BC ECONOMY
Saved by @jacobhtml

1. Ok, so most people have a vague sense of frustration that the last Dem administration didn't do enough on the economy. But it's still just a vague sense. So my org wrote a report showing in detail, industry sector-by-sector, what policymakers did wrong.

 2. We also wrote one pager descriptions of every sector. For instance, in media and telecommunications, there were multiple massive mergers (Comcast-NBC, Disney's roll-up, Charter-Time Warner). https://t.co/es3jzAGVKL
3. Consequences were bad. The median weekly compensation of writer-producers on television and online series declined 23 percent between 2014 and 2016 despite record profits in the industry and peak demand for programming. https://t.co/es3jzAGVKL
4. Health care, consolidation was bad. "From 2010 to 2015, Sanofi, Novo Nordisk, and Eli Lilly raised their insulin prices by 168 percent, 169 percent, and 325 percent, respectively; the three are essentially the only manufacturers of insulin in the U.S."
https://t.co/u4YqvTg06a
5. Newspapers, same story. Since 2005, America has lost 2,100 newspapers, one fourth of its total, leaving 1,800 communities without any local news coverage whatsoever. https://t.co/ULmsqCVFRt
6. Defense and aerospace - same story of the ill-effects of consolidation. "From 2008 to 2018, the average cost of a Pentagon weapons system jumped by 13 percent, without accounting for inflation."
https://t.co/tXLRSjGY5M
7. Airlines, same thing. Obama admin fostered three big mergers, United-Continental (2010), Southwest-AirTran (2010), and American-U.S. Airways (2013), and allowed consolidation among online travel agencies. Prices, bag fees, complaints up, wages down.
https://t.co/oAya4BUtSm
8. Agriculture, same thing. Collapse in dairy farming, control of chicken contract growers, massive power of meatpackers, etc. https://t.co/lHVWu02Pgb
9. Big tech, Google and Facebook both grew to utter dominance in online ads, social networking, search, maps, and video from 2009-2017, largely because of the dozens of significant mergers. Obama WH didn't block a single merger. https://t.co/F9lFaaToaQ
10. Same thing for Amazon. Using predatory tactics, it grew from a retailer to a core infrastructure provider across multiple markets, including e-commerce, retailing, logistics, cloud computing, voice assistants, security, and government contracting. https://t.co/PcW84Zydql
11. Finally there's labor and monopoly. Just a disaster. The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission challenged zero mergers or acquisitions based solely on the mergers’ effects on workers. https://t.co/dQrCe8MkYB
12. In 2016, a bipartisan FTC unanimously opposed the city of Seattle’s attempt to allow Uber and Lyft drivers to bargain collectively.
https://t.co/dQrCe8MkYB
13. After DOJ settled charges against Silicon Valley companies for colluding not to recruit each other’s workers, a class action lawsuit won $415 million for the workers, though the suit estimated the damages at $3 billion. https://t.co/dQrCe8uJA1
14. People have a vague sense things got worse because they *did* get worse. Wages down, prices up, quality down. These changes just happen by themselves. Each happened because of a discrete *choice* by a policymaker. https://t.co/I1fUawW87f
15. People distrust the government because our policymakers showed themselves worthy of distrusting. Joe Biden can win this trust back. And he is running a very different administration than either Obama or Trump did. And we are all learning.
https://t.co/I1fUawW87f
16. @noamscheiber has an important piece on how Joe Biden thinks about the world. Biden wants an 'industrial policy' to finance the growth of domestic production. That's excellent, but he has to recognize the problem of corporate power as a complement. https://t.co/aWmjAImjbU

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1/ Unit economic for founders thread.

Despite being a founder and a student of the subject, I missed out on a key point growing up.

Length of relationship with your customers, order frequency, product usage and utility matter.

They didn't teach me this in business school.

2/ Structured right, products used daily vs weekly vs monthly vs yearly lead to different profitability and scalability paths.

Quiz. Which business would you pick?

a) Enterprise software - US$ 250k one time license
b) Enterprise software - US$ 30k/month recurring subscription

3/ Sound's obvious? Which one did you pick?

Twice in my life I picked A. They were both great businesses, but they didn't compare to B. Especially in the long run.

Looking back, with hindsight, I know I should have picked B.

Why?

4/ Bringing in customers is hard.

When those customers leave after a few orders, your investment in that relationship is written off.

But it is not just about the relationship or investment. It is also about scale.

What are the easiest ways to scale a business?

5/ Think about it?

a) Get more customers - acquire
b) Get existing customers to order again - retain
c) Increase order size - up sell
d) Increase order frequency - cross sell / new use case
e) Get existing customers to get you new customers - referral

(b) to (e) are free.
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Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham
Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham
@paulgp
My friend @itsafronomics wanted to know the breakdown of student debt by income, so I pulled data from the SCF.

Student debt is more concentrated amongst high earners, but disproportionately amongst Black borrowers. The plot below plots the average within Income Quartiles.
1/n


But those are the averages. What's the share that's above 10k? (This is the Biden current cutoff for debt forgiveness, so a useful benchmark).

For comparison, 20% of white Americans have student debt, and 31% of Black Americans.


Let's contrast that with say, above 20k. I was surprised at how high the share remains.


When we get to 50k of student debt, or more, we see it's only about 5% of the US, and around 8% of Black Americans. Strikingly, it's a huge share of high income Black Americans (this is a known fact in the education literature, I believe).


So what does this look like put together? Overall, we see a higher share of Americans with debt above 10k, and 20k. We would cover a decent amount with 10k, but miss Black Americans especially.
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Rohit Lamba
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@rohlamba
0/ A holiday economic theory reading list. Some of my favorite pieces on theory that can be read with minimal sweat, but with the maximal intellectual reward. In no particular order:

1/ Myerson 1999. "Nash equilibrium & history of economic theory." JEL. Written with characteristic Myersonian elegance. "how a few short papers by a young mathematician achieved one of the great watershed breakthroughs in the history of social

2/ Blackwell & DeGroot 1986. “A conversation with David Blackwell.” Stat Science. After his PhD at 21, "There were 105 black colleges at that time & I wrote 105 letters of application." Beautiful discussion on a gamut of ideas & his intellectual life.

3/ Geanakoplos 1992. “Common Knowledge.” JEP. Zuper piece, lucidly written. Lots of interesting puzzles, great for teaching. When Moriarty says "All I have to say has already crossed your mind," Holmes retorts "then possibly my answer has crossed yours."

4/ Morris 1995. "The common prior assumption in economic theory.” E&P. This beauty was Stephen's first chap of PhD thesis! Does rationality imply CP? Does relaxing CP make theorizing uninteresting? Is failure of CP a failure of information processing?
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@kph3k
The “Should we get rid of the GRE?” conversation and the “Should we pay undergrad RAs $15/hour?” conversation have three things in common that I think are really unfortunate — 🧵

(For the record, I personally think we should keep the GRE and that the minimum wage should be $15 but I know a lot more about psychometrics than labor economics so I’m more confident about the former opinion)

1- lack of clarity regarding whether a proposed change is seen as a morally good END in itself, versus a MEANS to another end, and if the latter what that end is

1b - for instance, I don’t care whether or not capital punishment deters crime; it’s instrumental purpose is irrelevant to the fact that I think it’s a moral wrong

1c -for the GRE, do you think testing is Bad, regardless of its utility? Or do you think that under representation of some racial groups is Bad? Or do you think the racial wealth gap is Bad? people rarely clarify what ultimate wrong they are trying to right
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Brian Wesbury
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@wesbury
Inflation Is Coming!

Some say: Inflation didn’t rise after 2008-2015 Fed QE, so it won’t rise this time. Here are the problems with that argument.

1) From 2008-2015 regulators hammered the banks, so while the Fed’s balance sheet expanded, M2 did not accelerate.

2) In 2020, we used the banks to push out money, the opposite of the first round of QE. PPP loans were financed through banks and unemployment checks were direct-deposited.
3) The M2 measure of money is up more than 25% in the past 12 months.

4) That alone, 25%+ M2 growth, is enough, but we are compounding the problems.
5) Regulating fossil fuel production drives energy prices up.
6) Ag, industrial & transportation are energy intensive, and many claim they are bad for the environment. Result: higher prices.

7) Federal government borrowing and deficit spending encourages more Fed money printing, and artificially lifts demand.
8) Higher tax rates, rising minimum wage, and big government crowd out the private sector; reducing supply.
9) Demand up; Supply down! Inflation is coming.
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A brief thread on Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, the crazy con man who is now claiming to have hacked into the Georgia voting machines in Fulton County. 90s kids and tech aficionados might remember Jovan as the inventor of the CueCat, the dumbest gadget of all time.

Also, for anyone who wants to claim that Jovan Hutton Pulitzer (not his given name, but one he changed legally after the CueCat debacle) invented QR Codes: he did not. Like that other right-wing crazy man who claimed to have invented email, Jovan didn’t invent QR Codes.

He did invent the CueCat, a product that somehow raised $185 million dollars for a tethered barcode scanner for magazines and newspapers, so you could get ads from your ads. As I said, the dumbest product of all time. Good backup barcode scanners after they were hacked, however

Oh, that’s another thing. When CueCat was a thing, its systems were hacked. I guess that’s what makes Jovan a security expert. His bankrupt company from 20 years ago was hacked and widely mocked. He’s a genius.

In recent years, Jovan pivoted to being a treasure hunter who was featured on and widely mocked on Curse of Oak Island, because the man is insane.
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These setups I found from the following 4 accounts:

1. @Pathik_Trader
2. @sourabhsiso19
3. @ITRADE191
4. @DillikiBiili

Share for the benefit of everyone.

Here are the setups from @Pathik_Trader Sir first.

1. Open Drive (Intraday Setup explained)


Bactesting results of Open Drive


2. Two Price Action setups to get good long side trade for intraday.

1. PDC Acts as Support
2. PDH Acts as


Example of PDC/PDH Setup given
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00:30: Welcomes viewers and uses points out that his videos are only getting attention b/c they're 'horrific'. Directs folk to his Youtube page. So already clout hunting.

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1:30 "Laughing and joking aside, here's somebodys front garden." Proceeds to show litter and claim its thrown from windows and this is 'common'. I know a handful of streets with litter issues like this, but its neither common nor unique to #govanhill and other deprived areas.

2:10 "Don't be under any illusion I'm only showing you the bad bits" - only shows you the bad bits.

3:45: He's had offers of help, but hes said no because hes not responsible for 'anybody elses safety' Good lord.

5:01: "Its not that bad. But its not all good either" -Correct

6:00: TW: child abuse - He starts claiming to have been contacted by a health professional and told about child abuse 'in the area'. Huge ethical issues here as the 'professional' who has 'been in the game a long time' is reporting to Facebook Dude and not authorities.
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