Pun Salad

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I like John Krasinski as action hero Jack Ryan just fine. He's an able substitute for (hold your breath) Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, and Chris Pine. Once you get over Jim from "The Office" shooting people, he does a good job.

This is on Amazon Prime, and unlike Krasinski's previous outings in the role, it's a single, stand-alone movie. As things open, Jack has eschewed his spying roles, and has taken a role in the private sector. He's also lost his girlfriend, Cathy, for some reason. (Major departure from the books and early movies!) But (as opening scenes reveal) there's some violence happening in Dubai, as good guys try (and fatally fail) in their mission to extract … something.

To be honest, the plot was nearly incomprehensible to me, other than knowing who the good guys and bad guys were. It serves mainly to string together a lot of gunplay, car chases, explosions, and the like. Mainly because the bad guys seemed to have a supernatural ability to know what the good guys were up to. Fortunately, Jack has an equally uncanny ability to deduce what the bad guys are up to. But not always quickly enough to avoid good guy fatalities.

Wendell Pierce is back as Jack's once and future boss; Michael Kelly is here as Jack's wisecracking (and very deadly) sidekick. They are good too. Sienna Miller shows up as a chain-smoking MI6 operative, and she and Jack exchange banter.

As part of Reason's "1776 All-Stars" collection, Jack Nicastro explains why Samuel Adams Was the Most Libertarian Founder.

Good enough for me!

(For headline quibblers: Yes, I know that Jim Koch, founder of the Boston Beer Company, which makes Samuel Adams beer, is no relation to the historic Samuel Adams. But I did get a free tour of Jim's original Boston brewery once. And their website is drenched in red-white-and-blue patriotism. So I'm a fan.)

And more (Platner-free!) items of interest:

• Try not to fall asleep. Maybe grab some coffee before reading Megan McArdle about America’s most boring nightmare. (WaPo gifted link)

  The nation is in a hole, and if it’s going to climb out, Americans need to take a hard look at the bill that is rapidly coming due, rather than stuff the notices in a drawer and try to forget they’re there.

  The debt held by the public is roughly $31.6 trillion, and it recently surpassed 100 percent of the gross domestic product. In other words, if we wanted to pay it off next year, we’d have to stop consuming anything and turn everything we produce, from apples to zippers, over to our creditors. Sure hope you remembered to stock up the chest freezer, or it’s going to be a very hungry year.

  Thankfully, we do not actually have to pay off the debt next year. In fact, we don’t have to pay it off at all. A nation with a healthy economy can sustain a modicum of debt, and even modest budget deficits, essentially forever. As long as the debt isn’t too high, the deficits aren’t too outrageous, and the economy keeps growing, inflation and economic growth will keep the national debt-to-GDP ratio within healthy bounds.

  Alas, the United States is well past that point. The outsize debt was barely sustainable even with the abnormally low interest rates between the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic. But with 30-year Treasury yields at their highest level in almost two decades, it is not. Interest costs alone exceeded 3 percent of GDP in 2025, more than the government spent on Medicaid or defense. That has helped push the annual budget deficit to almost $2 trillion, or 5.8 percent of GDP. Unless something is done, those numbers will get even worse as the boomers finish retiring and entitlements eat more and more revenue.

  The AI summary of the (as I type) 824 comments: they are "largely criticizing Republican policies, particularly tax cuts for the wealthy and increased military spending."

  Fun facts (from Google's AI): Uncle Stupid's total spending is 23.3% of GDP; tax revenue is 17.5% of GDP; military spending is 2.8% of GDP. We could cut military spending to zero, and that wouldn't get us even halfway to a balanced budget.

• A worthy followup. Friedrich Hayek postscripted his book The Constitution of Liberty with an essay titled "Why I Am Not a Conservative". (It's somewhat dated, but you can read it here.)

  Phil Magness was no doubt inspired by Hayek to write: Why I Am Not a Neoliberal. It's a downloadable PDF of a scholarly article. Abstract:

  I identify two strains of neoliberalism. I designate the most common use as pejorative neoliberalism, a term of disparagement for marginalist and freemarket thinkers. This use traces its origins to interwar Germany as a pejorative for the Austrian school. Since the 1990s, a nearly identical usage has been adopted by the academic far-left. I designate as non-ironic neoliberalism a post-2010 attempt to reclaim the term to describe moderately pro-market, but technocratic, beliefs. This version has more in common with the market-failure economic theorists of the mid-twentieth century than with the critics of their theories. I conclude that neither usage of the term has meaningful explanatory value for classical liberal economic theory.

  It's an interesting look, especially the "pejorative" part.

• Speaking of Hayek-inspired headlines… The WSJ editorialists are no doubt playing off The Road to Serfdom: The Road to AI State Socialism. (WSJ gifted link)

  Many of America’s worst policy mistakes have been bipartisan mind melds. A new example comes this week from Bernie Sanders, who wants the feds to take ownership stakes in AI companies. Hmmm. Which Republican might have inspired this statist brainstorm?

  Mr. Sanders teased his forthcoming legislation in a New York Times op-ed that pitched a U.S. AI sovereign wealth fund. “Even President Trump, in an executive order, has proposed establishing an American sovereign wealth fund,” Mr. Sanders writes.

  Yes, and we blasted the President’s idea last year. Sovereign wealth funds typically enrich a country’s rulers and friends far more than its citizens. Democrats criticize the Trump family businesses for profiting from the Presidency with crypto deals. Imagine the temptation for corruption if government owns stakes in America’s wealthiest companies.

  Another example of the rule: "Progressives" never seem to have any ideas that don't involve government demanding more money and power.

• Interesting observations from a pothead. No, I really mean it! Tyler Cowen shares an email that tells us Why drugs are here to stay.

  1. Drugs are fun.

  2. They open new ways of perceiving, sometimes by adversely impacting other ways of perceiving, particularly by adjusting attention response, and particularly for perceiving experiences that are sensory (what experiences aren’t sensory, ridiculous, I know, but here of course I mean art primarily.

  3. Since the experiences I am inadequately categorizing above are profoundly influential on people’s meaning-making, drugs can be as well, of course.

  4. Most people are not going to be as economically viable as they are now as producers of goods or services, and many, if not most, are going to be economically viable only to the extent that they generate demand, and here I think specifically demand for pleasure. Drugs are important in this social equation. People will use many more drugs of increasing variety and quality. This train has left the station, or, rather, these trains have left their stations. You will not call them back.

  Reader, those are the (anonymous) correspondent's first four points. There are 10 more.

  Mega-disclaimer: I've never used, nor do I recommend, any drugs other than ethanol (see above) and caffeine (ditto), and have no plans to. Still…