Colin Read • August 18, 2024
A Google and AI Dystopia - August 18, 2024
(graph from https://aiindex.stanford.edu/report/)
We have treated before in this blog the opportunism of companies that piggy-back on inflation expectations to raise their prices or decrease the contents in their products. They argued that, because the price of potatoes may have risen following COVID, the price of potato chips should rise by an equal percentage. We note, however, that the actual raw materials in many products we buy represent only a small fraction of the price we pay. Instead, profit margins were expanded in an opportunistic effort to capitalize higher prices into higher profits.
But that is only half the story. Supply side inflations, as measured by the producer price index, only translate into higher retail prices if consumers are ultimately willing to pay the higher prices. In reality, the question is whether consumers have a choice in the matter.
You see, market structure also comes into play. A price gouging corporation can only raise prices if it does not much fear its competitors. The more monopolistic the sector or industry, the lesser is competition and the greater is corporate power to set prices.
We have witnessed of late a dramatic shift toward such monopolization. The phenomenon is right under our noses, but its insidiousness is difficult to detect.
As an example, 80% of the about five dozen most common grocery items are controlled by just four companies. Four retailers own two thirds of all grocery stores in the U.S. A handful of oil companies own almost all the gas stations. And, one company, Google, absolutely dominates our online searches.
These companies have a great deal of pricing power because they in essence constitute monopolies by controlling large markets or by dominating local markets. They know their pricing power and they use it accordingly. If consumers feel poorer over the past few years, it is partly because of an increase in such monopolization. Technology is making things worse.
As an example, you have probably noticed that, if you use Google to search for something such as a new transfer pump, as I recently did, subsequent news pages I visited had ads for transfer pumps. As if by magic, the Internet knows what products I am looking for, and can tailor ads to feed business to companies able to supply me with a product I may have shown only the most casual interest.
Such ability to steer me to various sources willing to kick back a few pennies to Google is increasingly the norm rather than the exception. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being used to predict what I may want or do even before I am fully aware. Google collects vast amounts of information about everybody, organized by your gmail address or other identifiers. If you delve deep into the bowels of your browser, you will see quite literally hundreds of “cookies” that observe your Internet actions and feed into predictive models owned by hundreds of firms clamoring to capitalize on my consumer choices.
Let’s just imagine where this will go as AI is further developed. It will not only be used by Amazon to offer me discounts on certain items, such as a 20% off coupon offered me but perhaps not offered you. We may find that such tailoring of discounts will permeate more broadly than simply my Internet shopping.
But, this pricing power is not only confined to the Internet. While price fixing is illegal, selective price discounting is not. Nobody has said anything about offering a high starting price, and then selectively offering discounts based on personal characteristics. Already, Kohls is now doing away with price tags on store shelves and is replacing them with small computer displays that can modify prices centrally. I imagine a day when I walk into a store, their cameras recognize me using AI facial recognition software, and, as I move through the store and look at the prices of shelved items, the prices change to reflect the discount AI believes I expect.
A car dealership may know about my past purchases of big ticket items and AI can generate a buyer profile which includes my likelihood of bargaining or my willingness to pay the full sticker price if a few freebies are thrown my way. Anyone who has turned 65 knows how dozens of companies come out of the woodwork to sell you plans that complement Medicare. There are now myriad examples of market interactions we encounter every year in which the seller knows vastly more about us than we do about them, their products, and the techniques they use to augment their pricing and market share power. This vast collection of information is expanded every time you “accept” the cookie warning on a web page you visit.
Such new realms are going to test America’s antitrust and consumer protection laws. A couple of decades ago Microsoft lost a major suit brought by the Justice Department because of Microsoft’s power to bundle Internet Explorer (IE) with their Windows operating system. Microsoft’s uncompetitive effort to expand IE’s market share now seems like child play compared to what Google has been doing, and for which they too are being pursued by the Justice Department.
Many Americans are almost violently offended by any effort for the government to intrude in our lives or monitor our actions. Yet, we willingly accept intrusions by the private sector that make any possible government intrusions seem like child’s play. The payoffs Google has made to Apple, for instance, in return for giving Google sole access to iphone users' searches, represents a significant portion of Apple’s annual revenue. Such payoffs for monopolization made behind the Silicon Curtain are just the tip of the iceberg of how big tech is working to profit from us all.
AI will only increase many fold the effectiveness of big tech’s opaque efforts to enhance their profits and power. The vast billions being invested in AI are not designed to author my student’s essays. These investments are made primarily to enhance the profitability of big tech by knowing more about us than we may know about ourselves.
We have spoken many times in this blog about the potential for AI and robotization to perform many of the tasks we do. Conservative estimates suggest a quarter of all jobs will be replaced by AI, and robotization will continue its trend to replace most manufacturing jobs. Less obvious is the amount of control and self-determination we thought we had as sovereign consumers or as interactors in the marketplace or workplace. The insidious aspect is not that there are millions of companies now clamoring for our patronage, but instead just a few megacorporations who are the wizards behind the Silicon Curtain. Only their deep pockets enable the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars to earn profits tallied in the trillions.
Today’s graph comes from an annual report published by Stanford University on the state of Artificial Intelligence. It demonstrates that more and more people sense something profound is happening, but few have a good grasp of what that might be. Already Elon Musk claims Tesla is not a car company but an AI company. Certainly the OpenAI and its ChatGPT, Google with its Gemini AI, Microsoft's Copilot, Facebook's Meta AI, Apple's Intelligence, and Elon Musk's AI-ification of Tesla are all driven to generate profits for the shareholders of some of these largest corporations in the world. They obviously believe in the profits they can generate by monetizing and selling information about the buying habits and choices of you and me. Their huge investments into AI are made with a good sense of where this will take them and us, but I’m afraid they aren’t revealing the full plan, though.
Meanwhile, the crypto bros are working hard to figure out how they can get a piece of this newfound pie. Certainly, bitcoin mining corporations eye a new and very profitable application for their massive power allocations to fuel all the computing power necessary for AI. Together, these two sectors of bitcoin and AI are already expected to command upwards of 10% of our already overtaxed grid, and may well represent more should a certain candidate be elected president. There is little chance private investment will create enough new sustainable energy to fuel this growth, which will justify the mantra "drill, baby, drill."
I am no Luddite, and very much appreciate the value of technology in improving the human condition and the sustainability of our planet. As much as I enjoy the products Google provides me with for free, that are not really free after all, I wish the Justice Department well in its efforts to curtail increased market manipulation and monopolization. I fear though, that once the Justice Department chops of one head of the hydra, another will form somewhere else in the cloud. We can flail away, but it will be difficult to slay the beast we have collectively created or implicitly tolerated. AI has great potential for good, but it will be a great challenge to ensure AI is used to better the world for us all rather than divert huge profits to a few.
Some key economic data came out this past week that would usually warrant some comment. I am going to hold off on that until some more data comes out though because the consumer price information that was released remains a bit problematic. It was missing data from the previous month and seemed more timed to measure Thanksgiving weekend grocery discounts than a true measure of the economy. Nonetheless, it showed slightly improving inflation but with more significantly worsening increase in unemployment that is three times worse than the layoffs of federal employees. More on that later. Instead, let’s try to better understand the effects of tariffs by exploring one key commodity necessary for manufacturing items as varied as the cars we buy or the cans that hold the beer we consume. It’s not oil, sometimes called liquid gold. It’s solid electricity - Aluminum. There are a few industries for which electricity is such a prominent factor of production that their cost of manufacturing tracks electricity prices. One is bitcoin, in which about 90% of the cost of processing bitcoin transactions is consumed in electricity purchases. Similarly, Artificial Intelligence is highly electricity-intensive. Combined, these two processes are increasing electricity demand and raising the prices Americans pay to keep our homes lit and heated. Canadians have a bit of an advantage there because they have not allowed bitcoin mining to take hold as much as it has gripped US energy usage and politics. Canada is now identified as a good place for AI, though, with Microsoft recently announcing a $19 billion investment in new Canadian AI production and processing over the next few years. That investment is huge, given the size of the Canadian economy, and will surely move Canada up further from its 14th positions worldwide on the incorporation of AI into its economy. (The U.S. did not post in the top 20). One reason why Canada is becoming more central globally in such things as AI integration, cloud storage, and innovation is that it is blessed naturally with abundant sustainable electricity. Fully 80% of its electricity is non-greenhouse gas emitting, with about two thirds of its energy coming mostly from hydroelectricity. Such abundant electricity is cheap. The United States knows that. Today’s graph, courtesy of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, shows the very large imports of energy from Canada to the United States. While it costs a fair amount to build a dam or build out a solar or wind farm, once constructed that energy is almost free. This very low cost energy favors industries that rely highly on electricity. In addition, Canada has not squandered that electricity in ways seen south of its border. It resisted the big influx of bitcoin mines that inundated the U.S. once they were forced to leave China. Mainland China realized that they could make more money manufacturing the mining machines used worldwide than in being forced to burn more coal to mine bitcoin itself. The U.S. opened its arms to these miners, and its retail electricity users have been paying the price ever since. This leaves Canada with a distinct advantage in producing solid electricity - aluminum. Let’s for a moment discuss the role aluminum plays in Canadian manufacturing, how the U.S. benefits from this low cost and essential manufacturing commodity, how the new 50% tariff on Canadian aluminum is forcing up car, appliance, and beer prices for Americans, and how it is false to claim that Canada has an unfair trade advantage or is “dumping aluminum" in the U.S. market as President Trump claims. The world’s largest aluminum smelters coincide with those nations that can provide the cheapest energy costs - Russia, China, Canada, and Norway, for instance. In fact, Norway’s main facility is owned by a large hydroelectric conglomerate, Norsk Hydro, which is substantially government-owned. With abundant and cheap hydroelectric power, the small nation of Norway is an aluminum powerhouse because upwards of 60% of the cost of energy production costs are from electricity. Similarly, Canada is a world leader in aluminum production, primarily where there is the most hydroelectricity - British Columbia and Quebec. Just as South Africa can corner the market on diamonds, and Saudi Arabia is a petroleum powerhouse, Norway and Canada can produce aluminum cheaper than just about anywhere given their endowment of energy. This abundant supply of cheap aluminum is also good for partners who trade with these nations. For instance, the U.S. is more industrialized than Canada, and simply cannot make aluminum as cheaply as can Canada. Nor should they. If the U.S. tried to be aluminum self sufficient, all its products employing aluminum would be uncompetitive, too much resources would be diverted to an industry that can never outperform, American consumers would lose out in higher prices, and American exporters would find other nations do not want to pay the price for their airplanes, as an example of a heavily aluminum-dependent industry. This is an example why a claim that Canada somehow competes unfairly because it can price its aluminum cheaper than other nations that trade with the U.S. simply makes no sense. Canada is not “dumping aluminum” if it has a natural cost advantage in aluminum production, just as Canada does not “dump softwoods” just because timber land is so abundant in the world’s second largest country covered with trees. To have 50% tariffs slapped on Canada simply because it can take advantage of its natural resources makes as little sense as if the world imposed a 50% tariff on SpaceX rocket services simply because it can launch rockets cheaper. In the end, economically-unsound claims of unfair trade practices has certainly hurt Canada. But it also hurts those nations that depend on access to Canada’s inexpensive natural resources, especially the American consumer. Economists would take this argument still further. For instance, if China feels that it wants to subsidize its exports, that is equivalent to the Chinese government sending a check to American consumers. What is the problem with that, unless the goal was to so weaken competing U.S. producers that they are put out of business. I cannot think of many, if any, cases of such “predatory export pricing,” although I am sure that such ruthless competition occurs on occasion. In fact, the most common form of predatory pricing is actually between U.S. corporations within the U.S. - Meta swallowing up competitors or Microsoft making Internet Explorer so cheap that it forces competitors out of the market. In the end, if exorbitant tariffs force Canadian aluminum and softwoods to dry up, the U.S. will be forced to either buy more expensively elsewhere or divert its own precious manufacturing capacity into uncompetitive industries. Either way, when international trade is harmed by false claims of unfair competition, it is far more likely that those who cry wolf will be left holding the bag.
Last week three pieces of economic data were released. On this side of the Pacific, economic data, information on the American economy is dribbling out. I will wait for the drabs in a week or so before I comment on how hard it is for the Federal Reserve to steer the economy when both unemployment and inflation have remained stubbornly high for a year, and when the Administration is trying to skewer the Federal Reserve chair trying to pilot the increasingly rickety plane. At the same time, Canada is showing resilience. Its inflation is coming down, and its economy is actually growing, despite every attempt from its closest friend and ally to trip it up. The real story, though, is the record goods surplus in China. For the first time ever, it exported a trillion dollars more goods than it imported. No nation has ever commanded such a large goods trade surplus. To understand its implications, we must dive a bit deeper into exchange rates. The value of one currency against another is just simple supply and demand. We understand that as the price of something goes up, more entities will supply it, and fewer can afford to purchase it. This interplay between suppliers and demanders sets the price of things in a free market system. This basic notion of supply and demand has operated for millennia. Global free markets are a more recent innovation. Until relatively recently in our economic history, nations held to a gold standard that required each nation to peg its currency to an ounce of gold. Up to 1933, a U.S. dollar was valued at $20.67 per ounce of gold. This rose to $35 dollars under the Bretton-Woods agreement that lasted through to 1971. Over the same period, 4.25 of UK’s pound sterling was equivalent to an ounce of gold. This rose to about fifteen pounds per ounce of gold up to Richard Nixon’s abandonment of the gold standard in 1971. The implication of a gold standard is that we know precisely the value of one currency compared to another since each was valued and could be exchanged for gold. With the effective exchange rate of currencies set by the capacity of each nation to back its currency with gold, trade between nations must be balanced. If not, gold must be moved from one country to the other to rebalance any trade imbalances. Once the largest economy abandoned the gold standard in 1971, the value of one currency versus another depended on how many international traders needed each currency to purchase the goods of another. If one nation’s goods and services were in high demand worldwide, its currency would be in greater demand and the currency’s value would rise. The higher value of the U.S. dollar for example (when it ran trade surpluses) would then make its goods and services appear more expensive in global markets, and the amount Americans must pay to import goods or travel abroad becomes relatively cheaper. This process ensures a balance (equilibrium) between the amount of stuff other countries bought from the U.S. and the amount of stuff Americans bought from other countries. Well, that is only half the picture. The other half is not the use of currencies to trade in goods such as manufacturing or services such as engineering or travel, which economists call the “current account”, but also in international investment, labelled the “capital account.” Let’s pick on another country for a moment. It was reported this week that China ran the largest goods trade surplus in history, of more than $1 trillion, in 2025. This is even more remarkable given that the statistic only covers the first eleven months of 2025. However, China also trades in services, not just the goods we clamor to purchase for their low price and ever-increasing quality. In that dimension, China runs a slight services trade deficit. A service is something we buy that we can’t put in our closet or garage. China provides some services to the world, in engineering abroad most notably, but it also purchases the services of shipping companies to transport all the goods it exports, licenses for intellectual property such as American music and patents, and tourism and education as its citizens travel abroad as tourists and students. Their services trade deficit amounted to about $165 billion last year, with about a fifth of that in a deficit with the U.S. When combined, it may well be that by year’s end, China’s combined trade surplus will be very near a trillion dollars. So, if exchange rates adjust to balance inflows and outflows, where is that trillion dollars going? Let us imagine that China insists on the exchange of currencies to all flow through a large China-controlled clearing house such as its central bank. This would mean that there would be an additional trillion extra American dollars sitting around in its vault each year as more US dollars were flowing in to convert to their currency to buy their stuff than is converted back to buy US dollars and its stuff. This analogy is simplistic, though. A Chinese consortium could use the US dollars flowing in to help pay for some US goods or services it might need as part of its production process. Hence, no conversion of currencies would be necessary. Or, and here is where it gets interesting, Chinese firms might use some of those excess dollars to buy US manufacturing plants, US real estate, US companies, or US stocks and bonds. It will certainly want to buy something. If it does not, there would be a stack of US dollars just piling up somewhere, not earning interest and being eroded by inflation. Any transfers of currencies by a Chinese banking authority does something similar. It may decide to keep a little bit of the excess of US dollars to augment supply and demand for its own currency and hence keep its currency at a rate that provides for long term stability and favorable trade terms. Such “floats” total about $3 trillion for China, of its $3.5 trillion in reserves for all nations. The US also holds reserves of currencies of other nations, but these are less than a trillion dollars. China holds massive reserves that don’t just represent a bunch of dollars sitting idly by in their vaults. Instead, they can reinvest reserves in what is the new “gold standard” of investments - US treasury bonds. In other words, China also invests in the US budget deficit with funds it obtains from the US trade deficit. Such demand for US dollars to invest in US federal government spending keeps the US dollar strong and China’s goods a relative bargain. What if the U.S. government did not need to borrow because it no longer ran a federal budget deficit? Then, either China would instead have to invest in more US factories and stock and real estate, or, if not, would have to raise China’s exchange rate to bring its trade surplus in line. Quite simply, America’s budget deficit helps fuel China’s huge trade surplus. What would happen if, in spite, China refused to reinvest their surplus American dollars? Their stock of unproductive currency would reach such levels, and be such a burden on its central bank that it would eventually have to revalue its currency. But, at the same time, the Federal Government in the US would also have to react. With a big chunk of the the buyers of US government bonds disappearing overnight, but with little desire of the federal government to stop spending far in excess of tax revenue coming in, which is approaching a $2 trillion annual deficit, the US government would be forced to raise the interest rate it pays on its debt to attract new lenders. Larger interest payments further worsens the budget deficit, given that such debt will exceed $40 trillion by the end of next year. Even a 2.5 percentage point rise in its yield would tack another trillion onto its budget deficit. In other words, the US really needs China, and China knows that, of course. That is why President Trump is trying to force the hand of the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. In incredibly simplistic short-termism, the President believes that the Fed can simply lower its interest rate by, let’s say, 2.5 percentage points, to make up for any shortage in the Federal Government’s capacity to borrow. This is simplistic because the magical interest rate the Fed sets is not in the prevailing interest rates in the economy, including government debt, but rather only in very short term lending it offers banks in a pinch to maintain sufficient cash reserves. What the President is really saying, and I am not convinced he knows it, despite his hope to appoint his economic advisor to be the next Fed chair in May, is that the Federal Reserve must stand by to purchase as many government securities as the President wishes to sell it. In essence, by aiming for balanced trade with China, it is implicitly assuming that the Fed will simply print money to buy US bonds and allow the US government to spend well beyond its means. That is essentially what the Weimar Republic did to try to enable Germany to recover from the Great War. It led to a 700% inflation rate. And it is an entirely different Fed policy, called quantitative easing, than its lowering of the interest rate it offers banks. The Fed's job is not to bail out the Federal Government by printing money and contribute to inflation. Instead, it is to moderate inflation and stabilize employment. Other things China could do with US dollars if it decides to not reinvest in the US is to purchase more commodities worldwide denominated in US dollars, such as oil from Russia or Iran or other cash-strapped nations needing US dollars to buy its own goods and services abroad. After all, since the US prides itself on being the world’s reserve currency, there are plenty of nations that would accept purchases of their goods and services in US dollars so they can purchase their fossil fuels, US movies and music, etc. China could then use such purchases of US-denominated goods and services to subsidize companies in their own country, to purchase US technologies and intellectual capital, and to further enhance its own domestic investment and demand. In fact, one of China’s biggest strengths, its incredibly high gross domestic savings rate of 43% of GDP (compared to 18.6% in the US), means that their domestic interest rate is very low and its private sector probably overinvests in some dubious projects such as a glut in domestic housing. Compare that to the US problem of a shortage in private sector housing because of a shortage in housing investment capital as so much investment capacity must flow to the purchase of government debt to support the huge US budget deficit. Once the Chinese public is convinced they must buy more stuff instead of saving so much, China’s economy can rebalance around higher domestic consumption and a more domestic-focused economy that would be even more resilient than it is now. The moral of the story is that all this stuff about trade and surpluses and tariffs is far more complex than the simplistic mantra we hear in the news. Despite some domestic economic problems of its own, China holds a lot of cards, they know how to play their war chest, and each year they make some more. Now, you would think that is a metaphor the President can appreciate.
Last week we discussed just how hard it is for even a median income household to afford a median priced home. As a consequence, the rate of homeownership in the U.S. has been dropping to below 65% since reaching a peak of 69% twenty years ago. Increasingly it is only higher income households that can afford to buy homes. Much of the rest are left to rent. At the same time, rents have been increasing dramatically, which leaves many more households living paycheck to paycheck with no appreciable savings, given that the largest bulk of middle-class wealth is in home value appreciation. If we look at housing policy in the U.S., we see why. The incentives for homeownership are tilted significantly toward the wealthy. This is ironic because the wealthy are those who least need an incentive to purchase a home and can most easily afford that American Dream. The largest subsidy in the U.S., but not in Canada, is the deductibility of mortgage interest. First, a household must have sufficient tax deductions to make worthwhile itemizing their various deductions. These include state and local taxes, mortgage interest, and other items. Of course, a low-income household cannot afford a sum of these deductions that exceeds the standard deduction all households can take in the alternate. Hence, itemization tends to be for households with incomes over about $200,000, live in a high property tax state, and with significant mortgage interest. A household on the lower end of this income threshold pays a marginal tax rate (including state taxes) of 20-25%. One with double that income, around $400,000 per year, pays a marginal tax rate of 35-40%. These are the subsidy rates on mortgage interest paid. Those whose income is too low to itemize but who still somehow manage to eke out the savings to buy a median home receives no such subsidy at all. Let’s look at three such households that each buy a median home. One is a low-income home that does not itemize and hence receives no deduction for mortgage interest. The second middle income household faces a combined 20% tax rate at the margin, and an upper middle-income household pays a 40% marginal tax rate. Today’s graph shows the lifetime subsidy each of these households receive. For 2023 home prices and mortgage rates, the wealthier family who purchases a median-price home receives a lifetime subsidy of $187,289. The modest income household earns half that, or $93,645 over the lifetime of their mortgage, while a lower income household receives no subsidy at all. In 2023, the median home price in the U.S. was $426,525. The subsidy of $187,289 granted the wealthier household was 44% of their purchase price. The moderate-income household receives a subsidy worth 22% of the same median home, while the low-income household receives no subsidy at all. The wealthiest households receive an even greater subsidy from the rest of American taxpayers. We also see from the graph that the subsidy to the wealthy has increased dramatically over the past couple of years. As the interest rate rises, not only is homeownership farther front the grasp of many citizens, but the subsidy to the wealthy increases still further. An adjustment signed by President Trump in his first term made these deductions a bit more expensive in some mostly-Democrat states, but that penalization has since been relaxed. We are left with a system designed to make homeownership must easier for the wealthy, but with little or no benefits from those who must really stretch to buy a home. Of course, the wealthy can also purchase homes valued at much more than the median price, so their subsidies rise even further. These policies that favor the wealthy are not the only ones. Zoning laws are defined locally and often tend to favor larger lots as a way to keep home prices up and hence property taxes up as well. Municipalities often compete for well-heeled residents, something economists call the Tiebout Effect. A locality cannot blatantly restrict access by income, but it can impose zoning requirements that cater to the types of homes and properties only wealthier families can afford. This predatory zoning further restricts homeownership for low-income households. Last week we discussed just how increasingly difficult it is for low-income families to afford even a modest home. One with lower income or wealth may have no choice but to live farther away from the center of economic activity in a city. This distance is beyond access to rapid public transportation that tends to push property prices higher. Hence, low-income households who must live further out from city centers must also shoulder higher commuting costs as they are forced to rely on personal vehicles for commuting. The costs of owning, maintaining, and commuting a significant distance almost entirely negates the savings in home costs by living farther from the town center. These additional costs are often prohibitive, and are certainly not tax-deductible as is the mortgage interest of their wealthier counterparts who live closer in. Finally, as home prices rise, those who can afford the more expensive homes also receive the greatest capital gains on the value of their homes, assuming an identical percentage home price increase across the board. Since taxes can be avoided from such capital gains for those selling one home to buy another, wealthier families with the more valuable homes also receive greater tax avoidance advantages than their more modest income citizens. Not only do the wealthier households enjoy greater home profits, but they also avoid capital gains at their higher tax rates. Part of these phenomena that dramatically subsidize the wealthy over those barely able to realize the American Dream of homeownership are exacerbated by the fact that it is often property and not the home itself that drives home prices. We have discussed in recent weeks how to take the land cost element out of the equation by maintaining land in a public trust without at all discouraging people from building a home that suits them. One reader noted that Vancouver has experimented with such land trusts. At times, First Nations people may offer long-term leases on land they own but forever keep the land itself in the public trust, consistent with a belief that land should be used by all, not owned forever by a few. When I was mayor of my city, I tried to create a land trust in my municipality but was stymied by the county treasurer who wanted to usurp the idea (she never did create that land trust). A white paper was shared with me recently by a reader that recommended such land trusts in the United Kingdom, but there appears to be little movement along the lines of their recommendations. We know there are tools to make homeownership both more affordable and fairer. Simple changes in the tax codes that change the mortgage subsidy from a deduction to a tax credit that is phased out as income rises would do a lot to make homeownership more affordable while still remaining budget neutral. However, especially in the U.S., the system seems amazingly resistant to any change that would level the playing field or even tilt it a bit toward those who most need a helping hand. Politics seems incapable of adopting such progressive policies, and there are few to no economists in the halls of political power, at least in the U.S. Canada now has an economist at their prime minister. Let’s hope that nation cal lead the way in housing affordability.
A reader of this economics blog last week pondered additional aspects of housing policy in America. The topic is expansive, and deserves at least two parts. The gist of it is summed up in an exchange I heard between two fellow hikers earlier today. A young woman was having trouble keeping up on a steep and ragged portion of the trail. Her partner (at least up until today) responded that it was not his fault her legs were so short. She should not expect any assistance, and should just live with it. That kinda sums up our benign attitude toward housing - except, as I will illustrate, in fact we don’t even maintain such an indifferent stance, tinged with a note of hostility. Instead, our mish-mash of housing policies are decidedly tilted - and not to those struggling to put a roof over their heads. In this first part, I shall describe just how increasingly out of reach homeownership is becoming for the average American. In the next installment, I shall describe the various incentives offered for housing - wait for it - those who can most easily afford it. Much of homeownership affordability is related to the cost of a typical home, the income of a typical household, the mortgage rate, and the required down payment. From these parameters, a “conforming mortgage” in the United States determines whether a family can purchase a home. The first barrier to homeownership is that a household must provide 10% of the home cost up front as a down payment. If it can do that, the rest can be financed. However, monthly debt payments, including housing, student loans and other debt, cannot exceed 43% of regular and verifiable income. These criteria are actually a bit of a relaxation from past years. Previously, housing payments could not exceed 28% of income, with total debt of 35% of income. And 20% was the requisite down payment - else the mortgage interest rate would rise to cover additional mortgage insurance. Policies had to be relaxed given the huge runup in housing costs that have pushed home prices so high that a 20% downpayment was almost impossible. In addition, median households are now saddled with more debt than ever before, mostly due to student loans and rising automobile costs. Back in the 1980s, total debt as a share of income hovered around 10% for an average household. It rose to about 16% back in the 2000s, but has since fallen back down to almost 12%. This is a bit deceptive, though, because a wide swath of increasingly low-income Americans do not have access to credit of any kind. While debt load may be only about 20% higher than in the 1980s, much of that is because of the very low interest rates post-Great Recession. Those days are gone, though. These factors combine to yield a median age of first-time homebuyers that has risen to 40 years, a middle-aged record high. By 2025, only 21% of homebuyers were first-time. Most homebuyers are now 62 years or older. And in just fifteen years, the average homebuyer went from 39 years old to 59 years old. That is a huge shift in homeownership demographics. The American Dream of buying a home has turned into a nightmare. A 40-year-old first-time homebuyer who purchases a home at current interest rates has barely paid off half their mortgage by aged 60. The hope that home equity will be the major household form of savings for retirement has become a pipe dream for most first-time buyers. To see this, today’s graph shows the increasing unattainability of homeownership. When I compare the cost of servicing the mortgage on a median-priced home relative to median income, the pattern is clear. A ratio of 100% indicates a median household can afford a median home. A median home is now 26% more expensive than a median household can afford, a record high over the past 32 years that dates back to the beginning of the Clinton Administration. These ratios have even included the more recent attempts to make homeownership more affordable by lowering the down payment and by permitting households to incur even greater debt to buy into the American Dream of homeownership. The current administration proposes to address this problem by forcing the key Federal Reserve interest rate lower and by extending mortgages to 50 years rather than the current 30 year maximum. These policies are artificial or dysfunctional. As past blogs have explored, the Federal Reserve only sets a very short-term interest rate for its member banks. The Fed does not underwrite mortgage interest rates, which is determined by supply and demand. Sure, there would be plenty of demand for mortgages of a lower interest rate, but there would also be scant supply. In the end, mortgages would be artificially rationed to only with stellar credit scores, the wealthiest and the most advanced in their careers and life. This does not contribute to attainment of the American Dream of home ownership. President Trump also recommended replacing a 40-year mortgage with 50 year mortgages. You did not read that wrong. Of course there are no 40-year mortgages, but if one never had to struggle to scratch up the savings to buy a single-family home, perhaps one would not know that. In any regard, a 50-year mortgage does little to solve the problem. Homeownership would still remain 12% too expensive to permit a median home to buy into the American Dream, despite the gimmick. And, that median 40-year-old household has only paid off 44% of their mortgage by age 65. This gimmick does little to solve the problem, despite the great sound bite. Homeownership is becoming decidedly more elusive. In recent blogs, I have described how the great transfer of wealth from the pockets of those who own our human capital to the far deeper pockets of those who own land has pushed so many out of the housing market, and some even into homelessness. Demand is frustrated by high home prices that escalate far quicker than incomes, while relative supply is increasingly constricted by predatory zoning, rising populations, and increasing urbanization. Yet, there is little discussion about moving toward a system of more affordable housing alternatives such as more tiny home communities and policies that encourage downsizing by baby boomers left with homes far too large for our needs. Faced with myriad institutional costs of downsizing, many find it too expensive to transition to right-sized homes. One of the reasons for all this dysfunction is that the current system of housing policy bestows far greater implicit subsidies on those who can most easily afford homeownership, at the expense of the rest sitting outside of affordable housing and looking in. The phenomenon of systemic failures in housing policy is what we turn to next week.
This past week saw an unusual meeting between two seemingly political foes. President Donald Trump hosted an extended lunch with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. The two emerged as best friends forever. Let’s see how long that lasts. Just ask Elon Musk. Mamdani famously campaigned on affordability, and rightly so. Over the past few decades the share earned by the median income household, as a percentage of GDP, has lost ground. A median income salary does not go nearly so far in the U.S. as it once did. Perhaps nowhere is that more true than in New York City. Perhaps Mamdani has a point. It is time to rethink rent stabilization policies in areas in which rents are skyrocketing. Such a concept is economic sacrilege, so some explanation is in order. There are things that New Yorkers pay little more for because they are easily reproduced and transported. Food bills are not substantially higher, even if restaurant bills must cover the higher wages required to eke out a living in the City. Electricity is not dramatically higher than elsewhere, and other items such as mortgage interest rates and insurance are not disproportionate. The real culprit is the cost of housing. In 1987 when I was a young lad working for the Harvard/MIT Joint Center for Housing Studies, I did a report on New York City rent controls. My, how times have changed. So must how we interpret economic theory. Back then, the conventional wisdom was that price controls of any sort sends the wrong signal to markets. A price held artificially low creates greater demand, which is perhaps an unambiguous consequence, but it most troublingly creates reduced supply. The price of something must cover its costs, and, until suppliers become charitable donors to society, a price unable to cover costs will result in a reduction of those willing to bring their goods to market. Economists’ unwavering faith in free markets mediating willing suppliers and demanders and unfettered by government intervention usually means the analysis stops there. Rent-controlled, or the lesser-regulated rent-stabilized, apartments in New York City, it is argued, should be returned to the free market. The fortunate recipients of artificially low prices must just fend for themselves with all the others. This conventional wisdom deserves reconsideration. Something economists sometimes ignore at our peril and in our zeal is that not all costs to bring something to market are equal. Yes, indeed, the variable costs of production, in labor, materials, and machines to make things must be covered by the sale price. And an artificially low price will make it impossible to purchase as much of these important factors of production. Artificially low prices prevent goods and services made with these factors from reaching free markets to the same extent. But, there is another cost that is often far less important, but is critical sometimes. With housing it is not so much the cost of building materials or construction workers that dictates the price of shelter. It is the cost of land and the exorbitant profits generated in many urban and some suburban housing markets. In recent blogs we have discussed this barrier to housing affordability. I even refreshed our discussion of Henry George, the maverick 19th century commentator who rallied against the monopolization of land and its consequence of making a few rich while the many scrambled to put a roof over their heads. Land is different from the other factors mentioned above in that we cannot make more of it. Especially in places such as New York City (or Toronto or Vancouver), land has been developed generations ago and put to its most profitable use. To create new housing in these urban areas is pretty much impossible if one must also cover land costs and ensure the profits to those few who own the bulk of that land (President Trump likely included). Economists are almost innately driven by efficiency. My profession is determined to wring greater efficiency out of the economic pie by using our resources better or more wisely. That’s not the case with land, though. Instead, land has become an economic justice and not an efficiency issue. In the almost 40 years since I did the study in NYC, the debate is not how to do more, but who benefits from what is already being done. From that perspective, it is a fair discussion for Mamdani to assert that, after hundreds of billions of profits but with little or no new housing, perhaps expanded rent stabilization makes sense in that most unaffordable universe. Land is the ultimate political football since we can’t make more. Hence we are merely debating who can enjoy the spoils of land profits - those who have benefited from them to such an extent that the land component of housing has pushed shelter beyond the realm for many, or those who need a more affordable lease on life. Young households just starting out, and often riddled with student debt, are certainly in that category. So too are the elderly who may be forced to leave where they have lived all their lives because no social security payment can possibly keep up with accelerating land prices and apartment rents. In fact, today’s graph shows that over the last generation or so, the median household income index has remained about flat while rents have increased by 70%. That one most basic necessity is becoming increasingly unaffordable and out-of-reach. The rising population of homeless people is but one poignant indicator of the increasing divide between the haves and have nots. Now, I know this all sounds sacrilegious for an economist. But remember something David Ricardo taught us more than two centuries ago. Land is the ultimate fixed factor of production because we can’t make more. The only issue then is to determine how the spoils that flow to land should be divided - to make a few incredibly wealthy or to make housing affordable to the masses. Rent stabilization or control can accomplish such goals without resorting to what the wealthiest find even more unpalatable - a tax on their wealth.
The electric grid is falling apart. Long live the grid! The United States resides in a glorious past. Edison pioneered electric generation on the Niagara River, and Tesla revolutionized it by moving away from direct current and into alternating current. A grid was soon designed around the ability to easily raise and lower AC voltage so that high voltage lines could deliver power hundreds or thousands of miles. And what a wonderful grid it was. Designed essentially with early 20th century technology, it built out electricity superhighways to connect existing urban centers, and then branched off, hub-and-spoke style, to serve smaller towns and rural areas. The grid remains essentially unchanged today in the U.S., despite incredible changes in technologies and energy generation as we soon approach the middle third of the 21st century. The U.S. does not have a coherent plan, and indeed has regressed even farther from a plan over the past year. That is a problem. We would have been far better off if Eisenhower built out the interstate highway system and a national electric grid at the same time. I was surely difficult to garner the property rights to build out a national highway system. Imagine if, when a nation does that, it also secures the rights to move electrons rather than Chevy Volts. If roads must be built to transport people and the supply chain, these same routes may be ideal for energy too. If we were to do it again, we could employ underground high voltage direct current lines, something impossible in Tesla’s time but is feasible and more efficient than AC current now. The median mandated by modern highway design standards is an ideal place to bury and protect high voltage electric wires, out of the elements and unsusceptible to forest fires, lightning, even solar storms. We know the routing exists and new technologies now exist that can better provide for transportation of energy to meet increasing needs for Artificial Intelligence innovation. So, what’s stopping us? Well, it is expensive, but so is the piecemeal way electricity is delivered today. Bitcoin and AI have ratchetted up electricity demand, and residents are paying the price. Over the last fifteen years, my electric rate has tripled. Half of that increase is to fund regional utility’s request for rate increases to improve the grid and build more power. Unfortunately, this “investment” won’t solve the problem. The travesty is that there is power, but not always where it is needed. For instance, New York or Ontario may have a shortage of electricity in the early evening as people come home and cook dinner, while the West Coast may have excess energy then. And once the East is winding down, the West could use more power as they prepare dinner. Because the US grid is not considered a national interest as we do the interstate highway system, we instead leave it to every state or region to create their own fragmented system. They may form regional entities to alleviate some of the problem, but they are not at all interested in a national solution. All you have to do is follow the money. If the system is fragmented, each utility acts as a local monopoly. To ensure it is not too ruthless in exercising its monopoly power, utilities are regulated. Herein lies the problem. The regulation is cost-plus. If a utility can create an untenable situation, it can petition their public services commission for a rate increase to cover the cost of new investment plus a reasonable profit. With such cost-plus regulation, the utility has no interest in economizing because an allowed 10% profit on a $50 million investment is half the profit than one on a $100 million grid upgrade. Households are bleeding dollars because of this dysfunction. The industry has no incentive to integrate their networks, and heavily-lobbied government has no interest in coordinating a better national grid. Canada does a better job in the creation of national electricity networks. While the provision of electricity is considered a provincial responsibility, Canada’s proposed budget includes projects that create energy transportation networks which span provinces. Americans might call that socialism. Canadians call it common sense. With the increased demand arising from bitcoin, AI, heat pumps, and electric vehicles, and with wind and electric power now the least expensive form of electricity, it’s high time we look at our grid in a new way. Kudos to Canada for stepping up to the plate. America, what are we waiting for?
Canada is in the throes of budget approval, and Washington is merely trying to pass a Continuing Resolution to keep the lights on after failing to pass a budget by the October 1 deadline. In the U.S. the stakes are high. While the executive branch and both legislative branches felt they could pass the budget without any cooperation of the minority party, their attempt to use their majorities in every deliberative body failed. The opposition party asked and then demanded a negotiation over their prized Affordable Care Act health care program that was axed by the majority, but the majority preferred to shut government down rather than negotiate. In sending everybody home, and in ceasing all budget bill discussions in Congress, the U.S. federal government is at a standstill. Economic data has been embargoed, programs such as those who provide food to children in poverty have ceased, and commercial flights are increasingly grounded. At the same time, the minority government in Canada has presented its budget. The document is aspirational. It trims the government’s operating budget, but vastly expands investments in a nation that increasingly feels threatened by their American cousins. I expect the Canadian parliament will pass the budget. Their system encourages healthy discourse, and even requires the governing party to answer questions from the opposition parties once each day. But they also want the government to function, and would rather pass a budget than try to bring down the government. In fact, if a budget is ever rejected by vote, that automatically constitutes a no-confidence motion that forces an election. Some parliamentarians want more operating spending in the budget, some want less, but nobody wants the government to fall into dysfunction. Prime Minister Carney has a great deal of experience on Wall Street. He adopted a budgetary tool that I used to use as mayor, and which other governments and all corporations use, but is never mentioned in Congress. It is an explicit section of the budget that defines just how much the government intends to spend on investments in the nation’s future rather than services for citizens today. Wall Street and corporations routinely use the budgetary category they label Capital Expenditure, or CapEx, to delineate the types of projects that the budget proposes to invest in as a way to sow the seeds of future profits or prosperity. Such capex is essential for economic growth, and should be the most deliberated element of a corporate or national budget. It is this discussion that is currently debated in Canada. The proposed budget, which shall surely pass, creates the largest budget deficit in Canada’s history, but for the Covid year. While historically large, it is less than half the size of the U.S. deficits, even when adjusted for Canada’s much smaller population. But, it is large for Canadians and it makes a historic investment in Canadian competitiveness. And, it is still vastly lower than US deficits in blue (as a share of GDP) as shown in today’s graph, with Canada in red. That’s the reason why the budget will sail through. I don’t mind buying a house if I know I can enjoy affordable housing services for years to come. I’m willing to front savings for a car, or invest in education. In fact, most people are motivated to make such personal investments to the degree to which we are willing to make sacrifices today and make payments well into the future. That’s what CapEx does. We set aside some income and consumption today to create even greater opportunities for the future. Well-functioning government does the same. It builds roads and airports and lays track and electric distribution lines, and maintains such existing infrastructure, subsidizes education, and invests in the research and development that will someday translate into patents, prosperity, profits, and prevention of cancer, dementia, and the debilitating effects of childhood poverty. The difference is that these investments pay healthy dividends well into the future. Such CapEx lasts sometimes for years, and sometimes for generations, especially when compared to operating spending that merely keeps the lights on today. Canada’s capex is designed to attract scholars and R&D from around the world, build homes to put them in, and pursue major projects that will open up new markets to replace the broken supply chain that used to look south. Such investments that will pay back the full amount in renewed prosperity in just a handful of years are sound economic policies, even if they incur penalties such as budget deficits and higher taxes today. Such prosperity expands the tax base to painlessly pay the people back well within the expected life of the new projects and initiatives. I outlined in a recent blog some of the investments a nation could make to stimulate housing. I guess PM Carney was reading it because these ideas made it into their budget. Carney also asked regional premiers and corporations to nominate large and transformational projects. The government promised that they would help partner with the private sector for half a dozen such grand projects this year, and will go further down the list next year. The Canadian government also pledged to invest more in the Arctic by building roads, bridges, ports, and airports, and by making an unprecedented investment in defence of the Arctic, even if it means potentially partnering with Saab to build fighter jets in Canada or with Finland to build a large fleet of icebreakers. To now, Canada has been spending around $1,500 Canadian per capita on defense. That is less than the $2,200 US that every American spends on average, but it is a lot for a nation with a smaller economy per capita and without global ambitions to project strength across the free world. With the increase in defense spending scheduled over the next few years, Canada will be more than pulling its fair share, but will concentrate its efforts in maintaining the integrity of its Arctic Archipelago and with strengthening NATO. The point is that a nation does not mind spending a lot today if it means increased prosperity and national integrity tomorrow, just as I don’t mind spending a pretty penny today to enjoy a safe place to live for years to come. Now, I’m certain that no government anywhere invests as much due diligence in calculating the return tomorrow on investment today, based on sound public accounting practices. However, to at least delineate capex in a national budget is a great start, especially if it unites a nation on a shared vision of the future. That is what CapEx budgeting is supposed to do. The argument for the calculation of a public return on investment can be viewed this way. An investment in future growth, even if funded by a deficit, ultimately competes for our savings. We save, perhaps by investing in the stock market, by investing in private corporations, for which we expect to receive profits in the future. Increased taxes result in reduced private investment, but if the return on investment (ROI) is higher from some strong public investments, it is worth that diversion of savings. This leads to the need for government to calculate the return a thoughtful investment can provide to the public underwriting it. We need more public CapEx ROI calculations. If we describe projects in these terms, a wise public will see the wisdom. I know some nations view government as part of the solution, rather than the problem, and some do what Canada is doing. I’m sure Americans would benefit too by taking such a CapEx approach to national investments to create future prosperity and expand the tax base. I don’t know if a good idea is enough to overcome cynicism and legislative dysfunction, but I can imagine the transformational effect that could occur if the U.S. invested massively in its future. Half a trillion per year, above and beyond the (declining) investments in R&D and education it already makes would allow the U.S. to emerge as a powerhouse in energy, technology, AI, and drug research, and may even allow it to catch up to China in these dimensions. Canada can compete in these areas, but its smaller economy means smaller capacities to invest. It cannot dominate in multiple economic spheres as China does and America could. But it can recognize its unique asset - the world's second largest country by landmass, with huge amounts of natural resources the world needs and with rarely matched access to nature. Any nation should first aspire to recognize its assets, but it must then figure out how to optimize their utility. That must be a deliberative process supported by a unified and undivided electorate.
Regular readers recall that once a month we run through the state of the economy. In the many years of this blog and these articles, I cannot recall a time in which the state of the statistics has been more compromised or peculiar. The seas are rocking, there are icebergs on the horizon, and the steady hand at the wheel is being attacked from every angle. Let us begin with an anything but routine rundown. Our analysis asks about trends in the recent past of three months so we can better determine expectations for the future. In today’s graph we see something troubling. By every measure, inflation by all recent and current measures is now solidly between 3% and 4% and is decidedly trending upward. Of course, the graph of the day is incomplete as most of the data that supports the late issuance of the consumer price index has not been released. That makes the job of the Federal Reserve much more difficult. The Fed does its best to maintain an inflation rate around 2%, so inflation is significantly higher than targets, and strongly moving in the wrong direction. Normally, this would be cause for alarm at the Federal Reserve, or at any central bank in a G7 nation. There are other compounding problems though. In the U.S., job creation is anemic. The U.S. economy should be creating 150,000 to 250,000 jobs every month to merely tread water, maintain some growth, and avoid accelerating unemployment. Some private sector economists have estimated job creation to be a third of the normal level, and, by some measures, may actually be contracting. Consumers get that these are precarious economic times. The Consumer Sentiment Index is at one of its lowest points since it began not long after World War II. At 55.1, it is half that of the 1990s. The Inflation Expectations Index also reveals that households expect to soon see a 4.8% inflation rate, and markets don’t seem to want to disappoint. Here is where I must put a pin in it. Normally, we would have the luxury of a number of measures from which we could triangulate. As it is, data for the Consumer Price Index is only dribbling out. Worse, the government won’t release producer prices or price data from the Personal Consumption Expenditures survey. I know the government is in the throes of the second longest government shutdown in its history, and shall this week surpass the 2018 shutdown of 35 days. Then, the Democrats headed the Senate, while this time it is the Republicans, in the Senate, the House, and the Executive Branch. The only commonality is that President Trump oversaw both shutdowns. That does not mean that government employees are not going to work. Air traffic controllers, despite their reduced numbers, are trying their best to keep the skies safe. Our military is still deployed, courts are open, and the dedicated experts that collect and process our critical economic data are likewise surely still doing their best, despite not getting paid. We see that because the Consumer Price Index was released, even if other data is being held back, perhaps in the theory that no news is better news than bad news. And while the House has been sent home for an extended holiday, the Federal Reserve is still meeting in these most uncertain times. They know that risk and uncertainty kills markets so they are doing the best they can to navigate some of the choppiest waters in quite some time. Their job is most difficult. Data is missing, and the revolving door of chief statisticians, now appointed in proportion to their loyalty to the executive branch rather than to accuracy and transparency, makes any data that trickles out most suspect. Not only is the water increasingly choppy, but the world’s largest economic ship is navigating in a thick fog with its radar and GPS turned off. In such perilous circumstances, perhaps we could rely on data from our allies. No, wait, we don’t have many allies anymore either. Instead, the Fed must rely on data it collects and inferences it can glean from information other sources publish. If these were normal times, the Fed could simply say that we should just hold the course and not zig to fight inflation or zag to stimulate job creation. In normal times, doing nothing is perfectly appropriate. These are anything but normal times. Normally, with anemic job creation, the Fed would be doing what it can to lower interest rates to encourage corporations and consumers to invest and spend. Such “loose” monetary policy, now called quantitative easing, is never super effective, but it is better than sitting on our hands and watching unemployment rise. What is much more effective is the opposite policy, “tight” monetary policy that raises interest rates to discourage spending, building of new homes, expanding factories, and building new commercial structures. This is the far more reliable monetary policy. Even so, once people start expecting inflation, as we indicated with the rising inflation expectation index, it takes quite a bit of monetary tightening over a prolonged duration to get that stubborn inflation rate back to the comfort zone of 2%. This past week the Federal Reserve straddled this fence by lowering the rate they lend to banks by a quarter of one percentage point. They reiterated after this nominal decrease in a key interest rate with a statement that their small turn in one direction should not be interpreted as an emerging trend. Even with such a qualifier, they know that any lowering of the interest rate can even further induce higher inflation. They are forced into a Faustian bargain of a rescue attempt in jobs and output at a risk of worsening inflation and consumer confidence. To make matters worse, bank reserves are at their lowest point since the pandemic panic, and last night the Fed had to inject more than $29 billion into the banking system, the largest amount of cash in five years. The Fed is talking tough about inflation but must quietly do the opposite to keep financial markets from retracting under the weight of increased uncertainty. These are desperate times, without reliable and consistent data, and with capricious economic policies created through social media posts in the middle of the night. The current chairman of the Federal Reserve has already been belittled, suffered attempts to remove him from office, and told that a loyalist will replace him in a few short months. And yet, he still shows up to work and tries to calm markets as best he can to avoid a far worse fate. He knows the highly compromised set of alternatives means the level of economic uncertainty has escalated to troubling heights. He is trusted by markets, though, and has taken the equivalent of a Hippocratic Oath to first do no harm. As economically whacked out as things may be, he knows just how much we need a seasoned captain at the helm. There are always some who wish to normalize the most troubled of times. We have seen incredibly inhuman tragedies occur when a significant minority of society are willing to understate or attenuate disturbing circumstances. Some now argue that the new normal inflation should be closer to 3% rather than 2%, for no compelling reason but to clear the way for lower interest rates. Of course, when inflation is now converging on 4% and expectations on 5%, the new normal can likewise increase, I guess. That is the mentality which has induced hyperinflations in failing South American countries, not the nation that revelled in its role as the global economic gold standard. Chairman Powell, I have been critical at times of the Fed’s unwillingness to act quickly or effectively enough to fight inflation post-Covid. I was equally critical of Chairman Bernanke, the Nobel Prize winning economist who navigated the Great Recession of 2008. These criticisms were matters of delay, not the far more problematic problem of stagflation, a stagnant economy that at the same time is facing significant inflation. In that light, Chairman Powell and his Federal Reserve Board is acting responsibly and irrationally in most irrational times. I do not think anybody could do much better, and I know some could do much worse. We are about to find out.
This year’s Nobel Prize in Economics was announced recently. The committee once again outdid itself. For the purists among us, I must note that this “Nobel” prize is not actually one denoted by Alfred Nobel, the conscience-ridden Norwegian inventor of dynamite and its use in weapons of destruction. Instead, this award sponsored by Sweden’s central bank is the “Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.” With that out of the way, let’s get on with it. The first few awards, that began in 1969, recognized the backlog of great economic ideas over the previous generations. Since the award must go to living individuals, they mostly awarded innovations since the Second World War. These first awards were rather conventional in that they rewarded those who shored up what economists call the neoclassical model of microeconomics, the study of individual markets or groups of decision-makers, or neo (meaning new) Keynesian macroeconomics, the study of markets in the aggregate. With that out of the way, the Nobel committee over the past few decades was liberated to reward innovations that recognized new tools to enhance the human condition, even if they did not comfortably fall into the traditional economist’s toolbox. Issues of how people make decisions unencumbered by the overly-restrictive traditional economic assumption of rationality, of what has made economies grow historically, or how economists might learn from adjoining disciplines rather than from an overcontemplation of our own navels, became the hallmark of the committee’s annual pronouncements. In doing so, the committee constantly reminds the discipline that the original purpose of economics in the era of Adam Smith and David Ricardo was to improve the human condition, not necessarily to enhance efficiency that will place more wealth into the pockets of the few that control production. This most recent award is in that spirit. We like to think of innovation in the style of Thomas Edison. He famously said, “It’s 10% inspiration, and 90% perspiration.” Yet, we certainly have such men and women of great inspiration over the centuries. Why, when we draw a graph of economic growth, does it look like a hockey stick - flat for centuries then rising rapidly beginning in the 1700s? There were many great minds before then. The Eulers, Bernoullis, Newton, Da Vinci, Galileo, and Leibniz come to mind. Yet, Newton famously had to spend equal time revering God as discovering the nature of the cosmos. They walked a pretty narrow line, knowing should they offend the powers that be, they could find themselves imprisoned, as Galileo famously discovered for believing the Sun may be at the center of our solar system. With the Protestant movement that questioned the authority of the Church, and with the Age of Enlightenment that encouraged individual aspiration, scientists and those who make things were freed from constraints that held back innovation. Royal scientific societies began to form and flourish, and great ideas and debates were advanced. The economic historians that won this year’s Nobel prize recognized the importance of such a culture of innovation, perhaps encouraged by, but certainly not undermined by powers that be. It is this separation between the world of politics and the rationality and realm of the possible that has allowed humanity to progress so dramatically in the engineering realm, even if it appears we have not progressed all that far in the societal and humanistic dimensions. We seem just as motivated now to destroy each other, unfortunately with better technologies provided by our innovators. The other observation by these economic historians is that our economic institutions have tended to bring the best science and engineering to market. Carnegie did not invent the blast furnace, but he brought it to market. That revolutionized steelmaking and helped vaunt the United States to the head of the economic superpower class. The climate is different now. Facebook bought Instagram because too many of its patrons were moving to the alternative platform. Microsoft engaged in a pattern of anticompetitive behavior to destroy competing and more innovative products and by keeping its users trapped in its software ecosystem. As often as not, large monopolies gobble up smaller competitors to lessen rather than enhance competition. And now, corporations are coerced into giving up part of their ownership to the U.S. government, with demands such as that Intel must give 10% of its shares to the executive branch of the federal government, or that Nvidia must provide a share of its China sales revenue to the government. In each of these instances, one could put up some sort of a weak case for why government should control industry, or why monopolies should lessen competition. However, such instances invariably stymy economic growth rather than enhance it in the short run. The long run implications of the politicization of innovation are even more dire. Once we criminalize scientific inquiry, induce academics to flee a nation, or allow for greater monopolization only if oligarchs donate generously to political parties, we are back to the stagnant economies of the Dark Ages, but perhaps with the religious hierarchy replaced by a political but equally self-serving one. The Nobel Prize committee recognizes that we create a better future by embracing new ideas and fostering science, engineering, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Big beautiful economic equations are great, and have been amply rewarded in the early years of the Nobel prizes in economics. Now is the time to recognize diverse thinking and understanding. This recent crop of awardees, the economic historians Peter Howitt, Phillippe Aghion, and Joel Mokyr this year, James. A. Robinson, Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson last year, and Claudia Goldin in 2023 each explained how open minds have advanced economic growth and how monopolies and oppressive institutions have constrained it. They collectively demonstrate that we succeed the best when we unleash and encourage science and engineering and replace aristocracies and autocracies with true meritocracies and a faith in science and free thought. These economic innovators tell us not only what we have to gain from entrepreneurship and industrial innovation, but also what we sacrifice in self-serving institutions, the concentration of power, poor policies, and lack of diverse ideas.
There was a bit of a comical moment the other day at the Israel/Gaza Ceasefire announcement. As one of the first nations to recognize the Palestinian people and recommend a ceasefire, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney was in attendance. President Trump referred to him as President Carney. I’m not sure if the subtleties of the parliamentary system are lost on the president, but Canadians certainly caught the gaff. Funny thing, though. I never hear President Trump refer to Britain's Keir Starmer as a president. Certainly, President Trump likes to goad Canada at every opportunity these days, for whatever reason. Canada is very sensitive and vulnerable to American slights. The saying in Canada is when the U.S. sneezes, Canada catches a cold. We see now that the U.S. economy has been plunged into a self-induced infection. Canada’s fate is potentially worse in the short term, but we have yet to see if the extensive damage can be mitigated. Canada has learned one thing from it all. They know one should not confuse a mutually beneficial economic arrangement with some sort of enduring friendship. Just because Canada and the U.S. have historically been the largest mutual trading partners in the world, and Canada has come to the side of the U.S. in almost every major battle, from Korea to Iraq (I and II), Afghanistan, and others, each of which Canada had no dog in the fight, does not mean a president may not decide to punish Canada unrelentingly over perceived economic slights on any given Sunday. Canada knows this now. There is almost a universal recognition among Canadians that the past has little bearing on how it might be treated in the future. I recall when the Canadian ambassador to Iran rescued a number of American diplomats after the American embassy in Tehran was taken over following the Ayatollah revolution. A couple of weeks after Canada shuttled their American friends to safety, it was trying to negotiate an economic issue with the U.S. When Canada asked if it could receive some cooperation in light of the Tehran rescue, the American counterpart exclaimed “But what have you done for us lately?” Canada did not learn then, but it certainly knows now that sharing its eggs in the American basket is very risky. Canadians equally know that it is time to become a world trader rather than just a trader with the U.S. Canada is now forging new relationships and treaties with other nations as quickly as I can read paperback novels. Britain, Europe, Mexico, and most recently India and China have experienced Canadian trade outreach to reestablish relationships curtailed by Canada’s loyalty to the U.S. For instance, when the U.S. was upset with China and Huawei, then-President Trump demanded that the Chinese Huawei Chief Finance Officer who was visiting Vancouver be arrested and extradited to the U.S. After a year or so of house arrest, the U.S. decided it was not so important anymore, and dropped the charges. Meanwhile, China retaliated fiercely against Canada. The same thing occurred when the U.S. banned China’s electric vehicles. The U.S. demanded Canada impose a 100% tariff on China as well. Canada reluctantly went along with the demand, at the expense of their relationship with China. In doing so, it denied Canadians access to the best EV technology available. Canadian farmers soon paid the price for America’s insistence that Canada punish China as China retaliated against Canada. Canada now knows that any sovereign nation inclined toward free trade must take the high road and not buy into protectionism. This is obviously not the direction taken by its American cousins, but it is nonetheless the high trade road to take. So, what would I do if I were Carney? Well, using the words of Michelle Obama, “When they go low, you go high.” Or, when they zig, you zag. Like the U.S., there are just not enough homes being built to house all those who wish to arrive at its shores. However, unlike the U.S., Canada has far more energy resources than it can use domestically, and has more lumber and steel production now that the U.S. has imposed punishing duties on lumber, steel, aluminum, copper, furniture, and other items that single out Canada almost uniquely. Finally, the U.S. has decided to severely limit the number of students who wish to study in American colleges and has curtailed the number of people who are permitted to migrate to America, unless of course they are white Afrikaners, or people “from cultures consistent with the United States.” If I were Carney, I’d consider these factors not challenges but opportunities. If the U.S. closes its borders, Canada could let more skilled workers in. As the U.S. imposes $100,000 H1 visa fees to highly skilled and educated workers, Canada should do what it can to facilitate their arrival. Those students that are denied entry to attend U.S. universities should come to Canada instead. And researchers fearful of persecution or cutbacks at American universities should find a red carpet all the way to the University of British Columbia, University of Toronto, Queen's University, McGill, or other world-class universities in Canada. And those doctors who find that the hundreds of billions pulled out of the U.S. healthcare system threatens their practices or rural hospitals should know that they are most welcome in Canada. Perhaps the potential financial rewards are not quite as high in Canada, but the risk is far lower, so we see. I’d use Canada’s inexpensive steel and gravel, and cheap natural gas and electricity to make more cement. I’d use this cement and its lumber made cheap because of its abundance of forest land, compared to a small population, to build baby build. Canada should embark upon a housing construction boom that would make it the world leader in factory-built and 3D-printed homes. I'd begin by building factory-built home manufacturing capacity near every Canadian city with growing housing demand. I’d use its abundant land to build these homes using long-term land leases so housing can be brought down to the very affordable cost of construction, given the proposed program of massively inexpensive homebuilding technologies. By making homes more affordable so that everybody who is willing to invest in homeownership will be able to realize their dreams, young people will be given hope. It can build the homes for those students no longer willing or able to study in the US to come to Canada instead. And it can provide affordable housing so those students can stay when they graduate, and those around the world with the skills needed by a growing nation can come and find welcoming and affordable communities. I would use the Sputnik moment of China's cutback in rare earth metals to mount a national effort to make Canada one of the world's leading producers of these essential metals for high tech, aerospace, defense, and autos. Canada, as the world's second largest nation, has huge reserves of the natural resources the world needs. Ironically enough, global warming has made these resources more accessible than ever. I would also create a program to recycle these resources so Canada can lead the way in sustainable resource usage. Canada is determined to spend more on defense, even more than the U.S. does as a share of GDP. As part of that strategy, I'd revitalized the shipbuilding industry much as Finland has, and build the world's biggest fleet of icebreakers to secure Canada's north. It seems a lot of people want its islands these days. And I'd leverage the scientists and engineers who built the Canadarm on the International Space Station, and MDA, one of the world's best satellite manufacturers, to put more eyes in space. Transparency from space may be the best antidote to wannabe dictators in North Korea, Russia, and elsewhere ... Canada could also revitalize its aviation sector, including defense. The Bombardier Global 8000 is the world's fastest civilian jet, Canada designed what became the Airbus A220, one of the most efficient and comfortable passenger aircraft in the world. and Canada built the Avro Arrow in the 1950s, then arguably the world's most advanced military jet, only to have the program curtailed under pressure from Washington, at least according to some conspiracy theorists. These strategies will be expensive, but investments are worth incurring debt. Anyway, Canada cannot any longer rely on the finances and expertise of others. Its scale is low, and that makes difficult big projects. If Canada wishes to be more independent, it must invest in itself. Others will want to help once they see Canada as investing to promote free trade and peace. Remember that, after World War II, Canada was the first nation that could to decide to not build a nuclear weapon. Instead, it used its expertise to find peaceful uses of Einstein's famous equation, and now leads the world in breeder reactor technology. I’d be approaching every major CEO worldwide and explain to them that by moving some activity to Canada, or by tapping into a soon-to-be vibrant and growing economy by making things in Canada, their companies and employees can thrive. While the wages they must pay are comparable to those in the U.S., employees and employers alike won’t have to face the American burden of incredibly high health care or education costs. Hopefully housing and construction can be equally valuable to those who come. These companies will also have access to very low energy costs, and the resources such as steel, aluminum, copper, rare earth metals and uranium that Canada can uniquely provide. I’d also explain that Canada views its education institutions as economic drivers rather than political liabilities. Just as Canadian inventors Banting and Best insisted that their innovation called insulin should remain in the public domain so that millions can treat their diabetes, Canada’s research institutions, strengthened as it attracts the world’s best and brightest, can produce the intellectual property necessary for a nation to thrive. What is clear is that Canada should figure out fast what it can do well, and do it. Government assistance in such infant industries is appropriate, legal, and good common sense. There is no time to waste. Canada can afford such investments, even given its economic challenges. As a share of GDP, its debt and deficits are smaller than south of the border. Today’s graph shows GDP growth is holding up, and is far less volatile than that of the U.S. Unlike much of US fiscal spending, what Carney should do is to promote investment in the future, not mere fueling of consumption in the present. By laying the foundation for a new and revitalized and internationalized economy, any investments now will pay great dividends in the future. As a former investment banker, such a sustainable rate of return is something Carney can understand. Carney can navigate these challenges to create opportunities. It must think big. An increasingly proud nation facing adversity will applaud his courage. He came to politics as a chief sustainability investor, one with a very long view, and as the central banker for two G7 nations, with a decidedly medium-term perspective. He now finds himself riddled with attacks from some quarters in the daily Question Period in which a prime minister must respond to queries from legislators seeking political advantage. That’s about as short term as one can experience. Carney must ignore the almost-daily attacks from President Trump, on the 51st state, on defense, on industry and tariffs, on Nato, even on from whom Canada purchases airplanes, and try to figure out a way to appease the president so that Canada’s challenges are not magnified even further. It’s one thing to turn lemons into lemonade, but yet another to plant more lemon trees. Many Canadians want Carney to take a tougher stance with America, not the least of whom is Ontario Premier Ford. Carney is managing competing risks. The long run strategy is to rebuild the economy around these opportunities, and damn the torpedoes. After all, Carney’s political mandate will expire after Trump’s. The next president will not view Canada any less favorably than the current regard. Carney remains concerned, though, whether he can hold on to sufficient support to retain his mandate. That will depend ultimately on the will of the people to unite for the future or to cower in the present. It matters little what motivates the U.S. to do what it does. It is now a Canadian imperative to not rely in relationships that are not symmetric and not depend on the past to predict the future. Canada might contemplate "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."