Almost four years ago, the election of Donald Trump took most by surprise. Even the pessimistic prognosticators gave Trump just a 28% chance of winning. This along with the earlier Brexit vote caused a lot of teeth-gnashing among pundits. Why didn’t we see these results coming? Why were the polls so off?

Now in 2020 we’re looking at a new election with brand new polls. Any sane person should wonder, can we trust the pollsters this time around? After 2016 the most famous poll analyzer of them all, Nate Silver, concluded that the polls were as accurate as they had ever been. The problem he said, was in people’s expectations of their accuracy. Personally, I think this is passing the buck, but I do agree that polls have always been far from perfect. Moreover, there are reasons to think they are even less accurate in 2020 than they were in 2016. …

Every year it seems like software companies become more valuable and more central to equity markets. Just this week, the prototypical Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company, Salesforce, was added to the Dow Jones Industrial average. It’s now the third largest component of the index. Since the Covid crisis, the accretion of value to these companies has even accelerated.

Looking at Salesforce data, it’s clear that a large part of its growing valuation comes from increasing revenue. Salesforce and other SAAS companies just keep making more money.

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A few weeks ago, the IMF released its June 2020 world economic outlook and it makes for grim reading. The agency predicts that global gross domestic product (GDP) will decline by 4.9% this year. Should we care? After all, people have long criticized GDP as a terrible metric for the health of a nation. …

The Covid crisis seems to be destroying what’s left of mainstream news media. So far Vice, Vox, Bustle, the Outline, Wired, Quartz, and many more outlets have had layoffs or are contemplating deep cuts. Of course, this shouldn’t be surprising. Fields that have free competition and networks effects tend to end up with a few winners and many losers. So far, it looks like the New York Times is destined to become the winner of news, much like Facebook is the winner in social media.

This leaves journalists who can’t score big media jobs with dim prospects. I would worry about these reporters except for one thing, many of them are internet famous. …

What does the popularity of Tiger King have in common with the election of Donald Trump? For one, both represent huge and unexpected cultural phenomena. In fact on March 29, “Tiger King” had more than half as many Google searches as our current president.

Written with my wife and muse: Laurie Tauberg

The gears of our economy have ground to a halt. Market indices are gyrating like it’s the second coming. The canals of Venice are clear after hundreds of years, and rent is due on April 1. Now, on March 26, in the midst of an unprecedented global catastrophe, the United States government has agreed to send us each $1200 if we make a certain income. What a fucking joke.

There are so many things wrong with this depressing stimulus bill. How should we all hate the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (C.A.R.E.S) Act? …

Call it what you want, coronavirus, COVID-19, the “China” virus. No matter the name, this viral pandemic represents the biggest global event since 2008. In that great calamity, many modern-day Cassandras made their name by being early to warn us. It got me wondering, who got this crisis right? That is, who called it early and is likely to see their credibility rise after this is all over. I have a few ideas.

Scientists

The unsung heroes of any pandemic are undoubtedly the doctors and scientists who fight to understand the threat. There are many who have warned for years about the kind of global shutdown that we are experiencing. …