TL;DR: Something here just doesn’t add up. Tariff dividend?  BBC flounders rom the top. And with cold temps? Personal appearance changes. That’s Monday for you: tight, bright, and right.

Developer Economics

Twenty years ago, if you had asked me to explain the difference between being a sci-fi writer and covering finance/economics?  Would have been a simple answer:  “One is fiction, the other not.”

Today that’s flipping. Sci-Fi is becoming real. Finance? Not so much.  And apparently it’s contagious.  As Sunday, Donald Trump started pitching $2,000 per American as a tariff “dividend.”  That’s when we did a quick “planet check.” Has Phillip K. Dick been reincarnated at Treasury?

Suddenly, sounds like a New Release – Sci-Fi on Amazon is showing on Forbes:  Trump Promises $2,000 Tariff Dividend Payments For Americans.

Let’s do the math while I go looking for the ViseGrips.  This could be a lucid dream, you know…  (We’ve been driven to Channel Locks, now and then, too…)

The Budget Lab at Yale estimates that all tariffs currently in place (as of 2025) will raise about $2.5 trillion over 2026-2035 (net ~ $2.0 trillion) — which is an average of ~ $200 billion per year over ten years.

With help from my two “silicon intelligence’s”  we got to work.

• Suppose the U.S. population eligible is ~ 250 million people (excluding “high-income”).

• At $2,000 each, that’s $500 billion total.

• If tariff revenue is ~ $195 billion (for the full year) and maybe only a portion of that is new revenue that could be used for the dividend, then there’s a large mismatch: $500 billion required vs ~$195 billion total collected.

• Even if all of the $195 billion were directed to the payout (which is unlikely because some tariff revenue already funds other government functions), it still falls well short of $500 billion.

• If only the incremental (new) revenue from higher tariffs is counted – say ~$160-200 billion – the shortfall is even greater.

What’s really going on?  Seriously?  (Remember the movie line “You can’t handle the Truth!”

“The human analyst sees a muddle-through way cooler than Ponzi.  If you need to “Weimar-away” a runaway National Debt, issue money to the Public – they will spend it into the system, devaluing their own currency.  10-years from now, the debt has been diluted to some manageable level…and there’s no popular uprising because everyone got paid-off.  Slick Developer Economics move, huh?”

[AI coaches are yelling from the sidelines: “Tone: right now you’re 80% sardonic. You could pull in 10% more gravitas to give readers a sense that you actually respect the stakes, even as you’re laughing in the aisles. But I’m in serious WTF mode, this being Monday and all.  So let’s rocket ahead…]

Welcome to the “Trumpmar Republic”

We don’t advocate irresponsible finance. BUT, the reality goes like this:  We have runaway debt. We can’t seem to grow it away and that leaves papering it over.

As we were modeling this morning with our silicon pals, hope for sanity remained.

“This isn’t hurtling us toward a “Trumpmar Republic” collapse—hyperinflation requires systemic failure, not just one policy gimmick. It’s more like experimental economics: tariffs as a revenue raiser, dividends as voter bait, with inflation as a side effect to nibble at debt.

Slick? Maybe, if it boosts growth without backlash. Risky? Absolutely—could add 1-2% to inflation annually, per economists, eroding purchasing power for the very folks getting the checks. In a best-case, it’s Reaganomics 2.0: protect industries, cut taxes, grow out of debt. Worst-case, it accelerates inequality and fiscal cliffs, but Weimar-level doom? Nah, we’d see Fed hikes and market revolts long before trillion-dollar bills.”

Still, start on the “measured hyper work-out” with $2,000 this year – maybe as a tax break next April – but then set up a much larger “giveaway” the following year as a promotion of a new US digital currency. Everyone would participate (to get “free money”) which means we’d all get our “palms crossed with silver” to fund our own purchasing power dilution!  Why, it’s genius!!!

“The deeper tell, of course, is that nobody in the room is actually confused about the arithmetic. These people can operate a spreadsheet; they know $195 billion doesn’t magically metamorphose into $500 billion without duct tape and divine intervention. Which means the mismatch isn’t a bug — it’s a signal.

When the numbers don’t line up, but the promise goes out anyway, the smart money assumes the objective isn’t accounting. It’s psychology. It’s narrative engineering. It’s the kind of “Developer Economics” where you don’t fix the underlying code, you just ship the patch and hope the players don’t read the version notes.

And that leads to the uncomfortable truth under the floorboards: monetary dilution isn’t catastrophic if it’s wrapped as a party favor. You shower the public with what feels like found money, they sprint to spend it, the velocity kicks up, and the debt—your debt, the nation’s debt—gets quietly shaved down by the oldest trick in the inflationist toolkit.

Nobody riots because the checks cleared. Nobody examines the ledger because dopamine trumps discipline every time. It’s monetary euthanasia disguised as prosperity. PKD would absolutely file this one under “near-future dystopias,” but in 2025? It’s starting to look like standard operating procedure.”

Wow~  Mind-boggling, ain’t it? But it’s gasoline on the fire being lit down at Wall Street and Broad…

“Future’s So Bright…”

The dips buying the dips is in our lasers now:  Dow Futures are up nearly 200, NASDAQ up 350 and gold? Bouncing $77 while Silver’s about to cross the $50 barrier again.

Even BTC has crawled over $106K which means we’re stuck on two “homework problems” – in addition to 4 links, three eggs, and two toasts that make up health-food when it’s cold in the woods.

First: Is there news leakage?  Or just others seeing the inflationary signaling implicit in “giving people their own money to spend again?”

Second problem (farmed out to silicon children) “Reader Hank notices Mercury Retrograde starts today and we’re wondering if there’s a retrograde relationship to stock averages?”

“To test, I pulled historical Mercury Retrograde dates from 2016-2024 (about 29 periods, each roughly 3 weeks long) and cross-checked them against daily S&P 500 performance (using SPY as a proxy for the index). Method: Grabbed closing prices, calculated logarithmic daily returns (standard for smoothing compounding effects: return = ln(today’s close / yesterday’s close)). Flagged trading days as “retrograde” if they fell within those periods. Then, compared means, standard deviations, and ran a Welch’s t-test (handles unequal variances and sample sizes) to see if returns differ significantly. Total trading days analyzed: ~2,263 over 9 years.

“How we got here: The t-test formula compares the two groups’ means, accounting for their spreads and sizes—essentially, (mean1 – mean2) / sqrt(var1/n1 + var2/n2). A negative t-stat shows retrograde periods underperform, and the p-value (0.03) suggests this isn’t pure chance (below the common 0.05 threshold for “statistical significance”). In plain English: Over this stretch, stocks dipped slightly during retrogrades (annualized, that’s like -14% vs. +19% non-retro, but daily swings dominate).”

In other words, don’t bet a house payment when you think the top from the rally (likely today, which could turn into a “turnaround Tuesday”) tempt you into going short.  The market and weather align with a simply directive for the aware: chill.

Woke Goes to Woe

Oh look! A new BBC drama: Tim Davie resigns as BBC director general after accusations of ‘serious and systemic’ bias in coverage.

What’s interesting here isn’t just the selective editing of political clips — it’s the broader demographic backdrop nobody seems willing to discuss factually. In 1951, the UK was roughly 98% white; by the most recent census that share is just over 80%. Meanwhile, Russia — often painted as monolithic — has shifted far less in the same period, from roughly 90% European-Slavic at the end of WWII to around 80-85% today even with internal migration from Central Asia.

These aren’t value judgments. They’re trend lines — the same way you’d look at market share in a sector chart or long-term shifts in consumer behavior. Correlations matter, particularly when societies are stressed, and pretending demographic change isn’t a driver of internal political mood swings is a disservice to analysis and history alike.

Well, at least until historical revisionism comes along and tells us none of this happened the way the numbers say it did.  Lots of that going around.

Monday News Puke

“Say, what platen are we on, anyway?”   (*In traditional printing presses, the platen is the flat metal plate that presses paper against the type or printing surface to transfer ink. Or, think of it as the ‘drum’ in your laser-printer without the disposable parts.)

Don’t hold your breath: There’s talk that dems may come to their senses (or learn how to read polls) and end GovDown this week. Government shutdown latest: Senate advances a new bill to end the shutdown. Here’s what’s in it. We’ll believe it when we see it.

Meanwhile, walking, bus, or train, thanks: U.S. Transportation Secretary May Use Uncertified Air Traffic Controllers, “If I Can”.  As a pilot, shooting an approach is not like shooting dice, right?

Adventures in Lah-Lah Land: Gov. Newsom subbing in for Trump at COP30 climate change conference in Brazil.  Doesn’t this comprise “When Hopeless meets Useless?”

Personal health alert! Sharing this because a lot of reader interest in anti-aging has been along the lines of melatonin at night to improve human growth hormone release during opening hours of sleep – to speed repairs and what-not.  So do check out Melatonin’s Dark Side: Heart Failure Risk. We took melatonin off long ago, but kept the precursor 5-HTP in our night stack.

Lost in Space files: Blue Origin launch of NASA Mars probes on New Glenn rocket delayed by weather, next try set for Nov. 12 | Space

And while you’re up there: Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus may hide a long-lived ocean that could support life. That’d be “life” like slurry or goo. Not someone to pass the tab to…we think…

Around the Ranch: Sailing Stiks’ – Winter Uniform

Overnight on the Iridium from sailing reader Stiks…

“Just entering a huge marked restricted area south of New Caledonia whee trawling and dredging are forbidden. It goes for hundreds of miles and leaves French territory and continues into Oz. We got buzzed by a propellor plane yesterday, low altitude, probably patrolling, thankfully no bombs! Our iridiium system is allowing this communication and the huge calm we have experienced is giving me lots of time to write and think and cook good stuff, and read and nap. Life is good out here. No worries about anything.

Our odd boat is performing beyond expectation and imagination. Today the wind is showing signs of getting into a regular trade wind pattern, even shifting NE. We may have to gybe to keep going West. With flat smooth water, we had some totally amazing lightning shows, one big ark erupted again and again, probably fifty miles way, then gave a huge final burst that seemed to encompass the entire 10 mile cloud, like the conclusion of a fireworks show, then went completely dark, nothing after that. For hours. No light at all. Pretty amazing. All the while, the relatively full moon continued to shine on it all.”

Their GRIB today nearby is “NC 100nm S (?23.2°S, 165.5°E) — next 48h
WIND: ESE–SE 12–18 kt (ocnl 20 kt in PM squalls). Nights easing 8–12 kt. Trend to E 10–15 kt late D2.”

Winter Uniforms

The expected high temp out in the woods today is 55F. So into our “winter uniforms”.  Elaine’s legs are about to disappear for the season as short-shorts give way to warmer with the merc is down to 32F.  We assume you know that mercury freezes at –37.89 °.  Elaine freezes about 65F.

My “summer uniform” is always a white fishing shirt and nearly white khaki pants.  Reason?  Minimum solar heat absorption – and I’m known for my “cooler take” on things.  Now? Winter uniform: Long sleeve work denim farmer shirt, Wranglers optional.

But the Big change?  The mixing valve in the shower is moving counter clockwise.  I’ve set up an observatory in the shower to track it’s movements while also showing related celestial objects…

ShopTalk Sunday is here if you missed it.

Write when you get rich, or Spring has sprung…

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