AI’s real contribution to humanity could be maximizing corporate profit by preying on personal data to raise prices. In fact, it’s already happening.
Economic Policy
Posted inEconomic Policy
Sources of America’s Hidden Inflation
How market power jacks up prices, and how Trump’s policies add to the pressure
Posted inEconomic Policy
Selling the Poor on Spending Like They’re Rich
How plutonomy, premiumization, and social media squeeze the middle class
Posted inEconomic Policy
The Historic Reversal of Cultural Affordability
America used to be a pioneer in democratizing culture.
Posted inEconomic Policy
The Wrist-Slappers Strike Again
A settlement with algorithmic collusion facilitator RealPage allows it to keep allegedly ill-gotten profits and continue innovating to raise rents.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Your Money Means Market Power for Banks
Deposits are the raw materials with which bankers play, the key to unlocking market power, as giants like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase demonstrate.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Credit Unions Go Large and Go Rogue
Intended to bolster local access to lending, large credit unions today are swallowing up community banks. A Trump purge has reduced their oversight to one regulator.
Posted inEconomic Policy
New York Gets Serious About Food Prices
State lawmakers could work with Zohran Mamdani’s administration to tackle high food prices through a combination of his public grocery proposal and a proposed antitrust law.
Posted inEconomic Policy
New Reforms, Same Old Florida Home Insurance Market
Inflated ratings, weak oversight, and bare-bones consumer protections continue to leave homeowners exposed to the worst of Florida’s fragile, undercapitalized insurance market.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Russ Vought Tries to Bankrupt the CFPB
A legal office in the White House, at the behest of Office of Management and Budget director and Project 2025 architect Russ Vought, has decided to redefine the word “earnings” in order to bankrupt the largely dormant Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.