DONALD WHO? and CEOS PAID 325x AVERAGE WORKER

DONALD WHO? Donald Trump is on the ballot, but Republicans are trying to pretend he's not. Meanwhile, Trump himself instructed his cult following to "pretend" Trump is on the ballot and "cheat like hell" to win the election for Republicans. However, a CNN analyzed AdImpact data for September 1–15, 2026 and found:

- Only 12 Republican TV ads mentioned President Donald Trump.

- Republicans produced more than 500 TV ads during that period.

- Those 12 Trump-mentioned ads represented about $1 million in spending, out of more than $160 million in Republican TV advertising.

- This that less than 1% of Republican TV-ad spending went to spots specifically mentioning Trump.

- By comparison, Democrats mentioned Trump in 95 ads during the same period, with about $23 million in spending. 

CEOS PAID 325x AVERAGE WORKER - A new analysis was just published from the Economic Policy Institute about CEO compensation at the largest U.S. publicly traded companies.

- Average CEO compensation rose 14% in 2025, reaching about $27.9 million among CEOs at the top 350 U.S. firms.

- EPI calculates that CEOs received about 325 times the compensation of a typical worker in 2025.

- For comparison, the ratio was about 21-to-1 in 1965 and 31-to-1 in 1978.

- From 1978 to 2025, EPI estimates realized CEO compensation increased 1,316%, while compensation for typical workers increased 28%.

CEO compensation isn't simply a $27.9-million salary. EPI's "realized compensation" measure includes salary, bonuses, long-term incentives, and stock-based compensation when stock awards vest or stock options are exercised.

If you use the report's 325-to-1 ratio literally, one year of average CEO compensation is roughly equivalent to 325 years of the typical worker's annual compensation.

Job Openings for Trump Voters

 Attention Trump voters! 🍊 🍋 🍒 🥑 

Right now, there are many job openings in central California to pick fruits and vegetables. The pay is low, the labor is non-union, the hours are long and difficult, and the worksite is in challenging outdoor conditions, but you love America so much and we are counting on YOU in order to fulfill President Trump’s pledge to lower prices at the grocery store!

The workday starts early, so get out there and make America great again!

Andrew Yang Wants an Economy for Normal People

We have seen, and will continue to see, market forces that seek to maximize profit potential with the assumption that human flourishing will be an inevitable byproduct. There are clearly problems with this assumption already. But with increasing automation and AI, there is no good reason to believe this will be remotely true in the future.

Consider many (if not most) care-giving positions: home health care, teaching, child care and youth development, social workers, elderly care, animal welfare, environmental protection and cleanup. These and countless other occupations serve vital social functions yet have little economic incentive. People essentially commit to a life in poverty just to take on these careers - yet society would be nearly unbearable without them.

Add to this the ongoing de-skilling of various professions or outright automation of entire industries and we have a very bleak future for most humans ("normal people") in the mid-21st century and beyond. So long as a meaningful life and sustainable living are tied to economic structures which reward disruptive, concentrated monetary accumulation, most people will continue to see their quality of life diminish as a small oligarchy of tech wizards and financial elite consolidate most available resources.

"The War on Normal People" author and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang appears to be among the foremost leaders in the USA discussing this issue. He is certainly worth watching and listening to.

Related to this, Google's AlphaZero AI has become the undisputed champion of Chess. And unlike previous software programs like Stockfish which were programmed by humans, AlphaZero taught itself to play Chess and became better than every human player... in four hours. AlphaZero is actually more creative than most human chess players - another metric that didn't seem likely just a few years ago. Machines appear capable of learning something new more effectively and efficiently than humans could ever hope to.

The superiority of AI won't stop with games like Chess or Go, or even with automated cars and chat bots. Most of the jobs that most of us have will be performed more effectively by machines or with only minimal human oversight, and likely within most of our lifetimes.

If we don't de-couple our sense of purpose from work, if we don't separate how we obtain food, housing, and other essentials from performing profitable tasks, there won't be much of an economy left in which most humans can participate. The more one pays attention to the developments in AI and automation, the more clear it becomes that we are on a collision course with very grim prospects for most people unless economic and social structures are significantly redesigned with humans in mind.

A Bit of Perspective...

Here's a bit of perspective for the incoming president...

Who Won World War Two?

Quantitative Easing Forever

With the Federal Reserve pledging to buy $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities per month for the indefinite future and a pledge to keep short-term interest rates near zero into 2015 (source), the film may as well be called:

"Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke evidently thinks that driving up the stock market will quicken the animal spirits of the affluent 20 percent who own 93 percent of equities, and this “wealth effect” will spur economic activity, eventually benefiting others. So, the interest rates Barack Obama favors are a form of the trickle-down economics he execrates." - George F. Will (source)

War is Making Us Poor

Contrary to Keynesian economics, warfare is not good for the economy because war only destroys wealth; it cannot create it. Government spending on war, including escalating borrowing on credit to fund military operations, has both short term and long term destructive effects - morally and economically.

Plan 999 from Outer Space!

Everything you need to know about the recent GOP Presidential Debates:

The Myth of the Middle Class

Welcome to Washington, DC - the US capital.  In this tale of two cities (Northwest and Southeast DC), the median income disparities could hardly be greater ($29k vs. $140k).  Yet residents in both Georgetown and Anacostia regard themselves as "middle class."  Why?

This fine RT report rightly points out that real wages are stagnant or declining in all income sectors except the very top - yet does not address the underlying mythology behind the "middle class" in America.  In some sense, the notion that the growing levels of wealth depreciation and poverty have not disrupted the "average American" is a necessary illusion; the masses will be kept subservient and docile so long as they believe that they are, relatively speaking, doing just fine.  Only a few "fringe" politicians and economists are wiling to admit that the center is falling out of America, creating an inverted bell curve of the have and have-nots.  So long as most Americans believe they are "middle class," they will concede ever greater wealth and power to a small group of elites who continue to widen the disparities in income (at the expense of everyone else).