Derek Thompson

They divide the world into, well, the vibes say this, young people are sad, but the stats say this, young people are rich.

And that means that young people are wrong to feel the way they feel, right?

The stats are real, the vibes are everything that's fake.

And I think that's just the wrong way to look at the world.

Vibes are facts.

They're just a different kind of fact.

And if you don't treat them as facts, I think you're going to fail to see the world clearly.

I was just doing research for this episode.

And I saw that 84% of college graduates in New York City under the age of 30 voted for Zoran Mamdani.

84% of college grads under 30 in New York City voted for Mamdani, a socialist.

So if you're an economist and you say vibes are fake, stats are real, and young people are rich, how the fuck do you explain how 84% of college graduates in New York City under 30 voted for a socialist?

You can't.

You absolutely can't.

You can only make sense of that if you treat vibes as facts.

And so I am trying, this is more of a sermon, I think, than a question.

I will try to off-ramp as a question because I've been criticized in some of the comments for sometimes ending in sermons rather than questions.

So I will off-ramp this.

But I'm trying to make a point

to resist that economic or economist tendency to say vibes aren't facts.

Vibes are facts.