Show Notes
Ronald Reagan. Champion of neoliberalism. To some, the man who lifted the spirits of a nation and restored a sense of pride and optimism after a period of despair. To others, the Reagan years marked the death of liberalism. A dark turn toward unfettered capitalist exploitation and the decapitation of working class movements and civil rights. So, which is it? Was Ronald Reagan responsible for ushering in an era of prosperity and restoring national pride as his boosters maintain? Or was he indeed the harbinger of doom and the reason we have Donald Trump today? Like most things, it’s complicated. But there are three ways in which Reagan fundamentally altered the trajectory of the United States to the detriment of most American families. Max walks through each of them before offering a bit of context for the era and ends with an example of a modern political figure that borrows from Reagan’s political playbook but with a twist: this time it’s to do good in the world. Resources Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute: Americans Still Believe in Strong U.S. Global Leadership and Engagement, Including Young MAGA Republicans The New York Times: Javits Sees G.O.P. Hurt By Reagan NPR: 1976: The Last Time Republicans Duked It Out To The Last, Heated Minute : NPR 270ToWin: 1980 Presidential Election Interactive Map Center for Public Integrity: How four decades of tax cuts fueled inequality Roosevelt Institute: To Put Trickle-down Economics to Rest, We Need a New Tax Code Wikipedia: Americans for Tax Reform Brennan Center for Justice: Citizens United, Explained Heritage Foundation: Reagan And Heritage: A Unique Partnership The Nation: The Mandate for Leadership, Then and Now The New York Times: The Strike That Busted Unions Jacobin: The Legacy of the Crushed 1981 PATCO Strike NPR + Code Switch: The Truth Behind The Lies Of The Original ‘Welfare Queen’ History: Just Say No History of Cannabis Project: Reagan Drug Policy — Just Say No & the 1986 Act Wikipedia: Dark Alliance U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General: CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy PBS: The Iran-Contra Affair National Archives: President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1961) Peter G. Peterson Foundation: The United States Spends More on Defense than the Next 6 Countries Combined Frederic Lemieux: Militarization of Law Enforcement in America ProPublica: The Best Reporting on Federal Push to Militarize Local Police CounterPunch: The Hidden Cost of the U.S. Military: The Real Budget is Far Larger Than Reported UNFTR Resources Video: Did Reagan Destroy the American Dream? Essay: Did Ronald Reagan Destroy the American Dream? The Carter Series. -- If you like #UNFTR, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify: unftr.com/rate and follow us on Facebook, Bluesky, and Instagram at @UNFTRpod. Visit us online at unftr.com. Become a member at unftr.com/memberships. Buy yourself some Unf*cking Coffee at shop.unftr.com. Visit our bookshop.org page at bookshop.org/shop/UNFTRpod to find the full UNFTR book list, and find book recommendations from our Unf*ckers at bookshop.org/lists/unf-cker-book-recommendations. Access the UNFTR Musicless feed by following the instructions at unftr.com/accessibility Support the show: https://www.unftr.com/memberships See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Reuters “leaked” information from the forthcoming Anthropic prospectus and the numbers were pretty brutal. But that isn’t stopping all of Wall Street from lining up to invest in yet another AI company (SpaceX) with no discernible path to profitability. In this episode, Max digs through what we learned from the Reuters release and pairs it with other publicly available information on Anthropic to paint a bleak picture of a five-year old company that loses a ton of money but is somehow asking to be valued at around $2 trillion. Max then leads a philosophical discussion about the future of AI and punching babies. (That last part will make more sense in context.) Resources Reuters: Anthropic’s IPO prospectus shows sweeping AI vision, surging costs Perplexity Finance: AMZN Perplexity Finance: XOM Perplexity Finance: C Reuters: Anthropic IPO valuation hinges on $190-200 billion 2028 revenue forecast, sources say Yahoo! Finance: Anthropic IPO Filing Reveals a Major Vulnerability: Nearly 50% of Sales Flow Through Amazon and Google as Revenue Concentration Raises Risks: Report AI: Reset to Zero: Anthropic Paces the Frontier, and Floors the IPO Financial Times: Anthropic tells investors it will be profitable for second straight quarter The New York Times: The Fallout From OpenAI’s Revenue Surprise Bloomberg: Anthropic’s Annualized Revenue to Top $100 Billion in 2026, NYT Says TechTarget: Report: Anthropic locks in $518B AI infrastructure commitments Measured AI: Anthropic’s 15+ GW Data Center Build: Claude’s Compute, Campuses, and Chips Fortune: The hidden menace behind Big Tech’s AI arms race: Meta, Amazon, and others are spending billions on hardware that’s worthless in as little as 3 years, says Research Affiliates partner Investing.com: Earnings call transcript: Alphabet beats Q2 2026 estimates, shares fall on capex surge Flowtivity: US vs China AI Models Compared: GPT-6 Astra, Fable 5.1, GLM 5.3, Kimi K3, DeepSeek V4, Qwen 3.8 BBC News: Amazon finally flows into profit AEI: Who Should Antitrust Protect? The Case of Diapers.com CNBC: SpaceX raises $25 billion in debt sale less than two weeks after IPO Tech Times: Anthropic $15B Credit Line: Banks Commit $1B-Plus Each to Lock In IPO Roles Yahoo! Finance: Wall Street tests lender appetite with $60 billion Broadcom-Anthropic deal Dario Amodei: We Must Pace the Frontier CSI Magazine: FCC says broadband competition is driving faster speeds and wider coverage UNFTR Resources Video: Anthropic, AI, and Why We Need to Talk About Punching Babies. Essay: Mis(Anthropic). Episode: The SpaceX IPO Fraud. -- If you like #UNFTR, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify: unftr.com/rate and follow us on Facebook, Bluesky, and Instagram at @UNFTRpod. Visit us online at unftr.com. Become a member at unftr.com/memberships. Buy yourself some Unf*cking Coffee at shop.unftr.com. Visit our bookshop.org page at bookshop.org/shop/UNFTRpod to find the full UNFTR book list, and find book recommendations from our Unf*ckers at bookshop.org/lists/unf-cker-book-recommendations. Access the UNFTR Musicless feed by following the instructions at unftr.com/accessibility Support the show: https://www.unftr.com/memberships See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week we went deep on the structural argument that should underpin everything else—disaster privilege, capitalism as the constant, and why the real battle isn’t between the two parties but between the status quo and something that hasn’t been named loudly enough yet. DSA isn’t the radical fringe; it’s the only thing moving the conversation in the right direction, and the in-between days matter as much as Election Day. Chapters Intro: 00:00:45 Housekeeping: 00:01:00 Max Notes: 00:03:13 Resources F.D Signifier: Fallen Idols: How Black Leaders Fail Us Cato Unbound: The Education of a Libertarian Prison Policy Initiative: United States profile Airmail: The View from Here Al Jazeera English: Progressives, AIPAC & the future of the Democratic Party: Neera Tanden & Mehdi Hasan The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder: James Carville Prays Dems Lose Midterms To GOP Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: Share of Net Worth Held by the Bottom 50% (1st to 50th Wealth Percentiles) Brad Onishi: American Caesar: How Theocrats and Tech Lords Are Turning America into a Monarchy UNFTR Resources Video: On The Record 10/20/26 (Stupid Democrats, Evil Republicans and the Future King of America.) Video: Phone A Friend: Jared Yates Sexton: Left Activism in the Age of Trump. Episode: Russell Vought’s 7 Point Plan To Steal the Election. Episode: The Economics of Racism. Episode: Don’t Stop Agitating: A Treatise on Leftism. -- If you like #UNFTR, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify: unftr.com/rate and follow us on Facebook, Bluesky, and Instagram at @UNFTRpod. Visit us online at unftr.com. Become a member at unftr.com/memberships. Buy yourself some Unf*cking Coffee at shop.unftr.com. Visit our bookshop.org page at bookshop.org/shop/UNFTRpod to find the full UNFTR book list, and find book recommendations from our Unf*ckers at bookshop.org/lists/unf-cker-book-recommendations. Access the UNFTR Musicless feed by following the instructions at unftr.com/accessibility Intro music by Hold Fast. Support the show: https://www.unftr.com/memberships See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Max and 99 are back for another round of Omnibus. They cover headlines on the SSI asset trap keeping 7.5 million Americans in poverty and the 2028 Democratic slate. Then they tackle listener emails on what AI utopia actually looks like for the rest of us, using credit rating agencies to stop data center buildouts, and Russ Vought’s post-midterm constitutional endgame. Enjoy! Chapters Intro: 00:00:32 Headlines: 00:12:49 Emails: 00:25:20 Memberships: 00:59:09 Outro: 01:00:28 Resources Ken Klippenstein: Exclusive: How the Military Will Hack the Election New Republic: This Is the U.S. Government’s Most Maddening Poverty Trap Newsweek: Kamala Harris Leads Newsom in 2028 Democrat Front-Runners Poll UNFTR Resources Video: Francesca Fiorentini: Dems vs The Future -- If you like #UNFTR, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify: unftr.com/rate and follow us on Facebook, Bluesky, and Instagram at @UNFTRpod. Visit us online at unftr.com. Become a member at unftr.com/memberships. Buy yourself some Unf*cking Coffee at shop.unftr.com. Visit our bookshop.org page at bookshop.org/shop/UNFTRpod to find the full UNFTR book list, and find book recommendations from our Unf*ckers at bookshop.org/lists/unf-cker-book-recommendations. Access the UNFTR Musicless feed by following the instructions at unftr.com/accessibility Intro music by Hold Fast. Support the show: https://www.unftr.com/memberships See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
More than 20 years after his death, we’re still living in the neoliberal world Milton Friedman made. The arc of neoliberalism begins in 1947, gathers steam in the 1970s, and reaches its zenith in the 1990s before breaking into a million pieces and forever out of the control of its progenitors. The story of Milton Friedman rises and falls along with it, and it’s a complicated one of ego, ambition and academic notoriety; a confluence of factors and foibles that came to define the modern economic age. This is the story of Milton Friedman, one of the principal architects of the modern world. Resources Subscribe to Current Affairs Magazine Current Affairs: We’re Living In the World That Milton Friedman Made Mises Institute: Friedrich A. Hayek The New York Times: The Great Liberator Ancestry: Jeno Saul Friedman Johan Van Overtveldt: The Chicago School: How the University of Chicago Assembled the Thinkers Who Revolutionized Economics and Business Britannica Money: Classical Economics International Adam Smith Society: About Adam Smith Britannica Money: David Ricardo Wikipedia: Jeremy Bentham Wikipedia: Cesare Beccaria Wikipedia: Laissez-faire Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Karl Marx Competition and Appropriation: Retrospectives: The Origins of Neoclassical Microeconomics Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: William Stanley Jevons Econlib: Leon Walras Econlib: Alfred Marshall Harvard University: Raising Keynes: A Twenty-First-Century General Theory Jacobin: Right-Wing Populism Did Not Kill Neoliberalism C.J. Polychroniou: Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists Quinn Slobodian: Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, Iq, and the Capitalism of the Far Right The Mont Pelerin Society: About The Atlantic: The Heritage Foundation Current Affairs: Why Libertarians Oppose Civil Rights ProMarket: Aaron Director’s Legacy: The Beginning of Doubt is the Beginning of Wisdom Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Karl Popper Econlib: Ludwig von Mises Chicago Booth: George J. Stigler Free to Choose Network: The Power of Choice - Mont Pelerin Society Investopedia: Permanent Income Hypothesis: Definition, Function, and Effects Wikipedia: Natural rate of unemployment Investopedia: Monetarism Explained: Theory, Formula, and Keynesian Comparison Harris School of Public Policy: Permanent Income Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: The Fed and the Dual Mandate Bureau of Labor Statistics: The Employment Situation – September 2026 Milton Friedman, Anna Jacobson Schwartz: A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 Binyamin Appelbaum: The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society Freien Universität Berlin: The Methodology of Positive Economics Social Science Encyclopedia: Milton Friedman On Economic Methodology Economic Reform Australia: The F-twist – realism, economic policy analysis and climate change CATO Institute: Who Said TANSTAAFL First? Milton Friedman: The Free Lunch Myth Milton Friedman: Taxation, Inflation, and the Role of Government Investopedia: Market Definition: Economics, Types, and Key Features Bernard Harcourt: The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order Current Affairs: Ralph Nader History: Auto safety crusader Ralph Nader testifies before Congress The New York Times: A Friedman doctrine‐- The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits Scholarly Commons: Powell Memorandum: Attack On American Free Enterprise System The Heritage Foundation The Cato Institute The Manhattan Institute The American Legislative Exchange Council Brookings: What we learned from Reagan’s tax cuts PBS News: Column: How Reaganomics, deregulation and bailouts led to the rise of Trump Wikipedia: Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 Free To Choose: The Original 1980 TV Series EdChoice: Milton Friedman on the Phil Donahue Show in 1979 Investopedia: Stagflation Explained: What We
The Bitchuation Room’s Francesca Fiorentini returns to UNFTR’s Phone A Friend to break down the midterms, what Democrats need to be focusing on next and how the current leadership isn’t up to the challenges ahead. Progressive politics often finds itself at a crossroads during election cycles. In this conversation, we look at how the establishment handles internal pressure and why the narrative surrounding the midterms remains so contentious. Francesca offers her perspective on the shifting dynamics of the left and what it means for the party base moving forward. Resources The Bitchuation Room (with Francesca Fiorentini) UNFTR Resources Video: Francesca Fiorentini: Dems vs The Future. Transcript: Phone A Friend: Francesca Fiorentini. -- If you like #UNFTR, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify: unftr.com/rate and follow us on Facebook, Bluesky, and Instagram at @UNFTRpod. Visit us online at unftr.com. Become a member at unftr.com/memberships. Buy yourself some Unf*cking Coffee at shop.unftr.com. Visit our bookshop.org page at bookshop.org/shop/UNFTRpod to find the full UNFTR book list, and find book recommendations from our Unf*ckers at bookshop.org/lists/unf-cker-book-recommendations. Access the UNFTR Musicless feed by following the instructions at unftr.com/accessibility Support the show: https://www.unftr.com/memberships See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.