What we’re reading (8/24)
“How Costco Hacked The American Shopping Psyche” (New York Times). “In 2019, one quarter of U.S. consumers shopped at Costco. Today it is nearly one-third. Costco is the third-largest retailer in the world, behind only Amazon and Walmart. But the success of Costco goes far beyond hoarding. The company has hacked the psyche of the American consumer, appealing to both the responsible-shopping superego (‘Twelve cans of tuna for $18!’) and the buy-it-now id (‘I deserve that 98-inch flat screen’).”
“Preliminary Benchmark Revisions Wipe Out 30% Of Jobs Growth In The Past 16 Months” (Angry Bear). “Every month I write about the Jobs Report. But while it is timely, it is only an estimate. There is an actual census of over 95% of all employers that also gets reported, called the QCEW, and it is the “gold standard” of actual jobs growth (or loss). Its two drawbacks are that it is not seasonally adjusted, and it is reported almost 6 months after the end of the quarter it updates. Which is a lengthy introduction to saying that it was just reported through March of this year this morning. More importantly, the BLS preliminarily re-benchmarked all of its data beginning in March of last year. And which is a further introduction to saying that, as expected, job growth was a lot less late last year and earlier this year than we originally thought.”
“What We Know About Kamala Harris’s $5 Trillion Tax Plan So Far” (New York Times). “In a campaign otherwise light on policy specifics, Vice President Kamala Harris this week quietly rolled out her most detailed, far-ranging proposal yet: nearly $5 trillion in tax increases over a decade.”
“The Hell Of Self-Service Checkouts Is Becoming Kafkaesque” (The Telegraph). “The cost of living crisis hasn’t helped and supermarket chains are responding [to theft] with ever-more Kafkaesque security measures. For example, there are now shops where you can’t pass through an exit barrier until you’ve swiped your receipt. A friend recently went into a branch of Sainsbury’s on a futile quest for avocados, only to find she couldn’t leave as there were no assistants in sight and she had not forked out money. In the end, she had to buy some crisps solely to exit, which was effectively blackmail.”
“Messing Up The Closest Thing To A Sure Thing In The Stock Market” (Wall Street Journal). “Over the 10 years ended Dec. 31, 2023, Morningstar found, investors in the aggregate earned an average of 6.3% annually, or 1.1 percentage points less than the mutual funds and ETFs they owned. That echoes earlier findings from Morningstar and several academic and other studies. The consensus is clear: Investors typically underperform their investments, not just in mutual funds and ETFs, but in hedge funds and stocks as well.”
