Government Ownership of the Means of Production, Continued

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state..."-- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto

Jonathan Hillman at the Council on Foreign Relations:

Washington’s latest and boldest experiment in industrial policy is a renewed willingness to take equity stakes. Since January 2025, the U.S. government has announced investments worth $27.6 billion across thirty-seven deals involving direct ownership, broadening a toolkit that has traditionally focused on grants, loans, and tax incentives. The Department of Commerce leads the way with twenty four announced deals, including taking a 10 percent stake in Intel. The Development Finance Corporation, the United States’ development bank, has pledged six equity transactions in critical minerals, energy, and infrastructure. The Department of Defense has disclosed seven deals, and the Department of Energy has participated in two.

Return to this page for the Government Deal Tracker. 

Kit Pulliam at Moneywise:

The government owning equity in private companies is unusual, to say the least. And experts say that the way the Trump administration is approaching equity could be easy to abuse.

"The federal government has powers no private shareholder possesses," said Tad DeHaven, policy analyst at the Cato Institute, in an email to Moneywise. "A government that owns the players cannot be trusted to call the game fairly."

...

While it is unusual, the U.S. government holding equity in private companies has occurred before. But there's one big difference in past ownership deals compared to these new ones.

"It hasn't been normal for Washington to accumulate stakes in otherwise private companies as a routine economic policy tool," DeHaven said. He says that several administrations — including the Carter, Bush, and Obama administrations — have accumulated stakes in companies during emergencies, such as during the Great Recession or after 9/11.

"Whatever one thinks of those interventions, they were justified as emergency stabilization measures and generally intended to be unwound," DeHaven said. "The second Trump administration is doing something quite different."

Volunteering and Everyday Kindness

Many posts have discussed social capital, volunteering and civic virtue.

Stephanie Marken at Gallup:

The vast majority of U.S. youth, those aged 12 to 25, report participating in some type of formal public service or volunteering activity. But more than nine in 10 youth agree that everyday acts of kindness can be just as important as formal volunteering and say people can make a difference in their community without volunteering. Most youth report doing kind acts for others.

More than eight in 10 U.S. youth aged 12 to 25 (82%) report participating in some form of service. The most popular activities include donating goods or organizing donations (54%), environmental cleanup (35%), and volunteering at food banks or shelters (31%). More structured or civic-oriented activities are less common, ranging from volunteering at a hospital, care facility or senior center (15%) to writing letters to elected officials (13%) and participating in mission trips (8%).

 

Implementation and Public Groceries

Many posts have discussed public administration.

New York's Mayor Mamdani wants to set up public grocery stores.  As usual, good intentions crash into the reality of implementation.

California businessman Nick Kokonas at X:

I downloaded and reviewed NYC's grocery store RFP... as someone who has built biz's and bought a lot of food... wow.

Forget for a moment whether or not the govt should own a grocery store. Let's review the doc instead. Here you go... /1

NYC strongly prefers bidders who commit to all 5 stores. But 3 of the 5 sites haven’t been identified. Bidders are supposed to price unknown stores in unknown neighborhoods by assuming they’re “about 15,000 sq ft.” Absurd.

Bidders get preference for operating all 5 stores, presumably b/c scale lowers costs. But NYC awards each store separately, so an all-5 bidder may win only 1. They want scale pricing while refusing to award scale.

The stores must use a “limited SKU” model. They must also carry full grocery departments, household goods, culturally specific products, plus kosher, halal, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free and diabetic options. Pick one.

The RFP says stores won’t have deli counters or on-site food prep. Then its Core Basket includes chicken salad, egg salad, potato salad, fruit salad and other deli-prepared foods. So, a deli w/o a deli. Oh... you're going to ship them in every day prepared. Gotcha...

NYC chooses and pays for the design, equipment, refrigeration and fitout. The operator pays utilities, maintenance, cleaning and security. So NYC makes the capital decisions while someone else pays for the consequences. That's how they control the goalposts.

The “best” bid promises 30% discounts, best-in-class wages/benefits, local sourcing, sustainability, community programs and full-time jobs. Then 20% of the score goes to whoever claims they need the least subsidy. Lowballing is the strategy.... and then cost overruns are guar.

Core Basket discounts must be universal “sticker prices,” not promotions. Then the operator must create a membership card to “implement the discount program.” Which is it? Universal shelf price or an ID card system -- btw, also says it's available to all people...

and it doesn't even properly target their goals b/c the subsidy isn’t targeted. No means test. Anyone can shop there. So taxpayers will subsidize groceries for affluent shoppers who happen to live nearby, while needy families elsewhere get zero.

I always *thought* that this was a terrible idea. They could much better help people with $$ and hey, there are already programs that they could expand. But after reading -- now I *know* it's a ridiculous idea. We have an efficient system... just change the outcomes.

so naturally one asks -- why would they *want* to build crappy grocery stores that have conflicting goals and will be mismanaged? Because either that's the goal... or else they have no idea how to actually craft an RFP or run a business.

The Paradox of Competition in House Elections

Many posts have discussed the state of Congress.

 Bruce Mehlman:

While overall House control is highly competitive, most individual House seats are not. Three straight Houses have seen single digit majorities, the first such run since the 1790s — even as the number of genuinely balanced districts has collapsed. (David Wasserman, Cook Political)

Consumer Sentiment and the Perils of Online Polling

Many posts have discussed pollsters' challenges, including the plunge in response rates.

Joel Wertheimer at Silver Bulletin discussed the Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS):

The University of Michigan ICS is the gold standard sentiment survey measuring consumer sentiment.1 The survey has historically shown a very strong correlation with “hard” economic data such as inflation and unemployment. But before more bad analysis gets done on the vibecession, people need to know they’re working with dubious data. As with election polls, the ICS has struggled amid a shift away from telephone polling. There are issues both with partisan nonresponse, with some political groups more likely to respond than others, and partisan expressive response, with survey-takers using questions about the economy to express political sentiment.

So the problems with the ICS are these:

The switch to online polling made responses more negative and,

There are too many Democrats in the sample.

Thus, ICS data since mid-2024 is not comparable to past periods. Here is the partisanship of the sample over time:

And Democrats right now say they hate the economy with Trump in charge.

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When adjusted for these issues, the ICS should be substantially higher than the Great Recession lows we have witnessed over the past year. Weighting the survey to Pew’s National Public Opinion Reference Survey — what Nate Cohn called “perhaps the most important poll you’ve never heard of” — would place the ICS at a level more like that in 2013, when the economy was growing after the Great Recession but unemployment remained stubbornly high and wages stubbornly low. This adjustment would bring the survey in line with other measures of consumer confidence, such as those from the Conference Board, Gallup, and YouGov.

Trusting Veterans

Many posts have discussed veterans.

Ellen Maese at Gallup:

Seven in 10 U.S. adults say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in military veterans, according to new research from With Honor and Gallup. That confidence extends to elected leadership, with 77% saying they would trust a person with military experience a great deal or a fair amount to perform well as an elected official. Trust in leaders with military experience spans party groups, with majorities of Democrats (70%), independents (73%) and Republicans (91%) expressing this view.

The findings come as With Honor Action reports that 752 veterans across the political spectrum have run or are running for Congress in the 2026 cycle — a 47% increase from 2024 and the highest number the organization has tracked since it began monitoring veteran candidates in 2018.

Inequality, Households, and Teen College Plans

Many posts have discussed economic and educational inequality. 

Inequalities feed on one another. Kids from noncollege families engage in fewer extracurriculars,which in turn hurts their chances at getting into good colleges and getting good jobs.

Daniel A. Cox reports on the 2026 American Teenagers Survey from the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life: 

Teens’ planned trajectory after graduation varies dramatically between not only boys and girls but also those with college-educated parents and those without. Nearly three-quarters (74 percent) of teen girls with college-educated parents report that they are planning on going to a four-year college after graduation. About half of teen boys with college-educated parents say they are planning on going to college themselves. Nearly as many teen girls (46 percent) raised in noncollege households plan on attending a four-year college or university. About half as many of their male peers (24 percent) report that they plan on going to college.