Defended Forgotten America, Tower Strategy, and CGCN. We also want to thank our presenting partner CGCN and Alpha Institute.
So before our first conversation, we'd like to bring to the stage Scott Simpson, president and CEO of America's Credit Unions, and Breitbart finance and economics editor John Carney. Coming up, guys.
I'm American made. I got American parts. I got American F.
I guess I wanted to start out just to make sure everybody understands what we were going to talk about today. If you could talk about what the Credit Card Competition Act, sometimes known as kind of Durban-Marshall, what is that and what is it trying to do, and then we'll get into why, what the criticisms of it are.
Well, the attempt is to try to move around the payment system and use the government to induce the retailers, large retailers, to create a system that sits alongside the existing payment system. And it is fundamentally, and obviously this is our perspective, but it's a transfer of wealth to the retail oligarchs in this country. And that is the biggest concern that we have. And ultimately, there's going to be 146 million credit union members that will be harmed by that.
Yeah, that's actually very interesting. A lot of people don't really understand why credit unions in particular will be affected by this. People are very attached to their credit unions, and so if you could talk about sort of how credit union capitalization works and why this would particularly hit credit unions.
Thank you, John. If I could just sort of set the scale, we credit unions combined are the third largest issuer of credit and debit cards in the country, and 100, like I said, mentioned 146 million credit union members and about just nearly 100 million cards issued by credit unions in the country. The reason it's different for us and the reason we're opposed to this legislation is that the effect on small issuers is bad, and it's especially bad for credit unions. Credit unions are member-owned cooperatives.
Which means they're the only capital formation method that they have is retained earnings. And so the fact that you're displacing or forcing this revenue to move onto the balance sheets of big box retailers, you not only harm the system, which applies to every issuer, you disproportionately harm the ability of credit unions to earn capital, which for every dollar they lose in revenue from the interchange system, not only does it damage the system, it reduces our capacity to take in loans by a factor of nearly 10, or to take in deposits or make loans by, you know, that leverage ratio of about $10 to everyone.
Right. Credit unions can't go out and sell shares to raise capital. You can only do it from your revenue stream, retaining the earnings.
Yeah. And you think about that from sort of middle America perspective. Credit unions represent soldiers, sailors, teachers, first responders. That's who's going to be harmed. We are going to be left with no other choice than to retreat, pull product away from the kitchen tables of this country to continue to support big box retailers.
Yeah. Well, you alluded to this. This is framed as something that would help consumers' affordability, but you're saying that it's who are the real beneficiaries if the act were passed.
Well, John, fortunately we can use history to predict the future here. Just go back to the debit interchange rules that came out of Dodd-Frank, and we've seen it. In spite of the fact that they professed to have carveouts for small issuers, the reality is over the arc of that history since then, we've seen the entire system have massive decrease in revenue. And again, for us, that just means retreat from being able to serve the people that they claim in this legislation they're trying to protect.
And it doesn't, you were saying that the beneficiaries tend to be the big box retailers rather than the consumers.
Yeah. I don't want to be super specific, but you know, if you look at the wealthiest people on earth and draw the lines back to who we're talking about, that is the shift in wealth from the confidence and security of this payment system to the retail oligarchs.
So instead of, you know, a lot of people say, well, wouldn't this save me money if they, you know, we redirected the payments to the cheapest provider? You're saying no, that'll actually be absorbed by the consumers won't actually benefit.
The Durban amendment to Dodd-Frank, right, back during the global financial crisis, you know, they took advantage of an 11th hour legislative stunt to pass this unbelievably transformative bill. There is no evidence that any of that savings has pushed to the consumers.
Right. We don't even have to speculate about what is going to happen because we saw another version of this back in 2010. Plenty of reports, plenty of evidence that justifies that they are selling a bill of goods with the Credit Card Competition Act. Another issue that I think a lot of people care about, and we spoke before this and you brought it up to me, is that this could impact, a lot of people are worried about fraud and cybersecurity, and this could impact the ability of issuers to be able to, especially I think credit unions but all issuers, to be able to deal with fraud and cybersecurity issues.
Yeah. I mean, that's what the interchange system was built for, was to establish confidence that the American consumer could rely on this for protection. Well, that protection comes at the expense of the issuer. And again, using history to predict the future, if you look at the biggest data breaches in the history of our country, they tend to come from retailers because they don't have an incentive. They're not incentivized by this system to protect that data. And so it gives us zero confidence as issuers, as the organizations that are ultimately responsible for making the American consumer whole if they're abused by, you know, fraud. Zero confidence that the retailer space has the willingness, the capacity, or the experience to protect this system. I also would think that anything that's going to diminish the revenue that you're able to derive from the cards is then going to impact the ability to spend on security.
Absolutely. And that's only part of the equation. Of course, you know, we care about security, and so I think that in spite of the fact that we may have the reduced capacity to deploy resources there, but ultimately what that means is we have to retreat from consumers offering these credit products. And when we do that, like I mentioned before, we end up harming the very people they claim to want to protect in this.
Some people have said it would also have a pretty negative impact on small businesses through their, because a lot of them use things like points that they earn on credit cards to help, you know, generate revenue that they can then spend on their small businesses. I was hoping you could.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of value that comes alongside this payment system. It's been generated over its history, and all of that, there's the jeopardy. It has the potential of evaporating.
What, you know, there's definitely a populist appeal. People say like, all right, you know, we're going to take on the big credit card companies. But ultimately, if this falls on the consumer, I think actually people will still blame the credit card companies. They'll say, wait, now they're pulling back. Now they are, you know, they're not, I can't get the card I used to, or my points are going away. But that is something that this legislation will almost certainly produce.
Yeah. And I think what I would like to convey to anybody who will listen is that this affects the smallest of issuers. We have 4,200 credit unions in America. All of us put together are smaller than the largest banks in this country. And we are horrified by the reality of this legislation. It has a more significant impact on our capacity to safely and soundly extend credit to our membership than any other policy issue we contend with.
So just to like get a little bit concrete, are we talking about like people not being able to get cards, people, you know, like not being able to earn points? What are the impacts?
It's all of that. Yes, we have, if you don't have the capacity to earn for a credit union, we lose the capacity to lend. And when you lose the capacity to lend, you're pulling back from consumers, which means you can't lend deeper into credit risk profiles. And regular folks are going to be left to the wolves there. You know, you think about the lending alternatives that are out there in the marketplace. If they lose the access to their credit card, it's terrible. That's the net effect of this legislation.
So, is there anything that you think Congress should be considering instead of what they're doing now? And do you think part of this might be driven by people's, people are very upset at inflation? We went through some of the worst inflation in 40 years. That's come down a lot. Do you think maybe as inflation continues to come down, some of the pressure to pass something like this may, you know, fade away?
Yeah, my guess is you're going to hear from the secretary today an intense focus on affordability and the vitality of this economy. And that's what I think the Congress needs to be focused on. They need to have the discipline to, we hope they have the discipline to continue this deregulatory effort that allows for the free flow of risk and reward for credit to be able to lend deeper into the market to people who ordinarily would not have access to this opportunity, to this capital. You know, if you live where we live and if you engage America where credit unions engage America, these things that they carry in their wallet are transformational. It is the difference between groceries on the table, between putting gas in the car, putting shoes on their kids' feet before they send them off to school. It's transformational. And so I think if we can, that's the sort of focus that we hope to see. And we're grateful that we've seen that from the administration, we've seen it from Congress, this reflexive focus on reducing the regulatory pressure. Because again, just like for every dollar that we can't make in revenue from a credit card program harming the American consumer, for every dollar we have to spend complying with onerous regulation, duplicative regulation has the same net effect.
Right. If we're having affordability problems, making access to credit less available to people will only make that worse.
That is it. You've hit it spot on.
All right. Well, that's all we have time for, but I really found this educational. Thanks for doing this.
Thank you, John, for the opportunity.
All right, thank you guys. I want to bring up the CEO of the Alliance for a Better Future, my new friend Janet Kelly, and Breitbart's Washington Bureau Chief Matt Boyle.
Go get him.
That was very kind. That was very kind. All right. Well, we got a huge crowd here today, which is awesome. So every seat is full, which is amazing. So we're very excited about that. We literally had to cut off the RSVP list because people were so into this event. So, Janet, a few big things. First and foremost, you lead Alliance for a Better Future. Can you tell us what Alliance for a Better Future is? Why does it exist? What do you guys do?
Sure. Well, you all are here to see Matt, right? That's why you came this morning. So thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. The Alliance for a Better Future is a new conservative AI policy organization, and we believe that AI has the potential to be the most powerful technology in the world, and we exist to make sure that it's channeled in the right direction, and that it is built with American values and protecting kids, our economy, our country. I believe that AI has the potential to be the most life-changing, life-giving, life-saving tech in the whole world if it is channeled in the right direction. And America is part of the fabric of our country is a spirit of innovation, right? I want to think about a world where air conditioning doesn't exist or a handheld vacuum cleaner, household vacuum cleaner. Let's see what else. Anesthesia. I think the ladies especially would like that one. Personal computer, smartphones. We may want to give that one back. But I grew up in North Carolina, and the Wright brothers took off flight, you know, at the Outer Banks. And so, not to mention all the entrepreneurial spirit that it took to start this country to begin with, right? And so we have to get this right, though, because right now only 25% of Americans trust AI. And the way that we win the war on AI is to build AI that is trustworthy, that Americans will use, that they believe benefits them. And that's why we exist, to promote policies that do that.
So before you founded the Alliance for a Better Future, you were the Secretary of Health and Human Resources in Virginia, for people who are unfamiliar with your background. So you were talking there about the, you know, the potentially life-saving impacts of AI. We're already seeing it, you know, have major effects on possibly curing diseases or coming up with better treatment plans for people. I'll tell you, I know people who work in the healthcare industry, and they're regularly deploying AI to make things more efficient, particularly like in nursing homes and hospitals and whatnot. Can you talk to us a little bit about, you know, some of the major things that we could see AI do in that respect? Because again, I agree with you that we have to do a better job communicating this, and the AI world has to win people over. But I think the way you do it is you show people just what it can do, right? Like, so talk to us about what AI can do.
Yeah, absolutely. And in the medical field particularly, AI is just crushing it. I think in a few short years, and maybe even a few short months, we are going to see things that really get us excited and build that trust for American AI. Right now, when it comes to breast cancer radiology, the AI diagnostics are better than humans already by about 12%. We've got people with ALS finding their voice, literally finding their voice on a just soul-crushing and body-crushing disease. We're going to have new discoveries coming out, I believe, starting every single month. Diabetes management, there's a really cool, a bunch of people in my family have diabetes, and it helps people with diabetes regain their eyesight. And so I think that we're just going to see more of that. But at the core, and sort of the tie between being secretary of health and running an AI policy org, is this idea of human dignity. And I believe that every single human is made with inherent value and worth. And if that can be our focus, that's something that can help us build trust.
Yeah. No. So one of the big things that we see, everybody talks about, is this AI arms race between the US and China. Which side is going to win this thing? And whichever side wins is really going to determine the future of the 21st century here and beyond, right? So can you talk to us about that arms race and why it's important that America wins that arms race?
Sure. This is a very important question, and it's not the only reason that our org exists, but it's one of the ones, and it's a big reason as to why we have the sense of urgency that we have. Because if we hesitate, we're going to hand the most powerful technology in the world to one of our foreign adversaries. And think about the implications of that. Our very American way of life, the American dream, everything that we hold dear, whether our kids grow up the way we grew up or better, or whether they don't. And I know none of us want a world where someone's writing the rise and fall of the American empire. We will not let that happen. But if we hesitate, China will win, and it will have devastating effects. They have already proven that they will cheat and steal and lie in order to beat us, backed by their government. They're not playing fair. And the only way, again, that we can win, we are the only country in the world who can build AI that the world trusts, not just that Americans trust, but that the world trusts. And if we can do that, then we win. And again, I will just say that the window for this is closing for a lot of different reasons. It's open now, but it's closing. And so that's why we have the sense of urgency that we have.
Okay. So we see data centers are in the news in a huge way. I think a big part of the reason why it's something new, it's something different in people's communities. But a big thing that I think you guys are pushing for is to make sure that we have the right guardrails on AI policy. And I think that will help win people over if you have the right guardrails on this stuff. That 25% becomes 40%, becomes 60%, so on and so forth. Talk to us about those particular guardrails that we're talking about. You mentioned kids, you mentioned, we talked a little bit about national security. What are some of these guardrails that you guys are focused on, you know, making sure make it into policy?
So let me start with national security because I think that that's the most urgent thing that the administration is focusing on. And let me just say, since Secretary Bessent is here, the president, the whole admin have just done an extraordinary job on a very complicated issue. The president said earlier this summer, AI is mostly good, some bad. We need to keep the good and get rid of the bad, right? And I'm like, couldn't have said it better myself, and it was just really good. And so when we talk about the good, there's so much good. I've already talked about some of those. When we talk about the bad, that's where the guardrails come in. Because if you think about guardrails, it can sound restrictive, especially if you have children. It's like, oh, I don't, you know, you kind of bristle against that. But guardrails help you go faster, okay? They keep you from falling off the mountain. They keep other cars from crashing into you. Guardrails are what will help us go faster. The Autobahn runs on guardrails. So when it comes to national security, there are sort of three main things that I think the administration is probably thinking about, or that lawmakers may want to consider. One of those is harm detection, and that's testing. And the conversations around that would look like who should test, what should we test, when should we test, how should we test, right? Is it before or after deployment? Maybe it should be both. So that's harm detection. Harm reduction are things like chain-of-thought monitoring. That's the only record that we have when something goes wrong of what went wrong. It's kind of like the black box in an airplane. So if we lose the ability to monitor that, which they're already kind of hiding from us, the agents are, then we lose the ability to know what happened and how to fix it and how to remedy it. You've got jailbreak prevention, things like you need to stay in this box and stop jailbreaking. That's what's happened this summer and the headlines that we keep coming out. It's hard to take it seriously because it happened at a gym and a company called Hugging Face, which no one takes seriously, but some people are. But the harm reduction is really important. And then the harm response, what happens when there is a problem, what do we do? There's industry standards outside of AI for this, a report that doesn't just sit on a desk, a report that's not an investigation, that's not punitive, but that is collaborative, that is constructive, and that tells us what we can be doing better next time.
Okay. So Congress is a little bit of a mess on a lot of things. More than a little bit. I don't even know if they're going to be in session again between now and the midterm elections. I hope they do because I hope they actually do some work, but I know they're doing the midterm convention later this week. The Republicans are. I hope they come back and actually do some things. But they're all over the map on AI. So what do we do? Is there something that can be done between now and election day, midterm election? Is there something that happens next year or during the lame duck or something? What do we do to fix this in Congress?
I think my message to Congress would be, if we hesitate, we lose. And so I would hope that they act before election day. The best day to act, if it's not before election day, is right after election day in that lame duck session. Because we really cannot afford to wait. We don't know what's coming in January. I hope that the Republican Party maintains control, but if it doesn't, what I'm worried about is that the Democrats are going to cede the AI conversation to the extremes of the people like Bernie Sanders who just want to shut everything down and overreact and panic and stuff it in the basement and hope it goes away. That is not good for our country. And so Congress needs to act. Right now, they're abdicating to the president, which is fine because he's leading in a great way. Or they're going to have to abdicate the responsibility to the judiciary, and that's just not a good way to govern the most powerful technology in the world with American values to make sure that we win.
Okay. So you mentioned President Trump multiple times here. There's a lot of talk that he may be doing a new executive order on AI. What are some of the things you want to see in that order? What are you looking for from the president? I mean, obviously, he's already done some remarkable things on this front, but what more do you want to see from him?
Well, I would just go back to those national security policies. The detecting harms, reducing harms, analyzing those harms after they happen. I think that they have a lot of smart people in the admin. And I've been really impressed by the commitment and the courage that they have shown and the creativity that they have shown on this topic. And so I'd go back to that. When it comes, I'll just go back to Congress and kids' safety. One easy win for Congress this year is the Kids Online Safety Act. To get that through. I think that it's got bipartisan support and there's a lot of momentum behind it. That's easy. It polls well over 90%. It would be a really smart politically and right policy move for them to do this fall.
Okay. So now, and then another big thing is, again, getting back to that, because that 25% number has me like, that's a very low number, but I do think there's a lot of room for upside. Another big impact here is on jobs, right? Like, and how this is going to impact jobs. We just did our last event was all about focus on a lot of this stuff, and there's a lot of space, whether it's, you know, construction of new facilities like data centers or other things. There's a lot of space where this stuff can do wonders to actually create more jobs and have a positive economic impact. How do you get that message out?
So when it comes to jobs, you're kind of balancing innovation and safety, right? You're like, we've got to innovate and we've got to be safe. With jobs, it's more balancing innovation and intentionality. We've got to plan. We've got to collect data. We've got to know what we're talking about without guessing. By the way, AI can help with that. Then I think we've got to prepare. I met a lady this weekend. She's 78 years old and she couldn't wait to tell me about the AI certification course that she was taking. And I was just blown away. She didn't have any idea what I did for work. I met a new college grad who said, every single person in my building thinks I'm a genius because I know how to build dashboards for them in less than an hour. And so I think pivoting to that new economy and preparing for it is really key. And taking the long view when we can. I think a way to build trust when it comes to jobs is for CEOs to be honest about what they're doing with AI in their companies. And I've been really encouraged. A lot of the fears that we were afraid might come true haven't. And so I'm really encouraged that the pie is going to grow. That's what innovation does, right? This is not a zero-sum game. The pie gets larger, Americans are better off, and we get to keep our way of life.
All right, Janet Kelly from Alliance for a Better Future, really want to thank you for joining us. Thank you for everything and excellent discussion. Look forward to continuing. Thank you.
All right. And folks, I want to welcome up to the stage next we have Chris Farenkopf. He is the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Executive Office of the President of the United States. Chairman Farenkopf, thanks for joining us here.
All right. So lots to talk about here. So, Mr. Chairman, I know you just started, what, a month or so ago, right? Like after the Senate confirmation. But the big theme of today's event, if you will, is the state of the economy. We're less than two months now ahead of a midterm election. So let me just start super broad with you. What is the state of the American economy right now?
I always try to look at the state of the economy in terms of three things. First thing is jobs. We just had an absolute blowout jobs report.
Now, jobs reports vary a lot month to month. But we had 162,000 jobs created in one month, and they revised the last two months before that to add another 50,000.
Yeah. So basically the American economy has to add probably, we estimate, about 40,000 jobs a month just to keep the unemployment rate constant. And so since January 2026, we've added twice that, 80,000 a month jobs. Over the last 12 months, we've added 50,000 jobs a month, which means that that's why the unemployment rate went from 4.3% to 4.1%. Job market's doing great. Weekly hourly earnings, which I, that's incorrect. Weekly earnings are up, I believe, 3.7% over a year. GDP, we had GDP is doing pretty well. GDP growth is doing pretty well. Right now, inflation is a little bit higher than we would like. But this is important, coming down.
Okay. So let's talk about a lot of the good news first, and I want to get into some of the challenges like inflation, like gas prices, like housing prices. But the good news, there's a lot of good news in the economy. We obviously saw the jobs report, 162,000 jobs. A lot of that was manufacturing, by the way, which is very good long term. But the, so, you know, it was funny because I was talking to our economic editor, John Carney, who he and I are going to interview Secretary Bessent here in a little bit as we were preparing for this. And I was like, why are the expectations so low? Like, so what is it about these economists that they think that it's only going to be like, because I think this report was close to three times as high as the expectations. I think the expectations were around 50, 55,000 for the last month. So what is it, why do they underestimate President Trump and his policies?
I want to point out that not only was this jobs report three times higher than the median Bloomberg estimate, there's 77 economists that they... It was also bigger than every single one of them.
It wasn't just higher than the average. It was higher than every single guess.
Yeah. Why do they under... I don't have a great theory of why people underestimate this economy, but I think there's a lot of good things going forward. One of the things I like to point out right now is right now capital expenditures are on track not to double, but almost double what they were in 2024. And the reason I like to look at investment is because investment is essentially deferred consumption. It's, you know, you can, economy produces stuff. You can either eat it, what you produce, or you can take your production and put it somewhere that will be useful in the future. And we are seeing that show up all over the place, that this economy isn't just producing a lot, but it's producing a lot in a way that will make us produce even more in the future. Capital expenditures are up, factory construction is up, manufacturing is moving back into the United States. And a lot of this is, you can just point to this administration policy or that administration policy that's causing it.
So again, on the manufacturing, I mean, that's one of the brightest parts of this jobs report. I mean, just the topline number is incredible, but the manufacturing jobs. Can you go through some of those for us and explain why this is important? What is it about the manufacturing? Because I mean, this is something that, you know, I mean, we frankly for the last 40 years, and President Trump is, you know, this is the heart of his campaign, speaking to the American worker, the forgotten man and woman out there. He wanted to bring the manufacturing back. We saw way too many factories moved to Mexico or China or elsewhere around the world. What is it about this current administration's policies that are leading to this manufacturing renaissance again here in the United States? What's happening and what does the data show about the effectiveness of the president's policies in general?
What the data show are manufacturing jobs are increasing for the first time in a very long time. There's been a very, very long trend of manufacturing employment just going down. Part of that is just history. If you look at, for instance, agricultural jobs, it used to be 80% of the people worked in agriculture, and now it's probably around two or three. So we thought that manufacturing, or by we, I don't mean the administration, I mean the economists of the world thought that, oh, that's just the way it is. Manufacturing jobs in the United States are just going to keep going down. And very recently, they've actually started going up again in the United States. And I point to two specific policies. One is OBBB, going to get the number of B's wrong. The one big... the one big beautiful bill. I guess there's three. It did excellent reforms for investment in the United States in particular. You get to write off immediately. You don't have to, you get to expense your capital expenditures right away. That's caused a boom in investment, a boom in factories. Those factories need people. The second is the reshoring of manufacturing. This is, as far as I'm concerned, this is a pure national security thing. It's incredibly dangerous to have the United States in a position where it's dependent on other countries to produce almost everything. That is being reversed.
Mhm. I'll tell you this. I've talked to people throughout a number of different industries, and there's still challenges in accomplishing this. Don't get me wrong. Like, there are definitely various hurdles and whatnot that they're trying to get through. But the fact is, is that I do know that there are factories getting built here in the United States that are making things that we need in this country. Again, and you know, frankly, I think that that's one of the most important things. Another thing you mentioned, you keep pointing to this, and I think this is also important. I want to see if you can flesh this out for us a little bit. When you talk about the capital expenditures, can you give us some of the statistics on this and again, walk us through why that's important for the longer-term economic outlook? It's similar to manufacturing. It's, yes, you see it in the initial numbers, but beyond that, it has a long-tail impact that's positive for the economy.
Exactly. So let me just get you the statistics. Sorry, I have to look at my notes. Real fixed private investment went up 1% in 2024. It went up 3.4% in 2025, and 2026 is, you know, two-thirds over. So we can get good estimates of what it's going to go up in 2026, 6.7%. So we went from 1 to 3.5 to almost 7 in three years. That's the growth rate in real fixed investment. Again, like the way I like to put this is an economy can produce a certain amount in any given year, but then the question is, what do you do with it? You can eat it, or you can take it and take your productive resources today and move them to producing in the future. We're actually seeing this all over the place. We're seeing this in terms of the mix of what we bring in from other countries. So we still run a trade deficit, but what we bring in from other countries has markedly changed in the last few years from consumer goods to investment goods. You can actually just look at the products that are coming in and say, what is it? Is it a pair of sneakers or is it a component for a machine that goes into a factory? And we're seeing market shifts in what we're bringing in from other countries. And I have to say, it's a lot better for the future if what you're importing is machines for a factory as opposed to a pair of sneakers.
Yeah. So it tripled and then more than doubled, or more than tripled, more than doubled. Just incredible from year to year. So that's just an incredible statistic there. So now, another thing you mentioned earlier as well was that we just had Labor Day, was the weekly earnings are up. So American workers are making more money and they're keeping more money in their pockets. And thanks to, again, the one big beautiful bill that you mentioned, the tax rates didn't go up for people. And then there's also other important things in there like the no tax on tips, social security, et cetera, in there. Can you talk to us a little bit about what this all means for the average American worker out there? What are they feeling as a result of this? What are they seeing as a result of these policies?
Well, the most important things I think about the OBB, get my B's right, is that I thought the expiration of the 2017 Trump tax cuts was going to happen in 2026. And that I just saw as being, you know, sort of Damocles hanging over the economy. They're going to have big increases in all sorts of taxes, big increases in, or I shouldn't say increases, changes in very good reforms that were done in 2017 for how we treated all sorts of business taxes that were going to be reversed. And everything was made permanent. That brought certainty, or at least less uncertainty, into the economic environment with relationship to your taxes and all that that was greatly needed. And that allows businesses to plan. Then that shows up in their hiring decisions, their investment decisions. This was important, and it's directly attributable to what was done in OBBB. One thing I wanted to talk about with the average weekly earnings is weekly earnings are two components, which are your hourly wage times the number of hours you get to work. And one of the big improvements since the beginning of this second Trump administration is more people are getting to work the number of hours they want to work.
So now another big thing that we see is having a monster impact on the economy, obviously, is artificial intelligence, AI. The president is very focused on making sure that these policies get through and are done right. There's definitely some consternation out there. You hear people talking about data centers and they don't want them in their community and so on and so forth. And the battle is happening out there, but there are positive impacts of this economically. There are also questions about it. Can you talk to us about what impact AI is having on the economy right now and why the president is so focused on making sure that AI is done and done right?
In my opinion, AI is another transformative technology in a world history where we have seen transformative technologies before. I mentioned earlier in this interview, 80% of the people used to work on farms. That's because that's what it took so that we had enough calories not to die. As things have progressed, you know, if you need 80% of the people working on the farm in order not to starve, then that means that you don't have many people left to do other things to give us what we see in this world. So I see AI as, and it has not been the end of the world that we were able to have machines to help with farming or machines to help with manufacturing. We have not seen, now some jobs get replaced. There used to be people who, when you made a phone call from one place to another, somebody had to physically pull out a plug, move it to another slot, and put it somewhere else. Those people did not, you know, those people were then able to move to something else that gives us again the standard of living that we have. So we do not see in the data that companies that use AI more are having fewer workers. In fact, it's the opposite. Companies that use AI more are hiring more than companies that use AI less. So I don't see AI as, I do see it as potentially transformative like many previous transformative technologies, but I don't see it as substituting people. I see it as another tool that complements people.
Okay. So now we talked about all the positives at the top there in the economy, and there are many more, by the way, but there are some challenges, too, that the economy still faces. I think the three main challenges the economy faces right now are, and again, this I get straight from our guy John Carney, that's going to join me up here when we interview Secretary Bessent in a few minutes, but the three main challenges are inflation, gas prices. Let's start with inflation. What do you, you mentioned before that it's still too high. It's still pretty stubborn. A lot of this started under the Biden administration. What do we need to see? How do we combat this inflation? How do we turn a corner on it and get the prices down on, you know, consumer goods, grocery prices, et cetera?
