These are dark days for free-market economists when one of the few areas of bipartisan consensus is for a terrible idea: Both Vice President JD Vance and Senator Bernie Sanders want the federal government to take an explicit stake in AI firms.

There are two processes that we cannot escape: aging and math. This applies not only to human beings but also to large government social-insurance programs.

When someone told me recently that her favorite use of AI is for financial advice, I was horrified. I am a retirement economist, and my first reaction was self pity: Now I know how doctors feel when people use AI for medical questions.

The average size of a single-family house built in the 1960s was about 1,500 square feet, and homes within multifamily units were about 800 square feet. Now those figures are more than 2,000 square feet and more than 1,200 square feet, respectively.

America is fast becoming a country with two economies: a stagnant one for men and a growing one for women. So far this year, the US has created more than 165,000 private-sector jobs, and 72% of them went to women. To some extent this reflects a structural change in the economy, as growth is in industries more likely to employ women, such as healthcare.

Putting money directly into Trump accounts is fundamentally different: It goes directly to the beneficiaries. Whether it will be more effective at improving prosperity or reducing populist anger is unclear. The public/nonprofit model can be better targeted and address specific societal needs, such as hunger or education.

There is also a popular notion that bond traders can see the future, that they know what inflation will be or if a recession is coming. But bond markets are often wrong. And they may be wrong now because bond yields are low relative to the risks the economy faces.

It’s happening. California looks likely to put a “one-time” tax of 5% on wealth above $1 billion on the ballot in November, and polls suggest it could pass — despite opposition from some economists (not so surprising) and Democratic politicians (more so).

So the question is not whether innovation can drive growth. It’s how much growth innovation can drive. The falling population and heavy debt load mean productivity will need to increase GDP by at least 2.5%, maybe 3% depending on the path of interest rates.

Budget airlines are going broke. Spirit Airlines may go under or get a government bailout, and JetBlue is just barely avoiding bankruptcy this year. It didn’t need to be this way. They tried to merge in 2024, but the merger was blocked because President Joe Biden’s administration was concerned that greater consolidation would lead to higher prices.

I came across a statistic the other day that goes against the intuition of practically everyone in the US who has a job: Americans are working less than they did in the 1950s and ’60s. How is this possible, when we all feel chained to our desks or our phones?

Once upon a time, not so long ago, about a third of all American workers had a gold-plated pension: When they retired, someone paid them nearly their full salary for the rest of their lives. They didn’t have to worry about the market, or inflation, or running out of money.

Cities such as New York and Chicago are in deep financial trouble. Broadly speaking, they have two options: Make the difficult but appropriate choice to raise taxes and reduce the scale of government, or continue to live in a state of denial, increasing their pension obligations while also promising their residents more services.

When someone says a retiree is “living off Social Security,” it’s not usually $100,000 a year.

There are at least two conflicting narratives about Gen Z and young millennials. One is that they are extremely risk averse — afraid even to go out of the house, much less on a date.

For years it was a punch line. Now the Laffer Curve — which purports to show that tax cuts can increase revenue — is making a kind of comeback.

One of my most longstanding and controversial opinions is that the move from defined-benefit pensions to defined-contribution pensions was a success. It’s an especially unpopular view amid stories of retirees who fall through the cracks and a grim market that is pruning many retirement accounts, if not retirement dreams.

A great financial economist once tried to convince me that retail investors should not be allowed to buy individual stocks. I strenuously disagreed: Wasn’t this America, the country that encourages risk-taking? Why shut regular investors out of the chance to get rich?

It is hard to say if there is much economic benefit or cost to increased bank profits. On the one hand, it may allow banks to issue more credit to lower-income borrowers with worse credit.

Markets are efficient after all. This does not mean that prices are always “correct,” just that they generally reflect the available information. When investors learn that software firms’ products may be displaced by AI, their prices fall, as they did last week.

Reality has a way of catching up with theory eventually, and now it has for Japan, whose long-term bond yields are rising as the yen is depreciating. The Japanese experience, it turns out, is not an excuse to run up lots of debt. It is a cautionary tale.

If you play it safe and the fund doesn’t generate sufficient returns, it will require more contributions, often from taxpayers. But if you take too much risk, it could also go wrong and leave the fund without enough money. The task requires balancing risk and reward.

Put me down as an AI optimist. Artificial intelligence has the potential to transform the economy and make Americans richer, healthier and more productive. I’d bet money on it — in fact I have, through the shares I own in an index fund, which means I am long the US economy.

There is a natural human tendency to assume that your generation has it harder than everyone else. Even by those standards, however, baby boomers (and some older millennials) are on the receiving end of an extraordinary amount of resentment.

I have a confession, shameful as it may be for someone who has spent decades studying retirement policy and advising individuals and institutions on how to save for and think about retirement: When I bought my apartment a few years ago, I raided my retirement account for the down payment.

Going public used to be a sign that a company had made it. In the last decade or so, however, IPOs started to become a little … cringe.

Taxes are a necessary fact of life. Although no one likes paying them, and they divert resources and cause waste, governments need revenue to provide essential (and some not-so-essential) services.

What will 2026 be like? There are reasons to be optimistic, as many were a year ago. Here are five of them.

While the Federal Reserve is expected to cut short-term interest rates next year, these reductions are predicted to have minimal effect on long-term rates, such as the 10-year Treasury yield.

I’ve been a retirement economist for my entire adult life, and yet I am continually amazed at how America continues to get retirement saving so wrong. Now, finally, the world’s largest issuer of mutual funds is showing signs that it recognizes a major flaw in the system.

The decision to attend college was a no-brainer during the second half of the 20th century. It almost assured higher earnings and job security. Tuition wasn’t even very expensive. None of this is true now.

This article argues that the pursuit of high returns by institutional investors, like insurers and pension funds, through illiquid and opaque private market investments is a repeating mistake that risks underfunding future liabilities.

The article argues that making productive use of AI requires strong critical thinking, statistical, and analytical abilities, a necessity challenged by weakening standards in math and reading in educational institutions.

There is a frenetic, sweaty-palm feel to the US economy lately. Markets are looking frothy and consumers are anxious, and meanwhile the gambling and stock markets are converging as people bet on all sorts of strange assets and events.

First, it would mean lower monthly payments, unless interest rates rise a lot. Yes, buyers who stay in their home for 50 years and pay off their mortgage over that time will pay much more in interest than they would have with a 30-year mortgage.

If owning a home is still the American dream, then it is increasingly out of reach for many young Americans. The average age of a first-time homebuyer is now 40, up from 33 just a few years ago and 29 in 1981.

The question of the moment in markets is whether we are in an AI bubble, as stocks seem awfully expensive amid hopes that artificial intelligence will transform the economy. But there is another curiosity that is far more concerning: low credit spreads. That suggests a low-risk environment — which describes precisely nothing about this market.

Being a millionaire isn’t what it used to be. This isn’t a lament, it’s a fact: As Bloomberg News reported last week, almost one-fifth of US households have a net worth of more than $1 million. Fully one-third of them have gained that status since 2017.

As the world faces a future of lower growth, there is a temptation among policymakers to have the government take a more active role in the economy. Policy certainly has a role to play. But all governments should realize that abundance doesn’t come from better planning.

Over the next decade, the US economy will face two big challenges: higher interest rates and AI-generated disruption. Each invites the same solution: policies to keep rates below their market level.

The jaw-dropping spike in gold prices is a reminder of what primal creatures we humans are — especially the species among us known as active traders. But the surge should also remind us of the importance of calling on the more evolved parts of our brain.

Over the next decade, almost every rich country will have to face fiscal reality. All have expanded their welfare state to serve not only the needy but also the middle class, with expensive pensions, health care and worker benefits.

Once again, the president is questioning what purpose is served by publicly traded companies issuing quarterly earnings reports. Not only did Donald Trump raise this issue back in 2018 — so did Barack Obama in 2015.

The Dutch have long been famous — at least to pension nerds like me — for their retirement system, which is well-funded and well-managed. Now that reputation is in jeopardy: As it turns out, providing generous, guaranteed pensi

For decades, betting that long-term bond rates would rise was known as the widow-maker trade: It was simultaneously the most sensible and the most consistently money-losing wager an investor could make.

On paper, these are good times for the US economy. The latest GDP numbers show growth was at 3.3% in the second quarter. Business investment is up. The unemployment rate remains low, and the inflation rate is reasonable.

The difference in wealth and income between the top 1% and the rest of America tends to get more attention, but one of the more striking wealth gaps is generational: Older Americans are far richer than young Americans.

Almost 15 years ago, I had a finance job in Austin which I did from my apartment in Manhattan. Although I was under constant pressure to move to Texas, I argued that because I worked in finance and media, leaving New York would hurt my career, and I’d have to be compensated for that loss.