I do find it interesting that the “actual” employment rate was 7% higher in 2000 than it is now. I get that we have an older population now, and proportionally more retirees as a result, but isn’t that relevant to our economic health? Rather than patting ourselves on the back for doing a good job despite an aging population, shouldn’t we be talking about how to turn this trend around? Italy, Japan, and China are about a generation ahead of us on this issue, and they’re totally freaking out - maybe we should too.

Private insurance used to offer flood insurance like 100 years ago, but to stay in business they had to raise premiums to a point where no one could realistically afford it (which is to say that living in a flood zone is not financially feasible for most people). The government had to step in with their own flood insurance program, which was tied to regulation intending to minimize the risk of flooding in at-risk zones so that premiums could remain affordable. Even these measures haven’t been sufficient to keep the program from running out of money, and we’ve been subsidizing it with taxpayer bailouts to keep it afloat.

All this is to say that private insurance is literally incapable of insuring against flood damage, so you can’t blame them for any of this. If you want to blame someone, blame Trump for rolling back standards that would have allowed FEMA to consider climate change in their risk models.

They fact-checked constantly during the first half, which was a huge improvement over former debates. Honestly I thought this was better moderated than any previous debate involving Trump.

Harris campaign requested unmuted mics - it was Trump’s team that was worried about him making an ass of himself with interruptions. With that in mind they might be letting him talk because it’s what Harris wanted in the first place.

A lot of people are doing work that can be automated in part by AI, and there’s a good chance that they’ll lose their jobs in the next few years if they can’t figure out how to incorporate it into their workflow. Some people are indeed out of the workforce or in industries that are safe from AI, but that doesn’t invalidate the hype for the rest of us.

This is like saying that automobiles are overhyped because they can’t drive themselves. When I code up a new algorithm at work, I’m spending an hour or two whiteboarding my ideas, then the rest of the day coding it up. AI can’t design the algorithm for me, but if I can describe it in English, it can do the tedious work of writing the code. If you’re just using AI as a Google replacement, you’re missing the bigger picture.

Using the heroes act I think gave them cover to argue that this was relief related to the pandemic, like PPP loans, which has honestly been an effective strategy to win over moderates on the issue - myself included. It seduced us into thinking that this was justified because PPP loans were not, and that two wrongs made a right. In reality, the repayment freeze was the relief we needed - anything beyond that would be economic stimulus, at which point you have to ask who’s being left out. The further this gets from the pandemic, the more difficult it becomes to justify.