Peter retweeted
It's very on brand for California that one of the factors pushing Oakland towards a possible bankruptcy is environmental activists pushing the city to illegally renege on a port contract
Taxpayers are now on the hook for up to $654 million, before interest
Peter retweeted
A heck of a chart: in every single one of the 10 major US cities that built the most housing between 2017 and 2023, rents for older, existing units fell—often by quite a bit.
Or we could legalize housing construction in our densest, highest demand areas.
It’s not a technology problem.
South Korea, China, Taiwan and other Asian countries are where the majority of manufacturing jobs of the future currently exist.
We’ve made clear we’d like to keep it that way.
🧵
Something folks are missing here: this raid wasn’t about “illegals taking American jobs.” It was about ICE storming the Hyundai–LG battery plant in Georgia, part of a $7.6B Metaplant project that isn’t even operational yet.
They dragged out more than 300 South Korean engineers and specialists. People flown in to help stand the place up so it could eventually employ thousands of Georgians/Americans.
This plant wasn’t scheduled to start running until late 2025 or early 2026. These workers weren’t taking jobs; they were building the factory that would create them.
This chart is just the urban / rural divide.
But the modern economy rewards specialization and scale, so people will keep moving to cities and getting more progressive, subject only to blue state home building restrictions.
Peter retweeted
I've reached the point where a private equity owned HVAC company telling someone they need to replace their system absent a perceptible problem should be wholly disregarded. It doesn't warrant a paid second opinion
I swear there's a team at @GustoHQ dedicated to fixing what isn't broken. Their mandate is:
1. Find things that work well.
2. Change them.
Nobody is looking for "new and exciting" when they run payroll. It just needs to work and be easy.
Also why do half the time I get a U. S. support agent who helps me in 2 minutes, and the other half I get an offshore person who can't fix my problem in 20.
Is it random? Is there some routing rule?
@GustoHQ's "break things that work well" team is at it again.
Payroll admins now have to verify and manually re-type (no copy/paste) their employee's bank info as part of onboarding.
(Which of course I don't want to know and can't verify.)
Peter retweeted
11/The question isn't "Can AI substitute for humans?" It's "What happens when it does?"
History's answer: Automated tasks become economically trivial while the economy reorganizes around what remains human. Growth is constrained by what's hard to improve, not what we do well.
Outstanding column by @nytdavidbrooks - “Trump is taking a sledgehammer to the sources of American prosperity: global competition, immigrant taken, scientific research and the universities.”
No serious person attacks the deficit primarily by laying off federal civilian employees.
It was honestly shocking to see that level of ignorance re the federal budget from the DOGE team.
Cutting your nose off to spite your face...
The bond market understands what has transpired and it doesn't like it. Rates are rising, and may now move rapidly.
Many of the same journos, politicians and media who thought they "won" by trying to sideline DOGE will now face an uncomfortable new reality in their personal financial lives and those of their constituents as rates rise.
They will then realize, but never admit, that what they did was reckless.
Meanwhile, the current administration is focused on shifting American employment towards low skill manufacturing by imposing blanket tariffs on items produced abroad.
Writing in NYT, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warns that “China Tech Is Starting to Pull Ahead”:
“China is at parity or pulling ahead of the United States in a variety of technologies, notably at the A.I. frontier. And it has developed a real edge in how it disseminates, commercializes and manufactures tech. History has shown us that those who adopt and diffuse a technology the fastest win.”
As he points out, diffusing a technology the fastest — and relatedly, I would add, building the largest partner ecosystem — are the keys to winning. Yet when Washington introduced an “AI Diffusion Rule”, it was almost 200 pages of regulation hindering adoption of American technology, even by close partners.
The Diffusion Rule is on its way out, but other regulations loom.
President Trump committed to rescind 10 regulations for every new regulation that is added.
If the U.S. doesn’t embrace this mentality with respect to AI, we will lose the AI race.























