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WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

The tax cuts for the rich are permanent.

So this is a gimmick that gives you a talking point,

but it doesn't deliver meaningful long-term tax breaks for middle-class Americans.

How the president gets away with boasting about the economy,

while economists say his policies redistribute money from the poor to the rich. It's Wednesday, February 25th, and this is here and now anytime from NPR and WBR.

I'm Chris Bentley.

Today on the show, there's a fire hose of money flowing into AI, but a lot of it is coming from other AI companies.

The broad concern is, are we really seeing a huge new economy take off,

or are we seeing the equivalent of five people sitting at a table all passing the same

$100 bill around to each other? The problem with AI's circular economy coming up at about 10 minutes.

Before we get to that, though,

we are not going to rehash President Trump's hour and 48-minute state-of-the-union address,

but we do want to dig into one major claim the president made

that he pulled off an economic turnaround.

Our nation is back, bigger, better, richer, and stronger than ever before.

I don't need to tell you, the economy is still very lopsided, and things are still getting

more expensive. But let's take a closer look at the real economy, not the one of political rhetoric, with

Justin Wolfer's, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan.

He spoke to Scott Tong.

...