The Sunday Drive - 07/02/2023 Edition
Musings and Meanderings of a Financial Provocateur
👋🏼 Hello friends,
Greetings from Saratoga Springs, NY! This Tuesday, for the 247th time, we say Happy Birthday to America. 🇺🇸
Now, let's take it easy and enjoy a leisurely Sunday Drive around the internet.
🎶 Vibin'
To commemorate the upcoming Fourth of July holiday, this week I’m vibin’ to Whitney Houston’s performance of the Star Spangled Banner at the 1991 Super Bowl.
The purity of her voice, and the honesty of her performance literally brought tears to my eyes. I am again reminded of what a spectacular artist Whitney was, and what an amazing country we live in.
💭 Quote of the Week
“I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.” — Bob Dylan
📈 Chart of the Week
I think that the dramatic uptick in retirements since the Pandemic has a lot to do with what the resulting lockdowns and remote work situations taught us.
Many of us had been in a career, doing essentially the same things for multiple decades, and then almost overnight had that daily work routine turned upside down. Seeing for ourselves that we could operate effectively without the location related restrictions we’d long lived with, led a lot of people to think differently about their work lives.
I really believe that a lot of folks who’ve “retired” in the last few years were essentially saying, if only to themselves, “I’m not done yet. I’m just done doing THAT.”
I do think that we will see, in fact are seeing, many of those recent retirees returning to the world of work, just in new and different ways - remote, part time, entrepreneurial and other ways of work.
Given the demographic headwinds of an aging population, we will need people to remain productive members of our society for a lot longer than was historically the case. Our economic growth depends on it.
🚙 Interesting Drive-By's
📈 In Defense of the Fed - from Jack Raines
In June 2022, economist and former US Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers said that we would need “five years of unemployment above 5% to contain inflation.”
One year later, it appears that Summers’ speech actually top-ticked inflation, stagflation is nowhere in sight, and the US unemployment rate still sits near all-time-lows at 3.7%.
💡 Culture is Contagious - by Shep Hyken
It’s the leader’s job to define the customer service vision, ensure it’s communicated, and be the role models demonstrating how customers and employees are to be treated.
In addition, leadership and management must defend the culture. If any part of the team isn’t in alignment with the customer service vision, be it an individual or a department – or even an entire region for larger companies – they need to be coached and properly trained. Everybody needs to be headed in the same direction and delivering a certain level of service to both internal and external customers. It’s not just in the culture, it’s a philosophy to be embraced by everyone in the organization.
📉 The Airbnb Collapse is Real - Twitter Thread from Nick Gerli
I’m always on the lookout for issues that could derail the U.S. economy and lead us into the recession that so many have predicted. This sobering look at the potential impact of Airbnb’s revenue slowdown on the U.S. housing market is definitely something to monitor:
Revenues are down nearly 50% in cities like Phoenix and Austin.
Watch out for a wave of forced selling from Airbnb owners later this year in the areas hit hardest by the revenue collapse.
🤔 Stress and Belonging - by Douglas Tsio for the Modern Elder Academy
Stress is related to obesity, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, depression, gastrointestinal problems, and asthma. Medical research estimates as much as 90 percent of illness and disease is stress-related.
🤓 One of the impacts of the iPhone on our behavioral norms:
👋🏼 Parting Thought
If you have any cool articles or ideas that might be interesting for future Sunday Drive-by's, please send them along or tweet 'em at me.
I hope you have a relaxing weekend and a great week ahead. See you next Sunday...
Your faithful financial provocateur,
-Mike
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