What We’re Reading
A 15-year-old describes Instagram:
“My meme account has definitely made me more independent,” Rowan said. “It’s made me more mature in a sense, because I get a lot of crap from people daily. I developed a thick skin from that. I’ve learned what’s appropriate for something, what’s a little too far. I’ve learned what people like and don’t like. I’ve learned to put other people’s interests kind of ahead of mine. It’s more responsibility as well. If I don’t post for a day, people will start asking questions and I’ll start feeling bad. I could have gained a lot of followers that day. I could have gotten money that day.”
There is a deep disconnect in the way the U.S. conceives of its obligation to children. Most Americans accept—even demand—the public subsidy of education from the moment kids turn 5 and enter kindergarten to the day they graduate from a state university or community college. But from birth to the fifth birthday, children are on their own—or, more precisely, their parents are. This arrangement is plainly weird: Parents must bear the highest burdens of child-rearing when they are younger, typically poorer, and less established in their career.
Generational wealth:
Fraction of all US wealth owned by Boomers & Gen-Xers when the average member of each was age 35:
— Kurt Andersen (@KBAndersen) November 24, 2019
Boomers, 1989 21%
GenX, 2008 8%
The average Millennial turns 35 in 2023. Right now they own 3%.
There will surely be political implications.https://t.co/j1pNrt8mll
The paths that lead to new ideas tend to look unpromising. If they looked promising, other people would already have explored them. How do the people who do great work discover these paths that others overlook? The popular story is that they simply have better vision: because they’re so talented, they see paths that others miss. But if you look at the way great discoveries are made, that’s not what happens. Darwin didn’t pay closer attention to individual species than other people because he saw that this would lead to great discoveries, and they didn’t. He was just really, really interested in such things.
Nobel prize winner Robert Shiller doesn’t track performance:
Q: Do you think of yourself as someone smart enough to pick winners in the stock market?
A: Well, I actually think I’m smart enough to pick winners. I’ve always believed in value investing. Some stocks just get talked about, and people pay all sorts of attention to them, and everyone wants to invest in them, and they bid the price up and they are no longer a good buy. Other stocks, they are boring. There is no news about them – they are making toilet paper or something like that – and their price gets too low. So as a matter of routine, you buy low-priced stocks and sell high-priced stocks.
Q: What’s your personal track record: Are you more up than down?
A: I have never done a personal analysis. I have to do that. But I believe that I’ve done well in timing the market, although not perfectly.
Have a good weekend.