off.

But even statewide, the dynamics would be completely different. You don’t have the same levels of density and organization. And in other parts of the country, anything to do with DSA would be a turnoff for tons of voters. What works in New York City won’t necessarily work in Florida or Texas or even New Jersey. Indeed, if Democrats are going to win the House in November, they’ll be relying heavily on military veterans like Pat Ryan to win contested races in purplish districts.

Ironically, if the Democrats wanted to push back on these new candidates, the most powerful thing they could do would be to open up their primaries and let everyone vote. Independents and Republicans – a plurality or majority of voters even in very blue districts – weren’t able to vote in Tuesday’s primaries. There was a push for open primaries last year in New York City that Zohran’s allies squashed – they know that the more people who participate, the less likely they are to win. DSA candidates prosper in a more confined, ideological limited primary with lower turnout where their folks can make a bigger difference.

Democrats in New York have historically preferred closed primaries because they thought they could more easily control them and who’s voting. It turns out that trying to limit the electorate may prove to be their undoing. I anticipate many breathless think pieces on the future of the Party and the results of trying to pack such disparate legislators under the same roof.

The way I’d interpret Tuesday’s results is that the pendulum is swinging faster now and moats are disintegrating. If you reflect the status quo, your case is getting tougher by the day. Change is in the air. Whether that change is a good thing is a whole different matter.

To check out Forward Party candidates in your area, click here. To get a copy of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” click here and use the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off. I’m doing a book talk next month in LA on July 22^nd. For 3 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, click here or email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch or explore.

I’m talking about Todd Achilles, candidate for U.S. Senate out of Idaho. Yes, that’s his real name.

Todd is running as an Independent after serving as a state legislator in Boise. “I served the country as a tank commander in the U.S. Army,” Todd says. “Running for Senate is another way to serve.”

Todd has done just about everything under the sun since returning from deployment to Kuwait 20-odd years ago. He got his MBA and became a senior telecom executive. He later became a public policy professor. Most recently, he was appointed as a state legislator in Idaho by the Republican Governor. “I was one of 9 Democratic legislators in the state house,” Todd observes. “There were 61 Republicans, so you get used to being in the minority to say the least.”

Yet Todd notes that the vast majority of Idaho voters are frustrated. “Most Idahoans are just struggling to get by and they’re increasingly fed up. They’re not getting any kind of real results.” Many are farmers whose costs went up because of the Trump tariffs.

The Republican incumbent is an 83-year-old Senator named Jim Risch. Yes, he’s 83 now and trying to run again. “He hasn’t done a single public town hall in 18 years,” Todd says. It’s a classic case of a DC legislator being completely insulated from any real competition.

“Our polling shows us well ahead of the incumbent after people find out about me,” Todd says. “I’m a numbers guy and we have a clear path to win.” His most common conversation with Idaho voters goes like this:

“Hey, I’m Todd Achilles. I’m running for Senate.”

Idaho voter – “Really? What party are you?”

Todd – “Neither. I’m running as an Independent.”

Voter pauses. “I like it. I’ll support you. We need someone like you.”

It’s a familiar pattern. In Idaho, running as a Democrat is a waste of time; Trump won the state by 36.5% over Harris in ’24, for example. But anti-D.C. sentiment runs high. And Todd is tapping into that.

“I’ve pledged not to caucus with either party in D.C.” Todd says. “Voters here know that they haven’t gotten results and they’re open to a different approach.” If Todd can break through, it would be enormous not just for Idaho but for the country.

I told him he should make an ad patterned after Brad Pitt in Troy: “Independence – Take it, It’s YOURS!!!!” Idaho only has 2 million people, but its Senate vote counts the same as any other state’s. This is an overlooked race and a big opportunity.

For my convo with Todd Achilles, Independent candidate for U.S. Senate in Idaho, click here. I’ve donated to Todd’s campaign and I hope you’ll check him out and consider supporting him too. If Todd wins, he would have achieved immortality. To check out Forward Party candidates in your area, click here. To get a copy of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” click here and use the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off. I’m doing a book talk in LA on July 22^nd. For 3 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, click here or email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch or explore. Look up this summer.

History was made on Friday with the biggest IPO ever as SpaceX hit the market raising $75 billion. The stock launched at $135 and closed at $160.95 for the day, giving the company a valuation of about $2.1 trillion and making Elon the world’s first trillionaire.

“Hey Andrew, you’re really smart. What do I do about the SpaceX IPO?”

I got this question from a friend. He had been called by his banker with a message: “I think I can get you an allocation in SpaceX.”

A bunch of people got calls like that. There were 21 banks boosting the IPO. That’s just about all of them.

They did their job as the stock popped in the first day of trading.

It was a lot of work; the banks moved the IPO to Friday instead of the traditional Thursday to diminish the number of trading hours they would need to support the stock. Turns out that it’s tough to find $75 billion in demand for new shares.

To be clear, SpaceX is a tremendous company that will break new ground for years to come. Starlink is a great product, and SpaceX has surpassed every other company or government in launching rockets and satellites into space. But the valuation is . . . high. Analysts peg the objective value of SpaceX’s businesses at around $800 billion or so. Again, one of the greatest companies ever created. But well shy of the $2 trillion it’s now trading at.

So what happens next? No one knows. But SpaceX’s stock price pits the faith in one man, a compelling story of AI and rockets and connectivity, and the assembled might of America’s financial institutions vs. math, gravity and business physics. The banks are about to leave the field, having collected very significant underwriting fees. Many early investors and insiders have just cashed out.

Traditionally, if anyone is left holding the bag, it’s the retail investors, many of whom are piling into the stock right now.

We are living in one of the great investment bubbles in human history, this one fueled by AI. One can’t time the duration of a bubble. But tread carefully, as gravity tends to win out in the end, even if the business is rockets.

I discuss the SpaceX IPO, James Dolan and some listener questions on the podcast with Zach this week. To check out Forward Party candidates in your area, click here. To get a copy of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” click here and use the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off. I’m doing a book talk in LA on July 22^nd! For 3 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, click here or email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch or explore. Look up this summer.

I was back on CNBC this week to make the case that we should tax AI – and eventually robots – and not humans. They invited me back because I think they’re worried about the impact of AI.

First, the big question – is AI going to displace human workers? Of course it is. You’re going to spend a trillion dollars on AI infrastructure and data centers... and then it won’t affect the labor market? That doesn’t make any sense. You need to have corporations paying hundreds of billions of dollars a year for AI in order to justify the trillion-dollar IPO valuations for OpenAI, SpaceX, and Anthropic. That money’s got to come from somewhere, and workers’ wages are the obvious source.

Let’s say the AI companies’ revenues continue to grow. Right now, they still won’t pay meaningful taxes because they are still losing billions of dollars and not generating taxable income. So you’re in the worst of both worlds - a diminishing need for human labor and no new tax revenue to show for it.

We have made people expensive to employ in myriad ways. For example, let’s say I hire a new whippersnapper at Noble Mobile. My costs will include 10% or so in FICA, state unemployment insurance and other payroll taxes. I’ll pay another 10% or so for that person’s healthcare. Then, the worker will pay 15–25% in income taxes depending. That’s almost half of the amount I might budget for this person that he or she won’t see in their take-home pay, all of which discourages both me from creating the position and hiring and the worker from accepting and showing up on Monday.

Or, I could use Claude or some AI tool to do the work. I pay Anthropic for some tokens and... that’s it. No payroll tax. No healthcare. No income tax.

We have set up a system that dramatically advantages AI when it doesn’t need the help to compete.

So what do we do? We need to try to balance the scales by taxing AI and then lift the taxes on people. Tax AI, not humans.

This isn’t just me talking.

Dario Amodei of Anthropic says, “You should tax AI via a token tax.”

Sam Altman says, “Create a national wealth fund via AI revenue.”

Vinod Khosla says, “Don’t tax the bottom 80% of workers.”

John Arnold says, “We should tax compute to make workers more competitive.”

A lot of smart people are figuring out that we have set ourselves up for a calamitous picture because we punish employers for hiring human beings relative to machines.

Addressing this imbalance is going to be one of the biggest challenges of our time. Are our leaders and institutions up for the challenge?

Of course not. Trump is doing whatever he’s doing and the Democrats are jockeying for position and lying in wait for the ’28 primary.

Multiple trillion-dollar AI IPOs are on tap – we are likely to mint the world’s first trillionaire - and things are changing quickly. What to make of these impending IPOs? The valuations don’t make sense at the topline – and the S&P 500 just balked at changing its rules to accommodate SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic. That said, I have never seen so many banks bending over backwards to encourage investment in an IPO. I have the feeling that being first out of the gate will be a lot better than being third given the amounts of demand needed to soak up these shares.

It’s unprecedented.

If we’re going to bet the economy and everyone’s retirement savings on AI, the least we could do is tax it.

For my conversation on CNBC click here. For my recent convo with Gavin Newsom, governor of California, on his podcast click here. To check out Forward Party candidates in your area, click here. To get a copy of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” click here and use the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off. For 3 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, click here or email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch or explore. Look up.

The sentiment is nice, but there were several people who were jumping up and down about automation and jobs even before I was. One of them is technologist Martin Ford, whom I interview on the podcast this week.

“People are arguing right now about whether we are seeing AI replace workers,” Martin observes. “My point is that, even if it’s not happening now, it will be happening eventually. With the development of both AI and robotics, it’s inevitable that the bulk of human workers will eventually be replaced. And some data shows that it’s happening now with entry-level jobs, particularly in computer programming and customer service roles.”

Martin wrote the seminal book, “Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future” way back in 2015. He had an earlier book, “Lights in the Tunnel” that made a similar case way back in 2009. I was profoundly influenced by Martin and read both books before I ran for President. What can I say? I read a lot. Martin argues for Universal Basic Income in Rise of the Robots. “In my view, the most effective solution is likely to be some form of basic income guarantee.” He describes a vision of a consumer market as a renewable resource with people receiving money that they then turn around and spend.

Right now though, Martin fears that the current changes are going to get rocky indeed. “Many of the workers whom I believe may be most subject to replacement by AI are highly-paid white-collar workers, like accountants and lawyers. As they lose their salaries, it’s going to hurt their ability to pay their mortgages or consume. The top 10% of earners account for 50% of spending in the consumer economy, and even if a basic income were to be implemented it wouldn’t be enough to make up for the loss of buying power.”

Martin also observes that labor replacement isn’t linear, but tends to spike in a downturn. “History shows that automation technologies get rolled out most actively in a recession, and there’s a chance we might be heading toward one now.” For example, 13% of credit card accounts are now delinquent, the highest rate in over a decade.

Martin also thinks that the current spending assumes substantial labor replacement. Here’s the math: $725 billion will be spent on AI data centers and infrastructure this year. How could corporate America spend $725 billion and not expect some of it to come back via reduced labor costs? I just came back from Michigan where they are trying to clear the way for more data centers in their state because the centers bring with them significant ongoing tax revenue. Martin says, “One argument is that it will increase productivity and enable big companies to do more. But with that much invested, reducing labor costs will be the low-hanging fruit.”

AI is in the news this week as several major companies have seen shaky returns from their early spending; one major company spent $500 million on AI tokens to little return, and is now reducing its spend. Other companies are reporting similar experiences. Simultaneously, Anthropic, OpenAI and others are gearing up for the biggest IPOs in history. You can almost sense them trying to reach the public markets so that they can realize hundreds of billions of dollars worth of liquidity before their ability to reach their lofty revenue projections gets called into question. It’s a footrace on which the entire stock market depends, as a lot of the recent growth has been fueled by belief in AI. “I think the valuations are too high based on what these businesses are bringing in for revenue,” Martin comments. But his concerns about labor replacement are bigger than any current valuation cycle. “This has been building up for years.”

Martin is nothing if not consistent - I saw him at TED in 2017. “I used to talk about this and people would see it as an interesting topic for the future, maybe twenty years out. Now, they think it’s very relevant to the present day. I see my job as trying to get smart people talking about this so we can address some of these issues.” He’s not the only one.

For my conversation with Martin Ford, the author of “Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future” click here. To check out Forward Party candidates in your area, click here. To get a copy of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” click here and use the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off. For 3 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, click here or email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch or explore. Look up.

A four-day workweek.

In early 2025, I got an email asking, “Do you want to be interviewed for a book about a 4-day workweek?”

“Sure,” I said. This was a topic that I was very fond of.

The book is now out. I interview the authors of “Do More In Four: Why It’s Time for a Shorter Workweek” Joe O’Connor and Jared Lindzon on the podcast this week. I advocated for a 4-day workweek during my presidential campaign in 2020. I believe a shorter workweek would enable us to benefit from AI’s ability to do more and would also preserve a few jobs at the margins. It would also preserve our health, our mental health, our time, and our relationships.

Right now, it feels like we’re working harder and harder. Meanwhile, Keynes predicted years ago a 15-hour workweek because our productivity would be so high and techies like Bill Gates have recently predicted the same.

“Work expands or shrinks to fill the time you allocate to it,” Joe observes. “This has become known as ‘Parkinson’s Law’ after someone who lived this rule in her own life.”

Most of us have experienced this - if we have to get something done in a couple days, we get it done. If we’re given five days for the same task . . . it somehow takes us to the end of the period.

“Numerous studies with dozens of companies have found that we get the same amount of work done in 4 days as we do in 5,” Joe states. Most of us have experienced this too. If we’re going on vacation for a weekend, we work harder to make sure we get our stuff done so we can leave on time and relax.

“There’s nothing magical about a 5-day workweek,” Jared points out. “It originated during the Industrial Revolution and Henry Ford. People actually thought a forty-hour workweek would ruin the nation’s work ethic because previously, people worked much longer hours at factories. That obviously didn’t happen. But this industrial setup has essentially lasted a hundred years till today. Now, with AI and knowledge work, our jobs are vastly different but we are still adhering to the same schedule.”

Joe’s company, Work Time Revolution, helps companies make the transition. “41 American companies adopted a 4-day workweek as a pilot, and the vast majority of them elected to keep it after six months. They saw an average increase in company revenue of 15% per year, as well as a marked improvement in morale and retention.” Early adopter companies will have a real advantage in keeping the best people; who would want to go from a 4-day workweek back to a five day?

Joe and Jared believe that this is the path to change – “Historically, a change like this has been made in the private sector by organizations, not through legislation. If anything, the legislation follows after it’s already been adopted by companies.”

As you’d imagine, this made me think about my own company, Noble Mobile. We’re less than a year-old and still need to work hard and grow. But years from now, would I like to see us adopt a 4-day workweek? I’m sure the team would enjoy it, and I’ve always believed in investing in talent and morale. This is, fundamentally, a different way to invest in people that most companies can afford.

Joe and Jared are thinking big. “A four-day workweek is better for the environment. It benefits our mental health, our physical health, our stress levels, our creativity, our relationships and our productivity. It could even encourage people to have children since they’d be able to spend more time with their families, as there are numerous findings that parents distribute more responsibilities when they have another day at home.” Imagine if every weekend was a 3-day weekend. That’s a change that most of us could get behind.

For my conversation with CEO of Work Time Revolution Joe O’Connor and journalist Jared Lindzon, the authors of “Do More in Four: Why It’s Time for a Shorter Workweek,” click here. To check out Forward Party candidates in your area, click here. To get a copy of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” click here and use the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off. For a limited time only you can get 6 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, an absolutely crazy value that will save the average family $1,000. You read that right. Email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch or explore. Look up.

This week on the podcast, I interview Paul Rieckhoff, one of the leaders of the independent political movement and the founder of Independent Veterans of America. Military veterans are often independents, as they are more about a spirit of service to the country than partisan politics. “If America is a religion, veterans are its clergy” is a quote I picked up from Paul.

I reflected on my experience leaving the Democratic Party in my recent book, “Hey Yang, Where’s my Thousand Bucks?” Here’s an excerpt:

Chapter 24 - Leaving the Party

When ‘Forward’ came out at the end of 2021, I left the Democratic Party. I put out a little social media video and a brief blog post saying I was now an Independent.

People lost their minds.

It made national headlines. Millions of people googled me. Millions read the blog post – I wished I had been more lengthy and prosaic in my explanation.

I got accused of being a wannabe Fox anchor, a grifter, a loser, a whiner, out to profit by selling books and on and on.

It was very odd.

The bookselling thing was particularly weird. You don’t actually make a ton of money on books most of the time, and Democrats are big book buyers. Trying to become a gazillionaire as an author by leaving the Dems would be insane. How much am I getting paid to write this book? I don’t even know, but let’s just say it’s not paying for anyone’s college tuition. Maybe enough to buy some textbooks? Tell you what, I hereby pledge to donate all proceeds from this book to an anti-poverty org or democracy reform. Now you can tell others about it and know that the money is going someplace good! This pledge isn’t hard to make because, again, there isn’t that much money at stake, unless this book becomes a megahit, at which point I retract this pledge and will instead bathe in the money.

I had been a CNN contributor up through this time. I was getting paid something pretty significant – about $125,000 a year - to be exclusive to them. Evelyn thought it was the best job I’d ever had. “You just talk for a few minutes and they pay you? Keep that job!!” It was a lot easier going on air when they just ask you your opinion on something than as a candidate. They offered me a contract to return at the end of my mayoral run.

Then the news came out that I was no longer a Democrat. My agent called me and said, “Hey, CNN is rescinding its offer to you. Apparently they don’t want to be seen as supporting a third party.”

I responded, “Wouldn’t that make me more valuable to them, not less, in that I’d be an objective voice that isn’t tied up in one party or the other?”

“They don’t think so.”

“Huh. Okay.”

It felt like rejection from a company that I thought really liked me.

So there was a lot of blowback when I left the Democratic Party. I was more mystified by it than anything else. This was just me doing what I thought was the right thing. It was clear to me that our two-party system was just going to get worse and more polarized and wasn’t going to fix itself.

On the TV front, I thought, “Okay, I guess this means I can go on any network. That’s cool.” Fox started asking me to come on all of the time.

I went on a couple times but became uncomfortable when a lot of it was, “Boy, those Democrats sure suck, don’t they!?! Tell us more Yang, you’re a former Democrat, why’d you leave those idiots?” I left the Democratic Party because I had become convinced that their approach wasn’t going to work, but it wasn’t like I thought Fox and the Republicans were the answer.

It was a lesson; in order to feed the narrative machine, it paid to be on one side or the other. That’s where the energy was. That’s where the money was.

I, of course, wasn’t really motivated by that. But it definitely made me understand what other people go through when they’re trying to do something a little bit different outside the machine.

During this time, my phone rang. It was Dave Chappelle. We are friends but he doesn’t often just call out of the blue.

“Hey man, I just called to say it’s inspiring to see someone do something that is actually courageous. I never see that happen. But seeing you do it makes me feel like there’s still some character left in the world. So thank you.”

I guess he’d heard that I’d left the party and was taking shit for it.

“Thanks Dave. That means a lot.” And it did. Take it from a guy who walked away from $50 million to do a comedy show with his name on it.

Dave’s call was a pick-me-up. But my response to the blowback I was getting was kind of contrarian and stubborn – it made me feel like I was on the right track.

And I was confident I’d find others like me who didn’t think the current path was going to work.

One of those people was Paul Rieckhoff.

For my conversation with Paul Rieckhoff, the host of Independent Americans, click here. To check out what Forward Party is doing in your area, click here. To get a copy of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” click here and use the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off. I get great feedback about the book all of the time, which is nice because it’s a different type of writing for me. For a limited time only you can get 6 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, an absolutely crazy value that will save the average family $1,000. You read that right. Email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch. Offline no-phones party returns to NYC on May 21^st! I’m going from that party to my college reunion. Look up.

I recently sat down for lunch with an elected official here in New York City. He asked me, “How is it raising a family and running a company in the City?” He was fishing for information on what business founders and parents are experiencing and what the city could be doing better.

“It’s fine,” I answered. “Most of my team is based here in New York and I’m not going anywhere.” He seemed a little bit relieved at my answer.

For me, it was an easy choice to start Noble Mobile in New York because, well, I live here already and so did my co-founders. My kids are in schools that they enjoy, in grades 8 and 4, and you try not to have your kids switch schools unless there’s a very compelling reason. Are my rent and taxes and cost-of-living higher than normal? Sure. But I’m in building mode and this is a fine place to build. I’m at a point where my choices revolve as much around my personal preferences or family priorities as optimizing for the last dollar.

There are a lot of advantages to building a company in New York. You have access to talented engineers and hires. You can establish a cohesive company culture that’s industrious and creative. It’s easy to meet with brands, celebrities, agencies, investors, media outlets and corporate partners. I go on CNBC or CNN or Fox or some other news network every week or so and it’s a short ride to a studio. Even podcasters are more likely to be either based in New York or visit.

The downsides of starting a company in New York City are primarily costs: everything is very expensive. This includes taxes, rent, employee compensation, food, healthcare, cleaning, you name it. Whatever a normal company might budget for, say, a company lunch, you can add 30 - 50% to it. We are based in the Garment District, which is highly convenient for travelers but kind of a no-frills neighborhood, partially to save money on rent.

We employ some young people at Noble Mobile. I think a lot about some recent college graduate arriving in New York the way I did back in 1996. (I graduated from college 30 years ago and am going to my reunion next week!) I was a random twenty-something-year-old wannabe entrepreneur trying to make something of myself. My rent was $1,080 to split an apartment with a friend. I walked or took the subway everywhere – a cab was an emergency measure. I would bring a book to read on the subway. I was in New York to try to access opportunities and meet people; I was the idealistic young hire who took a paycut at a small company hoping to achieve something. My parents lived in the suburbs, so I could take the train home for a nice meal during a weekend or holiday, but they moved away when I was in my mid-twenties.

The opportunities were both professional and personal; New York City had a great dating scene for twenty-somethings. I would go out late at night to an acquaintance’s birthday party in the hopes of meeting someone and having sparks fly, and even if the night ended in disappointment, the late-night subway ride home felt like the end of a quest that would start again the following day or weekend. During my twenties, I moonlighted as a part-time tutor and nightclub promoter while working at various start-ups.

For me, my big break came when the little education company I tutored at needed a new CEO in 2005. I became the CEO a year later, the same year I met Evelyn. When that company was acquired 4 years later, I became a millionaire. I paid off my law school loans and all of my youthful misadventures were wiped clean. I was 34 at the time, and married Evelyn two years later.

I would never have had this kind of journey any place other than New York. It was a pressure cooker that took me from a failed entrepreneur to a guy with three jobs to eventually a successful CEO in the space of 12 years.

I’m not sure if the New York equation still works as well for young people. There’s evidence that it doesn’t. My tiny bedroom in that apartment would cost $2,600 today as opposed to the $1,080 I spent in 2000. There aren’t as many growth opportunities where your compensation goes up at a rate that exceeds your cost-of-living. A lot of people live here for a few years and then depart because they can’t afford it. The fact that I’m still in the city as a middle-aged Dad is a mild shock, as I used to regard surviving here as a victory in itself. I pay for things that I never would have imagined when I was younger, like parking and food delivery and dry cleaning. Most of the people I came up with in my twenties have long since left New York City, if only to New Jersey or Long Island or Connecticut to raise a family.

I talk to business leaders and hear that big companies are starting to shrink their footprints in the city in favor of places like Texas and Florida. New York and California are right now the states experiencing the most out-migration; that is, people are departing mainly because they’re too expensive:

Would I tell a young person today to move to the City for their twenties out of school? Of course it’s not for everyone – no place is. It’s a deeply individual decision, and people will do what’s inside of them. I would say it’s a great place for the sense of energy and to experience a special time of one’s life. If you’re fortunate, you can become a bit like Liam Neeson in Taken, and develop ‘a special set of skills’ that might serve you well wherever you go. But I would also say that the New York of the late 90s and early 2000s I came into my own in has gotten pricier and less welcoming. It’d be good to set a clear sense of goals and a timeline for yourself, because, like a lot of the country, it’s gotten tougher over time for the folks showing up here with a dream.

For a limited time only you can get 6 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, an absolutely crazy value that will save the average family $1,000. You read that right. Email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch or explore. Offline no-phones party returns to NYC on May 21^st! I’m going from that party to my college reunion. Look up.

I’ve seen that sentiment among a dozen major social media accounts in the past week or so. It was like they had a meeting to talk about how to post about it.

Alas, I didn’t get the memo, and wasn’t invited to the meeting. My calls are with people who are freaked out about what their kids are going to do for work.

Part of it was that many of the bigwigs in tech have figured out that AI is . . . becoming deeply unpopular. It has a 26% approval rating, which is below just about every institution, including ICE. Data centers are being protested around the country. Two people even decided to take a shot at Sam Altman’s house (which is terrible, violence is not the answer). The industry has spent $150 million in PAC money to purchase compliance from the two major parties, but that hasn’t stopped ordinary people from coming to their own conclusions.

As one person online put it, “Okay, you’re saying that this is going to take our job and MIGHT kill us all . . . why am I supposed to be excited about this again?”

As you know, I’ve been deeply concerned about the impact of AI on employment for years, ever since I published ‘The War on Normal People’ back in 2018. People ask me all of the time, do I feel bullish or bearish on those projections now?

I answer, “It’s going to be even worse than I thought, because I imagined you’d have a government or public sector that is trying to mitigate the obvious harms of the displacement of labor.” Instead, you have an administration that is out to lunch on the potential impact and a multi-trillion dollar bet on the acceleration of AI that is the biggest outlay of capital in the history of business.

More money is now being spent on data centers than on commercial office buildings. If that isn’t the clearest metaphor for computers replacing human beings, I don’t know what is.

Yet, that is not something that ordinary people and families are going to like. So the new message is, “AI will augment and amplify human productivity, not replace it,” or “AI will automate tasks, not jobs.”

What’s the reality?

Part of the problem of today is that, in today’s information ecosystem, reality is a secondary or tertiary concern compared to what the perception is. It’s less important what is happening to millions of white-collar workers in real life than what the narrative is out there.

And yet, real life continues. This past week, Cloudflare announced that it was laying off 20% of its staff and attributed it partially to AI. Coinbase made a similar announcement.

I’m a numbers guy, and $700 billion is on track to be spent in 2026 by the hyperscalers on AI infrastructure including data centers. A major sports arena costs a couple billion or so. So imagine 7 new sports stadiums being built in every one of the 50 states this year and you have a sense of the scale of the investment. The only way to make those numbers work would be to replace millions of workers in corporations big and small in addition to efficiency gains or productivity growth. Simultaneously, you have mass layoffs at Oracle, Meta, Block and on and on.

These companies are voting with their wallets. It’s a bit like parenting; kids take their cues based on what their parents are doing, not necessarily what they’re saying.

It’s clear what these companies believe about the future based on their actions. No amount of spin is going to change that.

I interview Zach Graumann about this topic and answer listener questions on the podcast this week. I started Noble Mobile to ease people’s costs, and we have a Spring promo that is absolutely bananas of 6 free months as a thank you to the people who have supported me! That would save the average family $1,000. Email matt@noblemobile.com if you want to switch or explore. Offline no-phones party returns to NYC on May 21st – see you there! Go outside and look up.

As some of you may know, I’ve done the occasional comedy set this past year. It’s been a lot of fun. I did a quick five minutes in front of Dave Chappelle at his club in Ohio – it helps to know the boss – and in Raleigh and SF, and also at a couple Asian American comedy fests in New York and Los Angeles.

In Ohio, the crowd had approximately zero Asians in it. I opened, “Hello all, I ran for President! Did any of you support me?” Weak applause. “Well thanks! And to the rest of you, fuck you. Fuck you all. Magical Asian man from the future comes to give you money, and you’re like, ‘I’m not so sure about this guy.’ Congratulations, you’re why we’re all still poor.” I figured most people wouldn’t really know who I was.

In New York and LA, it was probably 80% Asian. I would go a little more insider-y and assume familiarity; I’d talk about my parents trying to talk me out of running for President, being a Dad and more personal stuff.

Back in 2020, during one of the presidential debates, I joked, “I’m Asian, so I know a lot of doctors,” to a healthcare question. I took a little bit of shit for that. Some said I played into Asian stereotypes.

You know what didn’t reinforce any Asian stereotypes? Running for President. I kind of thought that part would be obvious.

After the campaign, I was in Alabama for a charity event. A Southern gentleman in a business suit came up to me and extended his hand. “Mr. Yang, I don’t agree with you on a whole lot sir, but you’ve got a set of balls on you, and I respect that a great deal.” We shook hands.

I put my hand on his shoulder and said “Thank you. Just doing what I can for the country.”

I was at a nightclub a few months later, and a group of Asian guys freaked out when they saw me. One of them put his arm around me and started exclaiming to his friends, “See this guy? This guy fucks! He definitely fucks!!!” They offered to buy me drinks all night. I took a couple pictures and high-fived them before taking off.

I read a book by Jay Caspian Kang called “The Loneliest Americans” about Asian Americans. One of the main ideas was that no one cares about Asian American identity, and the author described the tension of writing a book that argues no one cares about the subject. It made me laugh, but it also felt familiar.

There’s a stereotype of an “Angry Asian Man” who goes to the gym, listens to hip-hop and is alienated, cursing to himself as he curls weights. I certainly resembled that in my twenties, before I met Evelyn.

Have I been mistaken for a delivery guy by a Manhattan doorman because I was carrying a plastic bag? Sure. Some teenagers yelled “Ching Chong” at me from a car window in New England a few years back, and I found myself more confused and saddened by it than anything else.

I know that the doors of this country are wide open to me in a way that they aren’t for most Americans. I can walk into a TV studio or a tech conference or to the entrance of a nightclub and the seas part. I started a political party and a wireless company that saves people money and gets them off their screen a bit more. Who gets to do these things?

The country I grew up in told me I could do anything regardless of my background or where I came from. I believed it. I still do, even though it’s becoming less true for more and more of our young people. Maybe we can do something about that.

Some of the above is excerpted from my recent book “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” which you can buy here with the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off or wherever books are sold. I interview YouTuber and occasional comedian Andrew Fung on the podcast this week. Go to noblemobile.com/yang for 3 months off your wireless bill, the best deal around that will also reduce your screen time and help you save for your family, and email matt@noblemobile.com if you want a human. Go outside and look up.

Who the heck is Seth Bodnar and why is he so pivotal? He is the former President of the University of Montana who in February stepped down to run for U.S. Senate as an Independent.

“As a father, I just couldn’t sit by and watch our country become more divided and dysfunctional. I believe we deserve better leadership than we’re getting. So I decided to run for Senate.”

This sounds like something lots of candidates might say, but Seth has demonstrated his patriotism over decades of service. He went to West Point and graduated first in his class (!!) on the way to becoming a Rhodes Scholar. He commanded an Airborne Special Forces squadron in Iraq, jumping out of planes in hostile territory over multiple deployments. He was basically a superhero. Seth remains in the National Guard to this day.

“Watching our members of Congress go on vacation while TSA workers weren’t getting paid is an example of subpar leadership. At West Point, we were taught that leaders eat last, and if there’s not enough food you don’t eat. Unfortunately, our current leaders often think they should eat first.” I bet many Americans would agree with that sentiment.

After returning from war, Seth became an executive at GE before becoming President of the University of Montana. “My wife is from Montana, and we have 3 kids together.” He served very successfully for 8 years before stepping away to run for the Senate in February.

In his first month, his campaign raised almost $1.4 million, more than every other candidate in the race, Republicans and Democrats combined(!!!). His endorsers include Jon Tester, who represented Montana in the Senate for years, as well as the former head of the state Republican party. He is building bridges in a state that has an enormous independent streak.

“When I talk to Montanans, they don’t think about politics day-to-day as much as they do how to keep their car working, getting food on the table for their kids, making sure their crop will make it to market this year, and that their kids will stay in the state instead of going away. They’re tired of people heading to Washington and then just putting on a jersey once they get there.”

You can see why Seth is such a compelling figure. The U.S. Senate could essentially be deadlocked in January, which means that an Independent Senator could be profoundly influential as a tiebreaking vote or a figure who could work with either side. The fact that he could come out of Montana - no one’s idea of a battleground – is also groundbreaking. Even though Montana only has 1.1 million people, every Senate vote is equal. I’ve donated to support Seth and I hope you consider doing so as well.

“Your money goes farther in a place like Montana where we can effectively reach out and talk to voters. When I get to the Senate, I’m not going to have a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ on my jacket, but instead an ‘M’ for the people of Montana. I’ve already pledged not to caucus with either party, but I’m excited to work with other Senators who want to solve problems for the people.”

For my interview of Seth Bodnar on the podcast, click here and for his website click here. For a limited time only you can get 6 months off your mobile bill through April 30. You read that right. Email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to collect what is objectively an absolutely boffo value that will help you save for your family and your future. Look up.

That was one of my favorite movies coming up. I later got to meet Ben Stiller, who shot me a ‘Blue Steel’ tweet during one of my campaigns. It was a highlight.

A little more than eight years ago, I started running for President in February of 2018. My campaign was announced with a NYTimes article called, “The Robots are Coming.”

No one cared.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. I only later learned that trying to get someone’s attention about a presidential race almost 36 months ahead of the general election was something of a fool’s errand. Just about all of the other candidates would declare after the midterms that November. There’s an ebb and flow to these things, and energy around the presidential only started running hot in mid-2019 when televised debates hit the airwaves.

In my case, the 12 months or so to have the field to myself were a godsend. I got to get comfortable campaigning, hone the message, build a little bit of a following and get my feet under me. Heck, in my case the biggest thing was getting added to the polls at all, which required me stumping around Iowa and New Hampshire for months in order to register.

Thank you if you were a part of that campaign. I was anonymous when it launched and together we mainstreamed a number of ideas that are all the more relevant today.

The energy maxed out in 2020 when the voting started. There were crowds everywhere I went, and my job was to rev them up. I compared it to holding a live wire, where you’re channeling a movement and trying to grow it.

My day-to-day was a barometer for how we were doing. People recognize you on the street and give you a thumbs up? That’s a great sign. I would see MATH hats in the wild routinely. You could actually feel for yourself what was happening in real-time.

It’s hard to believe that six years have passed. The past six years have been busy. I wrote a book or two, started a company and kicked off a political party. But not much compares with the electricity of a presidential campaign. My wife Evelyn recently pulled up a video of me saying “Chant my name!” in jest to a crowd of hundreds at a rally in Washington D.C.

I’m not someone who chases the energy in that way – I’m not naturally an extrovert or an adrenaline junkie. My idea of a great time is reading and writing, or spending time with my family. I didn’t run in 2020 to gain notoriety, but instead to advance solutions I believed would be necessary.

Lately, I’ve felt the energy around me picking up again.

Maybe it’s because AI is on everyone’s minds. Maybe it’s because several of my takes – AI eating the jobs, the need for UBI, the polarization of the two-party system, Joe Biden needing a primary – have aged well. Maybe it’s because more and more people are waking up to the deteriorating state of our institutions.

A friend over dinner complimented me the other night and said, “Somehow, you’ve managed to stay relevant pretty much the whole time since 2020.”

It was a nice sentiment, though I’m not sure he’s completely right. Sometimes it’s something you do, and sometimes the wave comes to you. When it comes, you do all you can to ride it.

Okay, you’ve seen the Noble Mobile promo, but this is a big deal – for a limited time only you can get 6 months off your mobile bill through April 30. Email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to collect what is objectively an outstanding value that will help you save for your family and your future. A new study just came out showing that time off of Instagram and Facebook improves your mood dramatically. The Hudson Valley Ideas Fest returns to Rosendale, NY on April 25th. Go outside and look up.

I spoke at the University at Albany last week and met with a number of students. They were bright and thinking about their future. A couple of them said they wanted to go to law school.

I responded, “If you go, try to find an inexpensive way to get your degree. I’m not sure the numbers will work out.” We went through the math. Maybe $80k a year for tuition, room and board. Times 3 = $240,000 in debt. How much would you have to make for that to make sense - and would that job be waiting for them in 4 years? I was openly dubious but didn’t want to be a jackass raining on their ambition. It’s good that they even had an ambition, after all.

But it left me thinking about just how rough it’s going to be for the next generation.

“Things have gotten so much worse in the last 10 years.” This is what the CEO of a major AI-enabled company said to me this week. His company has tripled its revenue in the last few years. But he’s cutting staff and sounding the alarm about AI. “The truth is, the faster we replace people, the better we will do.” He’s for a negative income tax to give people a floor paid for by AI-fueled profits.

His summary of the situation in three words: “With the help of AI, capital displaces labor.”

That’s actually the best distillation of the moment we’re in.

Also this idea: “The easiest people to fire are those you haven’t hired yet.” It’s one reason why college students are going into the most unwelcoming job market in a generation.

I wrote last week about unemployed and underemployed college graduates. I said in 2019 “coders will definitely be automated.” I knew that was the case because what coders do is highly structured and rules-based, sort of like the corporate law contracts I reviewed in my twenties, and I knew that highly structured rules-based work would be catnip for AI.

“A lot of corporate workers are there to maintain a legacy system or manage a project that isn’t core to the company’s work,” a tech executive commented to me. “Maybe 25% are touching something vital to what the company is doing right now.” That leaves 75% scrambling to justify their role. The end of the office will be painful.

“AI is going to push millions of people up or down a class. People don’t take that well.” That’s what an AI executive said to me over dinner.

Capitalism plus AI will be no one’s idea of a good time.

I’m pretty sure the numbers will show that entrepreneurship is going to rise, simply because there will be a ton of unemployed college grads and techies and others and they’ll have no choice. I love entrepreneurship as it can bring out the best in people. But for every successful startup, there will be 9 or 10 failures. Starting a business is not for everyone, and this environment will be unforgiving as the work gets stripped away.

The footwear company Allbirds pivoted to AI and its stock popped 700%. Maybe your shoes will tell you that your feet stink.

The water level is going to rise quickly. Appreciate what you’ve got, build a boat as best you can and try to bring others in.

You know something we can all do better on? Our data. Go to noblemobile.com/yang for 3 months off your wireless bill, the best deal around that will also reduce your screen time and help you save for your family. Email matt@noblemobile.com to get a human being. A new study just came out showing that time off of Instagram and Facebook improves your mood dramatically. I interview Princeton neuroscientist turned Congressional candidate Sam Wang on the podcast this week. The Hudson Valley Ideas Fest returns to Rosendale, NY on April 25th. Go outside and look up.

This week on the podcast I interview Noam Scheiber, the author of “Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class.” Noam painstakingly interviewed and followed college-educated employees who tried to unionize stores and warehouses at Starbucks, Apple and Amazon for several years. He also followed a young Hollywood writer who was part of the 2023 strike.

“I showed up at one of the first Starbucks stores that tried to unionize in 2021 in Buffalo,” Noam relates. “I noticed that a lot of the unionizing workers were college graduates who had showed up to Starbucks as an interim gig but then found themselves there for years. I thought there was something to dig into.” He wound up following one Starbucks employee, Teddy Hoffman, for three years who had been working at a Chicago Starbucks location after graduating from Grinnell College as Teddy’s store voted to unionize.

“Underemployment of college graduates is all over the news today because of AI,” Noam says, “but the truth is that it’s a trend that has been building for years. A lot of college grads went to work at Starbucks or Apple as a waystation job before the pandemic until they could get the kind of job they got a degree for, but instead found themselves semi-permanently part of the retail workforce.” Indeed, Teddy had already been working at Starbucks for seven years with his degrees in Theatre and English before unionizing, though he eventually became a teacher. “Because they’re college-educated, they have a certain worldview and confidence about them. I was impressed when they would just look up the details of the National Labor Relations Act, for example, to see what employers could and couldn’t do.”

Where there were fewer college graduates, there were more social and cultural barriers to organizing. “Each Starbucks store was kind of the same in terms of the makeup of their employees,” Noam observes. “This is one reason why unionization at Starbuck stores spread to 650 locations, while at Amazon, it hasn’t translated to multiple fulfillment centers.” The 650 Starbucks stores in the U.S. represent about 6.5% of Starbucks’ 10,000 locations in the U.S.

One of the admirable aspects of Noam’s book is that it doesn’t sugarcoat how hard it is to unionize in these environments. “Technically, employers aren’t allowed to discriminate against workers who are looking to unionize. But any grievance with the National Labor Relations Board can take years, during which a lot of these employees might have already moved on. And employers can all of a sudden start enforcing rules that were always on the books that can make an environment very unpleasant or increase benefits for non-unionized stores.” For example, a worker could get fired or disciplined for being 5 minutes late because there’s a rule against tardiness that ordinarily doesn’t get enforced, or non-union employees could get a new benefit that unionizing stores don’t get because any new benefit has to be collectively bargained.

Indeed, the human aspect of “Mutiny” is its most compelling aspect; seeing Teddy and other retail workers try to organize over months and years makes you feel for them. Teddy becomes a father for the first time, and he and his wife apply for government benefits because money is short and Starbucks has reduced his hours. But he continues on because he wants to see the campaign through.

So what lies ahead? Noam says, “One thing I can say with confidence is that this population is going to change our politics. Young college graduates voted for Zohran Mamdani, for example, at a rate of 84%. When do you see a number that high?” Indeed, one of Peter Turchin’s conditions for revolution is an oversupply of elites. The ambitions of young people can go dark pretty quickly when the future they were promised fails to materialize, which is unfortunately going to be the case for more and more of them as 42% are currently underemployed - and rising.

When I ran for President I was more likely to talk about truckers or retail workers than I was college grads being displaced by AI. But every 23-year old who returns home to their parents' house with stifled ambitions and deferred dreams represents a big lost opportunity. As that becomes the new normal, the costs to both the individuals concerned and the country will be profound.

For a link to Noam’s book, click here and for my convo with him click here. I started a wireless company that will reduce your time on social media and save the average American $500 a year. Go to noblemobile.com/yang for 3 months off your wireless bill, the best deal around that will also reduce your screentime and help you save for your family or email matt@noblemobile.com to get a human being. The Hudson Valley Ideas Fest returns to Rosendale, NY on April 25th. Go outside and look up.