Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• 2019: The year revolt went global

  Beyond Washington DC, Donald Trump, and impeachment, there lies a great big world - and that world, at the moment, is being convulsed by a remarkable number of revolts against political authority.

  Everywhere, the mobilizing force has been the wish to strike at the established order.
  Politics in the digital age revolve around information. A safe assumption when thinking about this environment is that everyone is aware of everything, globally. This sets up powerful demonstration effects: protesters in one nation can learn from those in another. One reason for the spread of anti-establishment revolts may well be their improved capacity to evade suppression.

• Why Your Brain Needs Exercise

  The evolutionary history of humans explains why physical activity is important for brain health

  Following up on this work in animals, researchers carried out a series of investigations that determined that in humans, just like in rodents, aerobic exercise leads to the production of BDNF and augments the structure-that is, the size and connectivity-of key areas of the brain, including the hippocampus. In a randomized trial conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by Kirk Erickson and Arthur Kramer, 12 months of aerobic exercise led to an increase in BDNF levels, an increase in the size of the hippocampus and improvements in memory in older adults.
  ...
  In studies of healthy adults, Anderson-Hanley and her colleagues have also shown that simultaneously exercising and playing a cognitive challenging video game may elicit a greater increase in circulating BDNF than exercise alone. These findings further bolster the idea that BDNF is instrumental in bringing about exercise-induced brain benefits.

• Physicians urge greater focus on role of chronic inflammation in overall health

  The condition has been linked with diseases such as cancer and diabetes, and may help cause half of all deaths worldwide.

• Via Negativa: Adding to Your Life By Subtracting

  Just as effective as adding something to our lives, if not more so, is subtracting the things that might be holding us back.
  ...
  Not only can eliminating bad habits be a highly effective way to improve your life, it's also often a lot easier than creating a new, positive habit. Positive habits take a lot of motivation and willpower to cultivate. But not doing something is much simpler.

• The Jordan Peterson Phenomenon

  Have Archetype - Will Travel, by skeptic Michael Shermer

  Peterson waxed archetypal, calling religious claims, mythological stories, and literary masterpieces "meta-true" and "more true than scientific truth" inasmuch as they are mediated by socio-political and cultural factors related to our Darwinian need to survive and reproduce. There is no "truly independent" truth, he says, only useful or not useful truths pertaining to our evolutionary needs. The use-value of a claim at a particular time and place is what makes it true.
  ...
  Peterson's magnum opus Maps of Meaning, in fact, is subtitled The Architecture of Belief, a 564-page mishmash of evolutionary theory, biology, psychology, philosophy, literature, comparative mythology, theology, the bible, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Jung, Freud, and others that may have been more accurately subtitled The Architecture of Archetypes.

• Most streamed songs

  via Spotify

  Most-streamed songs of 2019 (global)
  1. Senorita - Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes
  2. Bad Guy - Billie Eilish
  3. Sunflower - Post Malone
  4. 7 Rings - Ariana Grande
  5. Old Town Road - Lil Nas X
  Most-streamed songs of the 2010s
  1. Shape Of You Ed Sheeran
  2. One Dance Drake
  3. Rockstar Post Malone
  4. Closer The Chainsmokers
  5. Thinking Out Loud Ed Sheeran

Some links related to current United States economics.

• Why The Right Should Care About Income Inequality

  From the conservative right!

  Widening inequality and slowing social mobility really is a problem in America, and government policies championed by the elite have exacerbated this inequality. Because the solutions fit naturally with conservatism, it's scandalous for the conservative party in America to not propose solutions-and it's politically suicidal for Republicans to pretend like widening inequality isn't a problem.
  ...
  The Solution Is Families First and Middle Class Capitalism.

• Job loss predictions over rising minimum wages haven't come true

  Eighteen states rang in 2019 with minimum wage increases - some that will ultimately rise as high as $15 an hour - and so far, opponents' dire predictions of job losses have not come true.
  ...
  Opposition to higher minimum wage laws is increasingly based in ideology and orthodoxy rather than real-world evidence, economists say.

• The great American labor paradox: Plentiful jobs, most of them bad

  Quality vs. Quantity

  The numbers tell one story. Unemployment in the US is the lowest it's been in 50 years. More Americans have jobs than ever before. Wage growth keeps climbing.

  People tell a different story. Long job hunts. Trouble finding work with decent pay. A lack of predictable hours.
  ...
  Right now the JQI is just shy of 81, which implies that there are 81 high-quality jobs for every 100 low-quality ones. While that's a slight improvement from early 2012 - the JQI's 30-year nadir - it's still way down from 2006, the eve of the housing market crash, when the economy regularly supported about 90 good jobs per 100 lousy ones.

• The World Has Gone Mad and the System Is Broken

  Ray Dalio

  They are doing this because they have an enormous amount of money to invest that has been, and continues to be, pushed on them by central banks that are buying financial assets in their futile attempts to push economic activity and inflation up. The reason that this money that is being pushed on investors isn't pushing growth and inflation much higher is that the investors who are getting it want to invest it rather than spend it.
  ...
  At the same time, large government deficits exist and will almost certainly increase substantially, which will require huge amounts of more debt to be sold by governments-amounts that cannot naturally be absorbed without driving up interest rates at a time when an interest rate rise would be devastating for markets and economies because the world is so leveraged long
  ...
  At the same time, pension and healthcare liability payments will increasingly be coming due while many of those who are obligated to pay them don't have enough money to meet their obligations.

• What are the Real Reasons for Declining Productivity?

  Mike Shedlock / Mish

  Real Productivity Decline, 10 Simple Explanations

  1. The internet boom and the rising productivity associated with it were very real. The rate of change in internet-related improvements has fallen since 2000.
  2. Decreasing marginal utility of robots.
  3. The Fed's easy money policies sponsored numerous corporate zombies. Those zombies survive only because of ultra-easy financing. Zombie companies are unproductive, by definition. Things are even worse in the EU because of negative rates.
  4. The Fed's easy money policies also sponsored a "store on every corner". There are far more retail stores, restaurants, fast food establishments, and outlet malls than needed.
  5. Marginal stores have to be manned by somebody and they are, by increasingly marginal employees as the unemployment rate declines.
  6. Demographics. As skilled workers retire, those workers are replaced by workers with lower skills.
  7. Health issues in general. Obesity and drug-related issues are on the rise as are time off for those reasons.
  8. Militant unions demand and receiving unwarranted pay, time off, and control over workplace conditions.
  9. Corporate buybacks mainly benefit CEOs and executives who cash out their shares and options. It takes careful investment, not reckless expansion, not buybacks to have productivity gains.
  10. It's the debt, stupid. Fiscal deficits are totally out of control. Interest on the national debt by itself is $574 billion. What are we getting for it?

• Manhattan's Retail Industry Is Imploding Before The Holiday Season

  Average asking rents across Upper Fifth Avenue, especially between 42nd and 49th streets, saw one of the steepest drops in retail rents in Q3, falling 25% YoY, reported Bloomberg, citing a new report from Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.

  As shown below, Lower Fifth, Broadway, Madison Avenue, SoHo, and Herald Square retail rents over the same period were in free fall. This is a reflection of the weakening consumer base ahead of the holiday season. There were several outliers, Upper Fifth and Times Square retail rents over the same period marginally declined. Meanwhile, the Meatpacking district saw rents jump 7.3% in Q3 YoY.