On the Economy

* The average net worth of American families topped $1 million for the first time last year, according to the Federal Reserve. That average is skewed to a degree by a small number of billionaires and multimillionaires. But, as Josh Zumbrun points out here, the upper-middle class has also seen big wealth gains thanks to educational attainment, saving, bull markets, and good timing.

* Workers are doing less work for the same pay. To attract and retain good people, employers are offering more benefits than ever before, including more paid “time off” days (including family leave, sick leave, and vacation). And employees are using it, which is causing a fast-rising gap between employee compensation and employee output. In this essay, Jeffrey Sparshott explains why it is NOT a good thing.

* October was a bleak month for stock traders.  According to at least one analyst, this could mean a big upside for at least four stocks in the Dow. Click here.

* If elected, Trump said he will cut government spending “back to the bone.” That sounds like BS, especially coming from a former president under whose leadership US debt reached all-time highs. But there is reason to believe he might do it. Click here.

* No, Pumpkin, there are no free lunches. Common economic sense from Milton Freedman. Click here.

Another Way to Look at the Israeli/Hamas War 

Hamas’s brutal and barbaric attack on Israel was done to provoke Israel to conduct a land war in Gaza. Hamas leaders believe they have the wherewithal to eventually defeat Israel by making it a long and extremely costly engagement, with tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of casualties. With each new dead Palestinian, the world’s opinion of Israel will gradually turn against the US. And that will eventually turn the world against Israel.

It seems possible. The attack and Israel’s counterattack has already moved the needle in that direction. It has also moved Saudi Arabia to renounce its treaty with Israel.

But what choice does Israel have? Bombing Gaza to smithereens will eventually have the same effect, but without achieving anything. International aid will pour in and Hamas will resume its efforts to destroy Israel.

The only way I can see Israel winning this is by conducting a massive invasion of Gaza, killing or jailing every Hamas terrorist, and then claiming Gaza as its own and gradually eliminating Hamas by making it a true police state for 10 or 20 years.

And if I’m right about that, they should have probably invaded Gaza on day one.

Is there any other way Israel can ensure its safety in the future?

Click here.

Bill Bonner on War and the “Hypocrisy of the Elites” 

“But for our purposes, we are focused neither on the wolves nor the lambs, but on the shepherds. In a civilized world… leaders of countries such as the US, France, and Germany would be trying to protect the sheep. They would urge restraint. Calm. Negotiation. Deliberation. Most importantly, they would at least make it clear that they could not in good conscience provide aid – guns and ammunition – to be used to slaughter innocent civilians.

“This would be deeply hypocritical on their part. But hypocrisy is the proper role of the elites – to preach virtue in public, while enjoying whatever vices they choose at home. Almost all nations at one time or another slip into Old Testament kind of warfare, where they authorize, promote, or overlook the ‘collateral damage’ they cause. But while major nations may not be able to avoid it in themselves, they have the power to curtail it in others.

“What is so alarmingly on display in the Levant is the abject failure of The West’s leaders. Even at hypocrisy, they are a flop. Instead of calming people down, they incite them to even more outrageous acts of violence.” – Bill Bonner, Bonner Private Research, 10/16/23

The Difference Between Ambition and Entitlement 

“Ambition is when you expect yourself to close the gap between what you have and what you want. Entitlement is when you expect others to close the gap between what you have and what you want.” – James Clear

“The US is courting trouble.” 

“The federal government is 43% larger than it was four years ago, and its reach is expanding mightily. More than a third of the surge in investment spending [since then] can be traced to government subsidies, credits, and handouts. The chosen corporate recipients of the government’s largesse ostensibly benefit, but the rest of the private economy will be burdened by significantly higher rates and rising costs of doing business.” – Kevin Warsh, former member of the Federal Reserve Board, 10/6/23, WSJ

The COVID Response: What We Got Wrong

The Government Censored Them and They Fought Back

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya 

The Biden administration (along with the Justice Department, the FDA, and the FBI) has waged an all-out war against anyone – especially doctors and medical researchers – that questioned the CDC’s original claims about COVID and the measures taken to protect Americans against it.

Everyone that has not been living under a mountain of NYT and Washington Post newspapers is now aware that most of what the Biden administration and the CDC said about the danger of the virus and the effectiveness of the lockdowns and masking and vaccines was largely false. But that didn’t stop the Justice Department, the FDA, and the FBI from going after the early skeptics with every tactic they could muster.

Here’s an account (sent to me by LC) of what happened to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford School of Medicine), one of the plaintiffs in a case presented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance against the Biden administration.

“I have been a professor researching health policy and infectious disease epidemiology at a world-class university for decades,” writes Bhattacharya. “I am not a political person; I am not registered with either party. In part that is because I want to preserve my total independence as a scientist. I have always viewed my job as telling people honestly about the data issues, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans like the message. Yet at the height of the pandemic, I found myself smeared for my supposed political views, and my views about COVID policy and epidemiology were removed from the public square on all manner of social networks.”

The aim of the lawsuit (Missouri v. Biden) was to end the government’s role in the censorship of scientific findings. And last week, they finally won a small victory in federal appeals court.

“The decision provides some solace for scientists who had deep reservations about lockdowns but censored themselves for fear of the reputational damage that came with being falsely labeled misinformers,” says Bhattacharya. “They were not wrong in thinking science wasn’t working right; science cannot function without free speech.”

Click here to read more.

The COVID Response: Meet Dr. Fauci’s Replacement

Was She as Wrong About the Facts as He Was? 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, arguably the most likeable non-elected government official in recent memory, resigned last year from his role as director of NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) amid mounting criticism of his handling of the COVID pandemic.

While looking for a replacement, the NIH appointed Dr. Lawrence A. Tabak as acting director. And last week, he announced Fauci’s permanent replacement – Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, head of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama in Birmingham.

In introducing Dr. Marrazzo, Dr. Tabak said, “Dr. Marrazzo brings a wealth of leadership experience from leading international clinical trials and translational research, managing a complex organizational budget that includes research funding and mentoring trainees in all stages of professional development.”

To be sure, Dr. Marrazzo has impressive academic credentials. (A bachelor’s degree in biology from Harvard, an MD from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from the University of Washington.) Academic credentials are meaningful for people that aspire to be academics, but when it comes to a job that matters as much as this one does, what’s more important is specific experience, past performance, and personal characteristics like honesty and integrity.

In the case of Dr. Marrazzo, I have concerns about what she has said and done in the recent past. In researching her, I discovered that she was a big proponent of mask-wearing. In fact, as late as May 2021, she was quoted as saying that she wears a mask indoors. Click here.

She also promoted the government vaccination misinformation. In July of 2021, she was blaming the spread of COVID on the unvaccinated, saying, “So much transmission in our community because a majority of people are not vaccinated. The opportunity for little kids to get infected is much higher than where the vaccination rate is much higher.”

Based on what I’ve read so far, it’s clear to me that Dr. Marazzo has been promoting the company narrative since day one. This, by the way, is not completely surprising. Her role as head of NIAID, like Fauci’s, is not to tell the truth but to say what the organization thinks the public should be told. Her role is not that of a doctor or a scientist, but of a public relations spokesperson.

I’m hoping I’m wrong. I’m hoping she will stand up for the truth. I’m withholding judgement for the moment. We’ll see soon enough.

Who Is This Taylor Swift Person?

If I’ve ever heard a Taylor Swift song, I wasn’t aware of it.

I’m just too old. And, happily, out of touch with the pop music scene today. I’m not embarrassed to admit that. I mean, by the time she hit the charts, I was in my sixties.

When you get to a certain age, the brain is tired of doing the thousands of things you made it do for so many years. Like remembering why you ended up here, in the hardware store. Or why you interrupted such a nice dinner party to blurt out what you just said.

It’s time, you think, to air out the knowledge warehouse and reduce the number of memories that have, over the years, cluttered up every nook and cranny. By having fewer memories, you reason, your brain will have more time and energy to do what it still must do. Like find the car keys. Or remind you to put on your shoes.

Purging the brain is the order of your age. So, you do that, even if you would prefer to hoard it all. But even if you have that mentality, it still makes zero sense to take in more memories. Especially with music. In your adolescence and young adulthood, you collected more music memories than you will ever need.

Which is why, despite her rising fame, I never gave Tayler Swift any of my attention. Furthermore, her clean-cut, wholesome, “pretty” look suggested to me that she would be a quickly passing fad.

I was wrong. Swift signed her first record contract in 2005, at the fragile age of 14. Teenage stars – TV stars, movie stars, and music stars – generally have a short arc of fame. Two or three years. Five years, at best. But here we are, 18 years later, and Taylor Swift is more famous and more popular than ever. In fact, there is an argument to be made that she is the most successful rock/pop star of all time.

Here’s a good example: Take a look at this amazing list of the amazing number of music industry records broken by Taylor Swift.