My end of week morning train WFH reads:
• Vaccinated Democratic Counties Are Leading the Economic Recovery Data show America’s output is concentrated in counties that Biden won—which are better protected against delta (Businessweek) but see Remember When September Was Going to Be the Return to Normal in the U.S.? The delta variant is jeopardizing the economy’s long-awaited Fall comeback. (Businessweek)
• Price Rules Everything Around Me Prices are what drive narratives around asset classes, not the other way around. It’s not that crypto actually had a revolutionary change in the past month and then prices moved accordingly. Rather, prices went up and now people are attributing that change to some fundamental change in the space. (Of Dollars And Data)
• How Low Can Fund Fees Go? The average expense ratio for investors has fallen by more than half since 2000. (Morningstar)
• The death of the job What if paid work were no longer the centerpiece of American life? Since about the 1940s, Americans have been encouraged to look to their jobs for nearly all of life’s necessities: a living wage, health insurance, and retirement benefits, as well as intangibles like friendship, identity, and a sense of purpose. But these benefits were never universal, and they became less and less common as the years went by.(Vox)
• Joe Rogan, confined to Spotify, is losing influence A Verge investigation shows how going exclusive stunted Rogan’s power (The Verge)
• Nurses Who Won’t Vax Threaten Staffing Shortages Front-line workers were already in tight supply. With almost 1 in 8 nursing professionals not planning to get a shot, the problem’s going to get worse. (Businessweek)
• Pro-Growth Isn’t Anti-Environment: Rising human prosperity can be be ecologically sustainable. De-growth is anti-human. (The Overshoot)
• Who Has the Cure for America’s Declining Birthrate? Canada. To continue America’s upward trajectory in the 21st century, the country must reverse its current demographic decline. The most expeditious way out might be if the federal government gave up its monopoly on immigration and allowed states to bring in workers from anywhere in the world, based on their own labor needs, without being held to federal quotas. (New York Times)
• The States Making Voting Easier While Georgia moves to restrict voting rights, Virginia and California offer models for legislation that expands ballot accessibility. (Bloomberg)
• Deflecting an Asteroid Before It Hits Earth May Take Multiple Bumps After years of shooting meteorites with a special gun owned by NASA, researchers highlighted challenges for a preferred method of planetary defense. (New York Times)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Joan Solotar, Blackstone’s Global Head of Private Wealth Solutions. PWS manages over 100 billion dollars of the private equity giant’s $684 billion in assets. She has been named to Barron’s 100 Most Influential Women in US Finance list.
Where the Delta Wave Has Driven Up Covid-19 Vaccinations
Source: New York Times
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