| This is the Weekend Edition of Bloomberg Opinion Today, a roundup of existential dread by Christina Sterbenz. New subscribers can sign up here; follow us on Threads, TikTok, X, Instagram and Facebook. Electing a new president is a pretty miraculous act, especially considering that only about 22% of Americans have faith in the federal government. It's essentially a nationwide trust fall. We clamber onto the ballot box, tentatively peer behind ourselves and hope that one of the candidates — but really, the democratic process — will catch us. And the magical part is: They always have. Unfortunately, it's not just government Americans are skeptical of these days. It's also science and the media, the Supreme Court and Big Tech — actually, make that just big business as a whole. Over the past several months, my colleagues and I quantified these widespread bad vibes in a series aptly named, Republic of Distrust. Along the way, we also sought to answer a question — one that feels especially vital heading into Tuesday's election: How do we fix it? I hope you'll read the whole series. But to give you a preview, here are a few standout insights in our favorite form: charts. Distrusting the government is as American as apple pie, as Stephen Mihm puts it. After all, the US was founded on the idea that no one entity should have too much power. (Living under a monarch will do that to you.) But it turns out, Americans appeared to have the most faith in the government when immigration was at its lowest: from the mid '20s to the mid '60s. And considering some of the vitriol directed at immigrants during this election — including from one of the candidates — I'm sadly not sure that sentiment has changed much. Looking at this chart, I was shocked to see that Americans trust banks — some of the biggest of which had to be bailed out just 16 years ago — more than the presidency or Congress — which did the bailing. Banks even have more public trust than Big Tech, which certainly doesn't bode well for the budding artificial intelligence revolution, says Parmy Olson. That's especially true if AI is getting involved in elections. But don't just take my word for it, listen to Parmy explain it here. California, however, is heading in the right direction on regulating the technology, according to Dave Lee, with proposals to prevent deep fake pornography and mandate disclosing the use of generative AI. For what it's worth, big business isn't faring much better than Big Tech. The chart above provides one compelling argument why Americans might not be feeling so great about it: Three decades ago, the wealth of the top 1% of Americans eclipsed that of the middle 40%. "Why? For a lot of reasons," Beth Kowitt says. "But Milton Friedman definitely played a role."
As you saw in the Big Tech chart, trust in the medical system is among the highest. But our faith in researchers and scientists tanked during the COVID pandemic — and not only has it not recovered, it's actually continued to fall. As F.D. Flam lays out, the combination of online misinformation and inconsistencies — and occasionally, hypocrisy — from medical officials fundamentally changed how we view the field of science. Her solution? Saying "I don't know" more often. But since all of this information is coming from an online publication … do you even trust it? Faith in newspapers and TV hit all-time lows in 2022, at 11% and 16% respectively, and hasn't recovered much since. It turns out, Walter Cronkite may have started it all, as former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller points out. (At least we're not the National Enquirer!) We don't have all the answers. But defining the problem is more than half the battle. And if the data in this series underscored anything for me, it's that the institutions on the receiving end of distrust aren't usually blameless. But with some self-awareness and humility — like the kind Joe Biden displayed when he stepped aside in the presidential race — they can recover it. Maybe that's a lesson to carry with you to your polling stations. Hungry for more weekend reads? Sign up for Bloomberg News' Weekend Edition newsletter for big ideas and open questions in the fascinating places where finance, life and culture meet. | 
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