What we’re reading (11/8)
“This Election’s Winners And Losers” (Bloomberg). Interesting opinion from GMU economics prof. Tyler Cowen. Among the winners: “American Democracy.” As Cowen writes, “[m]aybe this one is premature, but so far the U.S. has held a closely contested election under pandemic conditions. Turnout was much higher than usual, and so far there hasn’t been much election-related violence. Could it be that the system really works?”
“Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Other Tech Luminaries React To Biden’s Victory” (CNBC). “Tech CEOs and Silicon Valley luminaries congratulated President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris after their victory in the U.S. presidential election Saturday. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos celebrated Biden and Harris’ win in an Instagram post. Bezos said their victory signifies that ‘unity, empathy and decency are not characteristics of a bygone era.’ […] Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who has been a vocal critic of Trump’s coronavirus response, said he looked forward to ‘working with the new administration and leaders on both sides in Congress on getting the surging pandemic under control.’”
“Prospering In The Pandemic, Some Feel Financial Guilt And Gratitude” (Wall Street Journal). “Feelings of financial guilt have plagued many prospering in the uneven economic recovery. In some cases, those emotions along with gratitude are changing spending behavior. ‘Some of my clients have expressed feelings of survivor’s guilt, wondering why they are doing so well when others aren’t,’ said Sue Peck, a financial planner in Madison, Wis. As Friday’s jobs report showed, the labor market is healing but the recovery still has a ways to go. The unemployment rate and the 11 million people out of work are still double pre-pandemic levels.”
“The Digital Nomads Did Not Prepare For This” (New York Times). “Americans have never been especially good at vacation. Before Covid-19, they were leaving unused hundreds of millions of paid days off. They even created a work-vacation hybrid — the workation. The idea: Travel to a nice place, work during the day and then, in theory, enjoy the scenery in the off hours. In pandemic times, the digital nomads have simply made workation a permanent state. The bad news is it’s the worst of both worlds. They should be enjoying themselves in their new, beautiful surroundings. But they can’t enjoy themselves, because work beckons. The anxious self-optimization pingpongs between ‘Why aren’t I living my best life?’ and ‘Why aren’t I killing it at work?’”
“Secularization And The Tribulations Of the American Working-Class” (Brian Wheaton, Harvard). Potentially fascinating working paper by a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard. From the abstract: “[o]ver the past several decades, working-class America has been plagued by multiple adverse trends: a sharp increase in social isolation, an even sharper increase in single parenthood, a decline in male labor force participation rates, and a decline in generational economic mobility – amongst other things. Material economic factors have been unable to fully explain these phenomena, often yielding mixed results or – in some cases, such as that of single parenthood – lacking explanatory power altogether. I study the decline in religiosity and…find that religious decline has a strong adverse effect on the aforementioned variables. […] I find that, for most outcomes, the bulk of the effect is driven by religious attendance.”
