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This is the first post of a multi-part Q&A series about economcis and investing The bull market is long in the tooth. How long can it continue? Will future returns be poor? From Josh Brown, This is why, he writes: The S&P 500 has been compounding at 14% per year over the last ten years.… Continue reading Stock Market Investing Series, Part 1: Why The Stock Market Has Gone Up So Much

If one listens to the media, one may be inclined to believe that China and the US are on the brink of war, much like the 50s and the ever-present threat of nuclear war by the Soviets, or that the US is falling behind China. From Freddie Deboer Please Don’t Let Political Contrarianism Turn You… Continue reading Not Worried about China-US Relations or Crisis

Most people if surveyed will vastly overestimate the rarity and difficulty of being a millionaire and underestimate the rarity of high IQ. Online, Mensa-level IQs are a dime a dozen is seems, but, astonishingly, having $1 million dollars net worth is more common by a factor by a factor of 5 than merely having an… Continue reading The wealth-IQ perception disconnect (why being wealthy seems so much rarer than being smart)

Tyler Cowen is always good at providing contrarian takes on popular issues, for example regarding why healthcare in the US is so expensive, and or why Americans spend so much on healthcare: Tyler Cowen: Spending a lot on health care is the American way Once we focus on consumption, America’s high health-care expenditures no longer… Continue reading Tyler Cowen: Why Healthcare is So Expensive in America, part 1

I wanted to highlight a recent comment on the blog: I certainly hope you are right. As a devil’s advocate I would point out that during President Wilson’s tenure (when federal tax was introduced) about $755/capita per annum was spent by the US Government (in 2020 dollars). Today, the amount is over $10K for every… Continue reading Civilization and Collapse, Cont.

Freddie deBoer argues that because history is cyclical, that thus woke liberalism will pass eventually. Plenty of ancient Romans would have rejected the idea of an economy without mass slavery out of hand. People living under feudalism tended to believe that the system was literally ordained by God – and then the plague, the rise… Continue reading Is ‘wokeism’ just a fad that will pass? Probably not

I came across this story, which went viral MIT Predicted in 1972 That Society Will Collapse This Century. New Research Shows We’re on Schedule. If I had a dollar for every forecast of how “X is supposed to cause Y”… “Trump winning was supposed to tank the U.S. economy,” according to Paul Krugman “Trump tariffs… Continue reading Will Society Collapse This Century? Who knows, but probably not

Milley was one of Trump’s favorite generals. Now he’s a villain of the right. But in the span of just one year, the man former President Donald Trump appointed as the nation’s top military officer has found himself at the center of political firestorms on both ends of the political spectrum. One year ago, Milley… Continue reading Appointing the right people

The article How to Build a Small Town in Texas went viral. His site promotes “Traditionalism, sustainability, localism, urbanism,” but his article went viral on Hacker News. I have observed that among the biggest defenders and advocates of traditionalism are people in tech (and probably other STEM fields), on either side of the aisle, not… Continue reading Traditionalism and Technology

Eyeing a target of $20,000-22,000 or so The #1 unwritten rule: for a technology to be transformative, it must be useful. The automobile, the world wide web, electricity, elevators, planes, social networking, TVs, iphones, apps, email…all useful, and thus all saw widespread adoption quickly. Bitcoin is none of those. It has some use but is… Continue reading Bitcoin getting ready to fall again, and why listening to billionaires will not make you rich