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There’s a pitch taking root within the Trump administration and some corners of Wall Street that envisions two somewhat incompatible realities playing out at once: rapid economic growth and low inflation.

It’s a tantalizing idea — typically, rapid growth creates greater demand, which tends to push prices higher. But this particular version hinges on many things going right, all at once. And even then, the result could be disastrous for the American workforce.

Here’s the gist: The “run it hot” theory posits that artificial intelligence tools are about to do to 2020s what the internet did to the 1990s — which is to say, unleash productivity across industries, allowing businesses to grow briskly and stocks to surge, all while consumer prices stay relatively stable. The magic of that moment was made possible, in part, by the rapid adoption of networked computers. (Yes, there were a lot of other macroeconomic factors going on — the end of the Cold War, a massive deregulation effort, increasingly globalized trade — but bear with me.)

On Thursday, Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett reiterated his belief that the next Federal Reserve chair should essentially run the Alan Greenspan playbook and keep interest rates low.

US economic growth is strong, Hassett told CNBC, but inflation is “not taking off.”

“So it’s obvious, because productivity is in the (work)force right now, because of AI ‌and the data centers… so it looks very, very much like the ’90s to me right now.”

This is a very trendy comparison lately, for obvious reasons — AI looks like a bubble the way internet companies were a bubble, wide-leg jeans are in, and Gwyneth Paltrow seems to be everywhere.

But there are important differences between then and now, and it’s not just that we all agreed to stop smoking in restaurants and started wearing pajamas to the airport. The big-picture economy is in a weird place — one that looks much more prosperous on paper than it does in real life.

Yes, broad economic growth is strong: Data from the Commerce Department on Thursday showed third-quarter GDP expansion hitting an annualized rate of 4.4%, roughly in line with where we were in the mid-90s.

But just because it looks similar on the top line doesn’t mean anything is the same under the hood.

The 1990s economic boom was fueled by spending from all income groups in the US. (Here’s a handy chart from Axios’ Emily Peck.)

But today, as Peck notes, the top 20% of earners account for a staggering 59% of consumer spending. Yes, this is the K-shaped economy, where the rich are doing better and better while the poor are doing worse and worse. The rich have become so rich, in fact, that their spending alone can make it appear as if the entire economy is great, even as the majority of people are finding that suddenly the costs of basic staples like housing and food are getting harder and harder to bear and dollar stores warn that more and more people are going without.

As we’ve discussed a bunch in this newsletter, the US economy of the mid-2020s is being propped up by two big forces: rich people spending money and companies plowing hundreds of billions into AI. Those two are related: The rich are more flush, in part, because of their exposure to the stock market, where the AI spending party has been raging for the better part of three years.

So what’s the problem with “running it hot?” Maybe nothing! If AI does make businesses hyper-efficient and reduce production costs, the way the internet did 30 years ago, then it really may make sense for the next Fed chair to cut interest rates and keep the capital flowing the way Hassett and President Donald Trump have argued.

But! There are at least two big risks right off the bat:

1. This all hinges on AI not only working but people actually adopting it and using it. Right now, that is far from certain.

Just this week, Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, warned at the Davos summit that the AI revolution depends on, um, more people actually wanting to use it. “For this not to be a bubble by definition, it requires that the benefits of this are much more evenly spread,” he said. He’s an optimist, of course, because his company’s future depends on it, but his comments point to a problem many critics have noted for years, which is that consumers are not as smitten with the technology as some computer scientists and early investors are.

2. In a K-shaped world, “the economy” can look great on paper even while a majority of people suffer. This is already happening. Trump isn’t wrong when he says the economy is doing well — unemployment is low, spending is holding strong, the stock market keeps hitting records. But like former President Joe Biden before him, Trump has found that he can’t will “affordability” into existence by saying it a bunch (or dismissing it as a hoax). As my colleague David Goldman noted this week, Americans’ opinions of the US economy will only start to improve once their wallets grow fatter.

And keep in mind: If AI does what its backers say it will do, mass layoffs will ensue as businesses replace humans with software. If interest rates are already low when the labor market crashes, the Fed won’t have much of a lever to pull to try to right the ship.

Bottom line: “You can sit there and say you want to ‘run it hot,’ and then you can have great GDP and all,” said Mike O’Rourke, chief market strategist for JonesTrading. “But you’re going to lose elections if Main Street doesn’t feel like they’re being brought along for that ride.”

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