The Frontier

Peter St Onge cites an OECD report stating one in five American college students read and do math at a 10-year-old level, despite public school spending doubling to nearly $18,000 per student.

At UC San Diego, first-year students needing primary school math support exploded 30-fold in five years, with one in four having perfect high school math scores. Berkeley and Harvard also report severe student deficits in core academic skills.

Peter St Onge states that in the most progressive districts, 23 Baltimore schools had zero math-proficient students and Detroit showed 96% lacking math proficiency, despite both cities spending a third more per student than the national average.

Nearly 90% of universities have discarded standardized testing, up from 50% before the Supreme Court's race ban, enabling admissions for unprepared students. High school A/A+ grades doubled in 10 years, with 79% of Yale students earning straight A's.

A study of 500,000 grades found a 30% jump in AI-doable courses like creative writing since ChatGPT's introduction. Peter St Onge attributes this to AI enabling meaningless, counterfeited degrees.

Peter St Onge argues legacy media could lose half its audience to AI, citing a Pew study that found Google AI summaries consume 92% of search traffic, leaving only 8% for news sites like CNN.

Reuters projects search traffic to news sites will fall by nearly half in three years, as trust in traditional media is down to one in four Americans. Most people now get news from social media and AI chatbots.

Independent creators are thriving; Substack grew fivefold since 2021, and Tucker Carlson's interview with Donald Trump garnered nearly a quarter-billion views, 80 times his Fox audience.

Challenger Gray estimates media layoffs run at 20,000 annually, representing one in ten remaining journalists each year, while independent creators expand. Peter St Onge predicts legacy media will be gone in 10 years.

A KPMG survey found 42% of Canadian manufacturers are moving or planning to move production to the US, with 29% having already moved some production and three-quarters expecting to move within two years.

Peter St Onge attributes the Canadian manufacturing exodus to Trump's tariffs and Canadian policies that raised taxes and red tape, stifling oil reserves 20 times larger than the US on a per capita basis. Business investment collapsed by a third in Canada while doubling in the US.

Canada is nearing its third recession in 11 years, with half of its top 10% income earners having fled to the US. Peter St Onge notes half a million Canadian college graduates compete for only 80,000 jobs.

Peter St Onge highlights Fed Chair nominee Kevin Worsh's view that AI will cause "the most productivity-enhancing wave," leading to structural price declines that enable the Fed to slash rates without sparking inflation.

Despite AI's potential, its current limitation is "hallucinations"; Grok's hallucination rate dropped from 12% in September to under 1% in its latest update. Prediction markets, like Kalshi, still forecast over 3.5% inflation.

Peter St Onge reports a study suggesting humans could live healthily to 194 years by addressing eight mechanisms of aging like telomeres and mitochondria. Elon Musk also believes aging is "not that hard a problem."

Peter St Onge predicts extended lifespans would double economic growth and incomes by preserving human capital, reducing healthcare/education costs (currently $1 in 4 of spending), and extending careers past 65.

Longer lives would shift voters hard to the right as people become more conservative with age. Peter St Onge warns it would also exacerbate inequality due to extended asset compounding for the wealthy.