The Frontier

James Daunt joined J.P. Morgan in New York after studying history at Cambridge but left banking after four years because his partner found the industry boring.

James Daunt opened Daunt Books in 1990 during a major recession and the first Gulf War, taking five years for the shop to become financially stable.

James Daunt argues that prior corporate executives at Waterstones and Barnes & Noble crippled their businesses by prioritizing short-term gains over long-term quality.

James Daunt claims that the UK economy is less dynamic than the US economy because of a massive cultural stigma surrounding personal and business bankruptcy.

James Daunt revived Waterstones by firing most of the corporate staff and eliminating centralized corporate control, granting store managers complete operational autonomy.

Elliott Management acquired Barnes & Noble after buying Waterstones to prevent the demise of physical retail, which would have forced publishers into an Amazon duopoly.

James Daunt cut Waterstones' thirty million pound marketing budget to zero on day one and maintains a zero-dollar marketing budget at Barnes & Noble.

Barnes & Noble delegates social media marketing to store employees on BookTok, operating with a single corporate guardrail to use common sense.

James Daunt argues that readers retain information better from physical books, whereas digital formats are largely dominated by generic, disposable fiction.

Barnes & Noble maintains consistent profitability and is expanding physical footprints, operating more than 700 stores across the United States.

James Daunt discarded expensive custom pine display tables across 650 stores, only to realize the mistake and spend heavily to buy them back.

Stephen Dubner notes that roughly 60 percent of jobs today did not exist in 1940. This historical shift underscores the constant evolution of the labor market.

Gina Raimondo launched Raise Us to help workers transition into an AI economy. Gina Raimondo opposes universal basic income, job guarantees, and wage guarantees, stating that the free market should dictate wages.

Gina Raimondo attributes the growing gap between wages and corporate profits to low-interest rates, corporate concentration, declining union power, and tax cuts. These forces have pushed the labor share of national income to record lows.

Gina Raimondo asserts that current data shows entry-level, college-educated workers in their 20s are the only demographic currently suffering job market difficulties due to AI adoption.

Gina Raimondo critiques the existing U.S. unemployment insurance system as overly rigid and ineffective for workers earning over $70,000 annually. Under current rules, recipients lose their benefits if they enroll in school or start a business.

Raise Us is piloting localized employment initiatives, including an AI skills assessment in Arkansas, manufacturing apprenticeships in Wisconsin, and a healthcare public service year in Maryland.

Raise Us has secured $500 million in commitments toward a $1 billion goal, backed by anchor donors Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI. Critics worry the funding is a reputational buyout to secure political permission for data center construction.

Gina Raimondo cites Anthropic CEO Dario Amadei warning that 20 to 30 million American jobs are vulnerable to AI. Gina Raimondo warns that failing to manage this transition risks severe political dysfunction and civil unrest.

The Trade Adjustment Assistance program failed to cushion the 1980s China shock because of bureaucratic complexity. Displaced workers waited nearly a year for benefits because they had to prove their job loss was caused by Chinese trade.

Gina Raimondo successfully shepherded the bipartisan CHIPS Act by framing semiconductor manufacturing as a national security issue. The U.S. military currently relies entirely on Taiwan-based TSMC for its leading-edge chips.

Gina Raimondo leveraged tech CEOs Tim Cook, Jensen Huang, and Lisa Su to pressure TSMC to manufacture in the United States. This customer pressure forced TSMC to accept lower federal subsidies and commit private capital.

Gina Raimondo supports an SEC proposal to scale back quarterly earnings report requirements. Gina Raimondo argues that the current quarterly reporting system forces CEOs to focus on short-term stock performance over long-term capital investments.

Raise Us is modeled on the 1940s Committee for Economic Development. That private-sector coalition successfully created local committees to transition millions of returning World War II soldiers back into the peacetime workforce.