Viewpoints with Kerby Anderson

Kerby Anderson
Today is the National Day of Prayer. It is a vital part of our American heritage. The first call to prayer happened before the American Revolution. In 1775, the Continental Congress called on the colonists to pray for wisdom as they considered how they would respond to the King of England.
Perhaps one of the most powerful calls to prayer came from President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. In 1863, he issued a proclamation for a day of “humiliation, fasting and prayer.” Here is some of that proclamation:

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand, which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

In 1952, Congress passed and President Harry Truman signed a resolution that declared an annual, national day of prayer. In 1988, President Reagan signed into law a bill that designated the first Thursday of May as the time for the National Day of Prayer.
It is estimated that there have been more than 130 national calls to prayer, humiliation, fasting, and thanksgiving by presidents of the United States. There have been 60 Presidential Proclamations for a National Day of Prayer because every president has signed these proclamations.
Today is the National Day of Prayer. Please pray for this nation and its leaders.

Kerby Anderson
What impact will robots and artificial intelligence have on jobs? In previous commentaries, I have discussed some of these questions and concerns. If you don’t want to be replaced by a robot, we are told, choose a service job, like cutting hair or serving food.
A recent article about fast-food robots dismantles that advice. Ryan Mills begins with a story of a restaurant providing high-quality, affordable Mediterranean dishes at a food truck park in San Francisco. It was created by three Stanford grad students. Each day, a small team prepares the ingredients. Then the robot takes over.
One review said: “The bad news: Artificial Intelligence is going to kill us. The good news: AI can sure serve up some tasty Mediterranean at a beautiful price.” The co-founder described their invention as what would happen if a vending machine and a restaurant had a baby.
There are many other examples. Sweetgreen (an LA salad chain) debuted its fully automated “Infinite Kitchen” at a restaurant in Illinois. Salad bowls move down a conveyor belt and the robot automatically portions out ingredients.
A CaliExpress burger joint has a robot that cooks burgers and fries. The kiosks, powered by artificial intelligence, allow customers to order and pay. Many believe this may be the first restaurant where all the cooking and ordering are fully automated. The inventor says the robots “don’t call in sick, they don’t get drunk the night before work and come in with a hangover.”
Other restaurants are experimenting with robots to deliver food. And robot bartenders and baristas are in the works. We will likely see more and more robots as states raise the minimum wage and labor costs increase.

Kerby Anderson
Jonathan Haidt has been on the Point of View radio talk show to discuss his previous book, The Coddling of the American Mind. He has now compiled his research in his new book: The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.
He begins his book by having us imagine that a visionary billionaire wants to establish the first permanent human settlement on Mars and chose your ten-year-old daughter for the endeavor. You don’t give permission since there would be significant danger to your child (radiation and cellular damage, less gravity affecting bone density and growth).
But then imagine there is another company that doesn’t seem to know anything about child development nor care about child safety. This company doesn’t even require parental permission. All the child needs to do is check a box stating she has obtained parental permission. Then she can blast off to Mars.
His first chapter focuses on “The Surge of Suffering.” He explains that there was little sign of an impending mental issues crisis in the 2000s. But suddenly in the early 2010s, things changed due to smart phones and social media.
When his co-author and he finished writing The Coddling of the American Mind, they already had data through 2016. Teenagers agreed with the statement that they had experienced a long period of feeling “sad, empty, or depressed.” Something changed between 2010 and 2015, which is the period he calls “The Great Rewiring.” His book has graphs on the increase in major depression among teens, an increase in mental illness among college students, and an increase in anxiety prevalence by age.
He concludes that parents need to be involved, but we also need some government action and some responsibility from tech companies. This is a crisis that needs our attention.

Kerby Anderson
George Barna has written a book to help parents discipline their children into spiritual champions. Raising children is a privilege, but also a daunting assignment. Parents have a God-given responsibility to guide their children, but it is often difficult to understand how to do that effectively and biblically.
One significant problem is the stark reality that so many Christian parents do not have a biblical worldview, as determined by the decades of surveys conducted by George Barna. As he reminded us on the radio program, it is difficult to pass on what you don’t have. The obvious first step is for parents to make sure they have a biblical worldview.
His first few chapters describe the importance of children and the need for parents to disciple them. His second section details what it takes to make a disciple, and lays out four practices that characterize genuine disciples of Jesus. The final section is a warning about how media and church-based ministries are affecting our children.
We cannot delegate disciple-making to the church for two reasons. First, it is the parent’s responsibility to disciple a child. Second, pastors may not be equipped to teach a biblical worldview. We talked about Barna’s latest research showing how many pastors (and especially youth pastors) do not have a biblical worldview.
It appears that most of what our children will be as adults is essentially determined by age 13. Their core beliefs, morals, values, and desires have become established by that time, though we can always have an influence on our children.
His book is a reminder that we need to be intentional in the teaching and modeling that parents and grandparents provide. We need to be “Raising Spiritual Champions,” and we need to begin today.

Penna Dexter
A rule has been added to the federal register that will make it  nearly impossible for an incoming president to fire certain federal employees.
The Office of Personnel Management issued the new rule which will shield employees appointed by the executive branch from being terminated for opposing the policies and agenda of a president.
The rule is to go into effect next month. It concerns employment protections in place for career civil servants that do not apply to political appointees.
The rule is based upon the idea that career bureaucrats — often lifelong federal employees — should not be subject to termination because they are not classified as policy-making executive branch employees.
But, as past presidents have learned, career civil servants often fill “policy-making and policy-influencing roles.”  They can form part of the deep state that plagues incoming presidents when they try to implement conservative policies.
National Review’s James Lynch explains that, toward the end of his administration, former President Donald Trump issued an executive order creating a new category, “Schedule F,” for policy-making employees. These employees would not be shielded from termination for “perceived disloyalty to the president and his agenda.” The rule states: “Faithful execution of the law requires that the President have appropriate management oversight regarding this select cadre of professionals.”
President Joe Biden repealed the Trump executive order upon entering office.”
According to Family Research Council’s Washington Stand, the new rule protects “those that the Biden administration has entrenched in the federal government from a possible Trump presidency.” FRC’s Senior Director of Government Affairs Quena Gonzalez, says this new rule “undermines the authority of the American people by tying the hands of an elected president.” He says it “undermines presidential elections.”
This issue goes beyond dueling executive orders.
Though employees with experience and expertise are valuable to a federal workforce, their role is not to undermine a president or impede his effectiveness. Any rule that perpetuates a permanent ruling class should be jettisoned.

Kerby Anderson
Summer is months away but there is already news of an energy shortage on the Texas power grid. Most people would not think Texas would have an energy scare. But officials asked power generators to postpone scheduled maintenance “to help alleviate potential tight conditions.”
Usually the grid has excess power-generation capacity in the Spring, especially given that the temperatures are in the 80s. One reason for the shortage is population growth, but others have to do with the electricity needed for new data centers.
Data centers need power 24/7 and cannot be shut off in the way that manufacturing plants or even bitcoin mining can be shut down when there is peak energy demand. Although we need data servers in this cyber age, it is worth mentioning that one significant amount of energy is merely used for pornography. Internet usage accounts for 10 percent of the world’s total energy consumption and is estimated to reach 20 percent in a few years. One study estimated that 35 percent of the Internet bandwidth is pornography.
Data centers already account for about 2.5 percent of US electricity but are expected to use more than 20 percent by the end of this decade. The reason for that is artificial intelligence. A typical web search uses less than one watt of power. An AI-powered search requires 100 watts. Training an AI search uses 1,000 watts.
A decade ago, The Guardian warned that “viral cat videos are warming the planet.” We now know more about what sectors of the Internet use electricity. We also know that we have more electric vehicles on the road than any other time in history.
Before we get to hot summers that demand even more electricity, we need to have a serious conversation about energy use and energy demands.

Kerby Anderson
Jean Twenge begins her essay by suggesting a thought experiment. “Imagine that a company began mass-producing a new toy. This was not a toy for little kids; instead, it appealed most to adolescents. The toy became wildly popular, first with teens and eventually with younger children as well. The toy was so engaging that some teens stayed up until 2 a.m. just to play with it. Before long, teens spent so much time using the toy that they cut back on socializing in person.”
As you can probably guess, she is talking about the smartphone that began to change the lives of teenagers beginning around 2012. She argues that “the growing popularity of smartphones and social media over the past decade and a half has fundamentally changed the lives of teenagers.”
I would encourage parents and grandparents to read her article linked to this commentary. She provides graphs showing in-person socializing decreasing and an increasing number of sleep-deprived teens who are sleeping less than seven hours a night. There are graphs showing a significant increase in major depression and loneliness. Also, she documents teens decrease in adult activities (getting a driver’s license, going on a date).
She also takes the time to eliminate other possible explanations. Could the increase in depression be due to school shootings or the opioid crisis? She reminds us that these (and other) explanations are specific to the US. We see a similar uptick in other countries.
She concludes with specific recommendations that might strike some as radical. But she then explains the cost-benefit analysis for keeping children and young teens off social media. She makes a compelling case.

Kerby Anderson
Most left-leaning economists cannot understand why American consumers are complaining when many economic indicators are positive. One of those individuals is Paul Krugman, a Nobel-prize-winning columnist for the New York Times.
He argued in a previous column that inflation was not a problem and used his recent trip to the grocery store to prove it. “Now, I go grocery shopping myself, and am occasionally startled by the total at the cash register—although that’s usually because I wasn’t factoring in the price of that bottle of scotch I picked up along with the meat and vegetables.” He did admit that he had “no idea” what he paid for the same groceries a few years ago.
Michael Powell, writing in The Atlantic, uses this story to illustrate the growing chasm between liberal economists and American consumers. Economists point to low unemployment and a cooling inflation rate (though the consumer price index was 3.5 percent higher in March than a year ago).
Meanwhile, consumers see higher prices just about everywhere they look. The consumer price index for food rose 25 percent from 2019 to 2023. Gas prices have gone up 50 percent in the past four years. Fuel-oil prices jumped by more than half in the same period. Home prices have gone up nearly 50 percent nationwide since the start of the pandemic.
Paul Krugman has an answer for Americans: “Maybe my message here sounds like Obi-Wan Kenobi in reverse: Look, don’t trust your feelings.” Michael Powell responds that Americans would be “wiser to trust their feelings and checking accounts than to rely on liberal economists riffing as Jedi masters.” That is why there is such a gap between liberal economists and American consumers.

Kerby Anderson
Over the last few months, the word “unsustainable” has been frequently used. The GAO (Government Accountability Office) proclaimed: “The federal government is on an unsustainable long-term fiscal path that poses serious economic, national security, and social challenges if not addressed.”
The Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, said in his 60 Minutes interview: “The U.S. federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal path. And that just means that the debt is growing faster than the economy. So, it is unsustainable.”
The country burdened with more than $34 trillion in national debt should be having a serious conversation about how to turn the economy around. Don’t expect any serious discussion from most candidates this election season.
Fortunately, Scott Powell makes a convincing case for the need for “radical economic change.” The current US debt-to-GDP ratio now exceeds 122 percent. As I have mentioned in previous commentaries, that puts us in the danger zone.
He is realistic enough to show that we need both spending reductions as well as new sources of revenue. Cutting spending is politically difficult but also constitutionally difficult since two-thirds (65%) of the federal budget is mandatory spending. But something must be done to reduce the size of the federal government.
The other way to balance a budget is to get more sources of income. He points to the country’s massive oil and gas reserves. The US is number one among nations in both natural gas and oil reserves. He also argues that another way to pay down the national debt is for the federal government to “sell half of its 640 million acres of public land.”
These ideas might seem radical, but we need to ask candidates running for office this year whether they have a better solution. I doubt they do.

Kerby Anderson
Today is Earth Day. I was a participant in the first Earth Day as a high school student and remember one equation. It was I=PAT. The environmental impact (I) was equal to the population (P) multiplied by affluence (A) multiplied by technology (T). In other words, as a country grew in population and affluence and technology, the worse the pollution and environmental impact. The obvious conclusion was that the best way to protect the planet would be to have fewer people, less wealth, and simpler technology.
It was an interesting equation, but it turned out to be wrong as countries got richer. John Tierney pointed this out in his column in The New York Times. He acknowledges that the “IPAT theory may have made intuitive sense, but it didn’t jibe with the data that has been analyzed since that first Earth Day.” Researchers instead found that the graphs of environmental impact with a simple upward-sloping line were wrong. Instead, it turns out that the line flattens out and then slopes downward. This is called a Kuznets curve.
Here’s the trend: as countries get richer, they have more incentive and more financial means to clean up pollution. Of course, there are exceptions (especially with countries with inept governments and a poor system of property rights). But the general rule is that as incomes go up, people focus on pollution.
Tierney says: “As their wealth grows, people consume more energy, but they move to more efficient and cleaner sources — from wood to coal and oil, and then to natural gas and nuclear power, progressively emitting less carbon per unit of energy.”
I think this suggests a positive environmental future for developing countries. They may be ascending the Kuznets curve right now, but may soon be ready to address environmental concerns.

Penna Dexter
Here’s the story of a young woman who became acutely aware of the relationship between social media and teen mental illness and is doing something important about it.
The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets describe her as a digital-wellness advocate. 
Larissa May, age 29, is Founder and Executive Director of a nonprofit called Half the Story. The organization’s founding concept is: “Social media is only half the story. We only share one part of ourselves on the internet.” This can be destabilizing, and worse.
Social scientist Jonathan Haidt has the data to prove the connection between social media and the rise in teen anxiety and depression.
In his new book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing An Epidemic of Mental Illness,” he highlights the teen mental health epidemic’s sudden onset. It occurred in 2012, the year Facebook bought Instagram. Instagram was founded in 2010, the same year Apple released the I-phone 4, the first smartphone with a front-facing camera.
Teens worldwide were drawn in, with girls spending hours “trying to perfect their Instagram profiles while scrolling through even-more-perfect profiles of other teens.”
Larissa says, “When I was a sophomore in college, I hit the darkest period of my life.” She says she was spending 10-12 hours per day on social media, ”which is not as uncommon as you might think.” She became depressed, anxious, and even considered suicide. Instead, in her senior year, as a class project, she started Half the Story.
She now educates middle through high schoolers “about the emotional skills that you need to thrive in the digital media.” She tells them, “If you aren’t in touch with your emotions, you’re not going to be able to control your digital habits.”
Larissa has developed a curriculum for educators called Social Media U plus an 8-week course for students. She also advocates for policy changes to limit online dangers.
She’s not waiting for tech companies but is actively shaping the future of the internet.

Kerby Anderson
A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal began with these sentences. “Memo to companies: Go ahead and cancel your DEI programs. That’s more or less the message of a recent report commissioned by the UK government finding that diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” The report found little evidence that DEI had any positive effect on corporate culture.
In fact, it is difficult to say what DEI means. The terms are, according to the report, “ambiguous, rapidly evolving, and often conflated.” Although the current fad is to focus on diversity among racial, social, or other lines, “a visibly diverse organization is not necessarily meaningfully heterogenous.” The Wall Street Journal editors concluded that “viewpoint diversity may be more important for a thriving company.”
As I have mentioned in previous commentaries, cancelling DEI programs, and closing DEI departments can save money. US companies spend $8 billion a year on DEI training. The other savings is in the legal area. Even in the UK, there have been lawsuits against companies because their DEI policies have “violated British protections on freedom of belief by punishing employees who dissented from the DEI orthodoxy on race or transgenderism.”
Last month I talked about the fact that the University of Florida announced it was ending its experiment with DEI. The college closed the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer and eliminated DEI positions, thereby saving more than $5 million each year on the controversial program. The Florida legislature passed a law prohibiting state funding of DEI programs and University of Florida President Ben Sasse implemented it.
I suggest other companies and universities follow their example.

Kerby Anderson
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban TikTok in this country unless the company was sold to Americans. Chinese national security laws require Chinese-owned companies to assist the government in intelligence-gathering.
But Lathan Watts reminds us that our own government has also been engaging in censorship and surveillance of US citizens. That is why he wonders if putting TikTok under American ownership would merely be an example of “jumping out of the wok and into the fire.”
He cites two recent Supreme Court cases that illustrate his concerns. The first is Murthy v. Missouri. The Biden administration is accused of a coordinated campaign to force social media companies to censor what the government deemed as “misinformation.” During the oral arguments, one Supreme Court justice announced to the attorneys that her biggest concern “is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government.” But isn’t that why the First Amendment was written in the first place?
The other case is NRA v. Vullo that involved the state of New York using its power to force banks and insurance companies to deny services to the National Rifle Association. Perhaps you don’t have any problem with that action. Would you feel differently if another state encouraged financial institutions to deny services to the ACLU or Greenpeace?
One week prior to the Supreme Court hearings, a US House subcommittee documented how the Treasury Department colluded with America’s largest banks to monitor customer financial transactions. The suggested criteria include transactions with stores like Cabela’s and the purchase of “religious texts.”
All of this illustrates the authoritarian impulses we see today in America. That is why Lathan and I wonder if transferring TikTok ownership to Americans would merely be jumping from the wok into the fire.

Kerby Anderson
Perhaps you have noticed that many young Christians are being convinced to deconstruct their faith. Occasionally we read about a prominent Christian author or musician who announces they are leaving the Christian faith.
The irony of this is the fact that there is an increasing amount of evidence for the Bible and Christian faith. We seem to be living in “the golden age of apologetics.” But it isn’t the evidence that causes these people to leave the faith but usually it’s their concern over social issues like abortion or transgenderism.
Fortunately, there are some excellent books that address this trend of deconstruction. Sean McDowell and John Marriott have written, Set Adrift: Deconstructing What You Believe Without Sinking Your Faith. They establish the biblical foundation for our faith and then provide practical advice on how to rethink and reassemble what is truly Christian and culturally relevant. They also utilize creeds as boundary markers for what is essential.
Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett have written, The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It’s Destructive, and How to Respond. They argue that “deconstruction is a death of sorts.” It is not only a death of beliefs but a death of their community and relationships. That last point is significant since deconstruction not only affects the person going through it but also has an impact on friends, family, and the church.
People throughout the centuries have been questioning their faith and having doubt about biblical truth. But this current phenomenon of deconstruction comes from secular leaders and even progressive Christians promoting “inclusivity” and “tolerance.” It is therefore important to understand how our culture is promoting deconstruction and to know how to provide encouragement to people experiencing doubt.

Kerby Anderson
J.K. Rowling is best known as the Harry Potter author, but she is also beginning to be known as a political activist. She lives in Scotland and has been leading the charge against Scotland’s Hate Crime and Public Order Act.
The bill criminalizes “stirring up hatred” in such a way that “a reasonable person would consider to be threatening, abusive, or insulting.” There need not be any specific victim of the crime.
In order to draw attention to this authoritarian bill, she posted this statement. “I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.”
She won’t be arrested, but it is likely that someone will be arrested sometime in the future for this abusive hate crime law. It is also ironic that when the law was first introduced, it was put forward as an attempt to amend an 1837 blasphemy law. Some critics have suggested that it merely swaps out one blasphemy law about religion for another blasphemy law about political correctness.
Most of the hate crime laws in this country or in other countries were drafted to address the problem of racism. This law clearly wants to expand the focus from racism to transgenderism. When J.K. Rowling heard she would not be arrested, she responded: “I hope every woman in Scotland who wishes to speak up for the reality and importance of biological sex will be reassured by this announcement, and I trust that all women — irrespective of profile or financial means — will be treated equally under the law.”
Hate crime laws have always been a bad idea, but this is even worse. It criminalizes the commonsense observation about the difference between women and trans women.

Kerby Anderson
Today is Tax Day. Perhaps you are like many other Americans and wonder if your tax forms will be audited. It turns out that the IRS has been audited. The editors of the Wall Street Journal noticed two irregularities.
The editors quote from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The editors conclude that the Biden administration’s goal of wanting “to audit more ultrawealthy and fewer middle-class filers is not going so well.”
The original plan was to disproportionately target individuals making at least $400,000. But the IRS “did not include specifics on how the IRS was going to ensure it met this commitment.” No wonder. The most recent data shows that the IRS is still focused on the middle class. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of the new audits targeted taxpayers with income less than $200,000.
To be fair, the IRS never claimed it would decrease middle-class audits. All it claimed is that it would increase audits on more wealthy Americans. The billions of dollars Congress allocated to the IRS was supposed to fund that increase. But the IRS hasn’t been able to hire all those new IRS agents.
A little over a year ago, we were told after passing the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, that the IRS would be focusing their audits on the very rich. Instead, they are still focusing on the middle class. Why?
First, the IRS has been going after the middle class for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks. Because that’s where the money is. Second, Americans in the middle class are more likely to settle with the IRS rather than endure costly expenses of appeal and litigation even if they have a good case.
Nearly two years later, we were promised that the IRS would target the wealthy. Instead, the middle class has been the target of so many of their audits.

Penna Dexter
Back in 2017, Ed Stetzer, then a professor, dean and executive director of Wheaton College’s Billy Graham Center, published an essay on the website, In All Things, titled “How Can the Christian Church Thrive In a Non-Christian World?” He wrote, “Our society no longer assumes the gospel, which means the Church often stands at odds with the rest of society.”
Seven years later, a U.S president proclaimed that Transgender Day of Visibility will be recognized on March 31, Easter Sunday. Was the president trying to spite Christians? Though Trans Day of Visibility has been around for 10 years, the president’s words in affirmation of “transgender Americans” stand in direct opposition to Christianity. He stated that transgenders “deserve, and are entitled to, the same rights and freedoms as every other American, including the most fundamental freedom to be their true selves.” He then blasted Americans working to protect society and its children from the fruits of the transgender movement: pornography in schools, mutilating surgeries, violations of basic female privacy, and fairness in athletics.
If this is not hostility to Christianity, it is blindness. Cultural commentator Rod Dreher writes, “The more troubling thing is that Biden’s kind of Christian sees no contradiction between linking Easter with Trans Day.”
He wrote, “In the 1970’s, the gay rights movement adopted the Greek letter lambda as its symbol. This is why the premiere gay rights advocacy organization is called Lambda Legal. What we are living through now is a cosmological struggle within our culture, a fight to the death between the Lamb and the Lambda. The ruling Class — our political leaders, but not only them — is on the side of the Lambda.”
Dr. Stetzer wrote, “the gospel is always clearer in an age when it is not culturally assumed.” We can proclaim a “radically distinct” gospel message. But Rod Dreher wonders: “Can Christian faith be sustained for long without the support of a nurturing Christian culture?”
Lord help us.

Kerby Anderson
A few months ago, I talked about the future decline in home ownership. For example, the number of first-time homebuyers declined to just 26 percent in 2022. This was the lowest level since the National Association of Realtors began tracking data.
The latest research from Zillow explains this significant decrease. The report estimates that you would need to make more than $106,000 annually to comfortably afford a home. Put another way, that suggests that more than half of American households can’t afford homeownership.
Let’s compare home prices and annual income in 2020 to this year. Back then, an annual income of $59,000 could pay a mortgage without spending more than 30 percent of the income (assuming a 10 percent down payment). That year the US median income was about $66,000. More than half of American households could afford homeownership.
Today the median income is around $81,000, which is far short of the $106,000 need to comfortably maintain payments. The monthly payment on a typical US home has nearly doubled since 2020.
Of course, these are averages. Here is a short list of cities that need a much lower household income to afford a home: Pittsburgh, Memphis, or Cleveland. Compare that to cities that require the highest family income: San Jose and Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
The cost of housing has skyrocketed, and interest rates have also increased. First-time home buyers are the families most affected by these increases. That makes it hard not only to find a home but to find one you can afford.
Owning a home used to be the American dream. For an increasing number of Americans, that dream seems out of reach.

Kerby Anderson
Veronique de Rugy begins her column with positive economic indicators (unemployment is low, wages are up, inflation is down), but then acknowledges that “the American people are grumpy about the state of the economy.”
I love it when this brilliant woman with a prestigious doctorate in economics refers to Americans as grumpy. She points to a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research that concludes the government underestimates the true level of inflation.
One of the authors is Larry Summers, who served as Treasury Secretary under President Clinton. He notes in a recent tweet on X that before 1983, mortgage costs were used in calculating the Consumer Price Index. Car payments were used until 1998. Now the index does not include borrowing costs. When interest payments jumped significantly last year, the index did not capture the effects.
Here’s the shocker. Larry Summers goes on to argue that if we measured inflation the way we did in the 1970s, the inflation rate that started in 2021 would have peaked at 18 percent. That is double the official reported peak of 9 percent. Put another way, we have been living through an inflation rate higher than anything Americans experienced in the 1970s and 1980s.
No wonder Americans are grumpy about the economy. The government statistics are telling them one thing, but their personal experience is telling them something very different. A recent Gallup poll found that two-thirds (63%) said the economy is getting worse. Nearly half (45%) think the economy is already poor.
Government officials and the compliant media can cite all the economic figures they want, but it appears they have underestimated the impact of inflation on the American consumer.

Kerby Anderson
Is there a leftist bias in artificial intelligence? A Washington Post tech writer has written about various research papers about the liberal bias within Open AI’s ChatGPT. Although the AI program tells users that it doesn’t have any political opinions or beliefs, it shows certain biases.
A study by the Springer Journal of Public Choice also found that ChatGPT produced responses that were in line with leftist thought. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that OpenAU’s models typically produce left-leaning responses.
One extensive study came from John Lott, who has been on my radio program many times in the past. His Crime Prevention Research Center asked questions of twenty AI chatbots on topics related to crime and gun control. He then ranked the answers on how liberal or conservative their responses were.
Only Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbots gave conservative answers on crime. But even these programs gave consistently liberal answers on gun control. Bing was the least liberal chatbot on gun control. The French AI chatbot Mistral in the only one that on average was neutral in its answers.
John Lott concludes that these AI programs are very liberal in their answers on crime and gun control. But they also provide liberal answers on economic and social issues, with Google’s Gemini being the most extreme. He also notes that Musk’s Grok has moved more toward the political center, but much more needs to be done.
As I document in my recent booklet on A Biblical View on Artificial Intelligence, there are many concerns that researchers have about AI, but one that certainly needs to be addressed soon in the obvious leftwing bias in these programs.