Category: Economics (Page 2 of 6)

WSJ: Go Woke, Go Broke, but not for Ben and Jerry.

June 26, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield are about as well known for their progressive politics as they are for quirky ice cream flavors like Chunky Monkey and Phish Food.

Their experiment in melding business with social justice for years seemed like a model to which many in the corporate world were warming up. And then attitudes cooled.

Ben and Jerry are old people who don’t realize the world has changed. When they started making ice cream, crunchy progressives wanted to save the whales, recycle and wear hemp clothing.

Ben and Jerry didn’t notice that modern progressives are antisemitic, despise law and order, and insist on libraries bringing in deviant sex clowns to read queerotic porn to children.

I’d like to believe that the corporate world is less interested in pushing a divisive progressive agenda.

NYT: Financial Independence Retire Early

June 15, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

NYT: Retiring Early

Life after early retirement: the elephant in the room. What to do after the cruises, the skydiving, the teetering stack of books on the night stand? The main danger of FIRE is that you might be running hard away from something rather than toward it — that you’re propelled only by the too-nebulous idea of escape. And then, even for those who lay out a clear road map for decades of nirvana, the loneliness can eat at you.

FIRE means Financial Independence Retire Early.

The article is helpful for people who don’t understand money. Life works better if you understand yourself.

Movie theaters are dinosaurs.

June 6, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Box Office Mojo provides up-to-date ticket sales for movies that are in theatrical release. Looking back 20 years, there is a trend that hasn’t been commented on elsewhere. Based on the trend, movie theaters will close and more movies will be sequels.

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

May 31, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

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?

Your favorite brands made a big mistake.

May 30, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Vox: Companies don’t care about Woke.

Have you ever wondered why people you know to be smart and reasonable, can be so politically different from you? People get their information from different sources and this article is a perfect example. Nothing is necessarily wrong, it just misses the point and leaves out some important parts.

The Happiness Index

May 21, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Happiness Gap

Because I just finished The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt, the World Happiness Report is of interest.

The US is ranked #23 on the Happiness Index. Only two spots up from Mexico, and 8 spots below Canada. I’ve been to Canada, it ain’t so great.

NYT: Renting is a lifestyle.

May 19, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

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.

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

May 16, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

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.

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

May 12, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

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.

April 30, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

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.