Category: Economics (Page 2 of 6)

Disney’s Star Wars hotel was never going to work.

Disney spent a quarter billion dollars to build, Star Wars:  Galactic Starcruiser hotel, and it only remained open for a year and a half.  This girl spent $6000 to be immersed in the experience.  Fortunately, she’s cute and made an engaging 4-hour video about her Star Wars adventure that’s been viewed by 7 million people.  She should recoup her expenses.

Disney is a big company, with a net profit of 1.7 billion dollars last year.  They can’t keep making big mistakes like this.  How did they screw this up so bad?

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NYT: Renting is a lifestyle.

NYT: Renting as a lifestyle

NYT: Renting as a lifestyle

“Forever renting is very much a movement. It’s a lifestyle.

The article emphasizes that renters should squirrel away as much as possible in an index fund or other investments.  Millennials and Gen Z need an article like this to tell them that renting is a lifestyle choice, so it’s okay to do.

My sophisticated aunt and uncle never owned a home.  I’d like to ask my uncle why.  He had a steady job as a teacher and she was an office manager.  My uncle liked building things and working on projects, but must have done that all at school.  It wasn’t the money.  They bought a vacation property in the Poconos and had plenty of investments.  The apartment they’d rented for decades was in a good neighborhood, nicely furnished and rather mundane. 

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Dow hits 40,000, and the party goes on.

Fox Business: Dow Hits 40,000

It isn’t hard to see how the stock market keeps climbing.  The federal government borrows a trillion dollars for a stimulus package or a boondoggle, or  it doesn’t matter what it’s for, but the money finds it’s way into the equity market, and it keeps going up.

I used to think that eventually, the shit’s going to hit the fan.  In 1988, I bought 10 ounces of gold and stashed it in a safety deposit box.  Gold kept dropping and languished below the $430 per ounce I had paid for it.  Fourteen years later, I sold at $445 per ounce.  I’d made $150.

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WSJ: Taylor Swift says, “suck it up and get to work”.

WSJ: Taylor Swift says to suck it up.

WSJ: Taylor Swift says to suck it up.

A clear sign hustle culture is coming back is how quickly America’s office set has glommed onto Swift’s upbeat dance hit, “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart,” released in April as part of her 11th studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department.”

I don’t know or care about Taylor Swift, but if she is telling people to get to work, rather than wallow in sadness, I am all for it.  Her message of resilience is much more appealing than the teachers taking a mental health day because they just can’t.

They can’t even finish the sentence to explain what is so untenable.

Politico: Far Right wants more babies.

Real Clear Politics: Have more babies.

Based on recent articles, we are supposed to worry about not having enough babies and people who worry about not having enough babies.

Back in the 1980’s, before we were afraid all the time, I supported several environmental groups.  Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund and a few others.  Never Greenpeace, they were already crazy.  World population was an issue of interest, so I supported a group called Negative Population Growth.

They were completely reasonable, but in retrospect, I can see how they could go off-the-rails in a catastrophic way.

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NYT: Paul Krugman insults Ohio

NYT: What’s the matter with Ohio?

These East coast elitist dickheads can’t be very bright because they keep trying to win us over with these articles about why we are so dim.

If you aren’t familiar with him, Paul Krugman is the George Costanza of Nobel prize winning economists.  Krugman could take the opinion that was the exact opposite of everything he thinks, and he would be more correct and respected.

For many years, Ohio has been thought of as a bellwether state: With rare exceptions, whoever won Ohio in a presidential election won the nation as a whole. But in 2020, Donald Trump won Ohio by about eight points even as Joe Biden led the national popular vote by more than four points and, of course, won the Electoral College vote.

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