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Jobs, Death And White (Collar) Privilege: 2024 Set For Launch!
The white collar world will begrudgingly start pretending to work again this week after taking pretty much the whole of December off to revel in undeserved privilege and creature comforts obtained on leverage.
For market participants, there's plenty to digest once the New Year's Veuve is vomited and Perrier purged.
The headliner is obviously the US jobs report, which people whose job it is to make guesses about jobs reckon will print 170,000.
If that seems like a generic number to you -- i.e.
You really make a guy wanna quit his pointless office job and do something useful for a living.
Thanks for another year of great information and musings. And for wrapping it up on a high note. You have the very rare gift of being able to inform, educate and entertain all at the same time. Although I doubt you’re the type that resolves anything simply because of a date change, if you were inclined, I would hope you’d resolve to stay just the way you are.
That’s a very kind comment. I appreciate it.
Wow, liking this spicy tone to end the year, may 2024 be more of the same =)
It’s a US presidential election year, we are going to need as much spice as possible to get through it.
Signature stuff. Grateful for the incomparable flourish to cap this year. From all of us around the edges we applaud your efforts, skills, and humanity.
Keep on Trucking, Comrade H!
Putting the game in proper repose a much appreciated necessity.
I think, based on anecdotals, that small businesses and lower income households are having a substantially harder time, economically speaking, than large corporations and higher income households.
Large + higher are cruising in smoothing air at Angels 30 with champagne flutes, while small + lower are lurching through stormbursts and dodging hilltops.
I also think, based on nothing, that the fortunes of large + higher manifest in headline economic data more, and more quickly, than the struggles of small + lower which tend to show up in the secondary instruments.
If the pilot adjusts the glide path and flare to give small + lower a soft landing, large + higher may see the far end of the runway disappear below as they overshoot into a no landing. If the pilot comes down faster to grease the landing for large + higher, small + lower may get a gear-collapsing, belly-crunching hard-ish or at least not-very-soft landing.
Is the pilot watching the instruments of headline economic data, or the secondary dials?
FWIW, income inequality dropped in the last few years
Yeah, buddy. I can feel the egalitarian utopia in the air everywhere I go in America these days. Just yesterday I caught a whiff of Chanel 5 on a homeless lady. “Miss, is that the legendary ‘extravagant floral richness’ of 5 I smell?” I wondered. She didn’t answer, though. “What a bitch,” I thought to myself. “Give ’em some perfume and watch ’em get arrogant.” Later, when I passed her again sitting in the exact same spot, I realized she was actually dead, frozen solid!
We can regret a situation like the high inequality in the US while noting the trend has stopped getting worse… at least for a couple of years.
Also – homelessness, for the part that is not mental health related/drug abuse related is fundamentally about housing supply. I am not a US citizen so my ‘support’ means zilch but I support higher density and reforming zoning rules to allow for more housing in parts of the country people seem to want to live in (California, NYC etc).
From what I’ve read, income inequality declined on some measures during the pandemic (stimulus etc) and has resumed increasing so far in the post-pandemic. See e.g. Fed survey October 2023.
I am hopeful that labor supply trends will increase labor share and wages trendwise, although the capitaltechbros are all in on AI to nip that in the bud and more besides.
Extent of income inequality is also different from divergence in how higher / lower income are doing in the current economy.
H- thanks for another year of great digital ink. The best $7 I sped every month. Happy New Year !
“Spend”
Entertaining and informative. This is why I keep paying my $7/month.
As for 2024, I’m just hoping for a net positive in several aspects of life.
“…turtles on Gabbana leashes.” Oh my lord, this was a gem of an article, thank you, H.