Bitchin Dave's Newsletter - August 18th
Wealth is so out of control these days. The ΓΌber wealthy have grown to a point where they have become oligarchs (actual definition: An oligarch is an extremely rich and powerful person who uses extreme wealth and business ties to control or influence government and society. The word comes from ancient Greek terms meaning "to rule by the few")
Back in 1990, there were just 66 people in the US who had a billion dollars or more. And the top 1% of the population controlled a little under $5 trillion in total.
Today, there are about 3,400 people with a billion or more (that's more than a 50 fold increase, and the curve is something like exponential growth). And the amount of wealth controlled by the top 1% is around $56 trillion (a nearly 12 fold increase!).
But the number of people in the top 1% only increased by about 20% (1.08 million people > 1.33 million people). Essentially meaning the group at the very top accumulated most of the wealth.
And the crazy part is that this increase is almost exclusively "new money," accumulated in an environment where de-regulation is key. Tax rules are favorable, companies can do what they want, and the people that run companies are profiting off the backs of their under-appreciated employees.
It's crazy, and can lead to nowhere good in the long run. We can and should be taxing them more. I have no issues with someone accumulating wealth, but at what point is it "too much" or excessive? Seems to me that there should be a threshold (IMHO $50 million is more than enough for anyone - and is generational in nature), and in excess of that, you have to contribute to society in some way - through taxation or by having to move it into a charitable endeavor. Of course, this doesn't stop one from greater accumulation, and someone could still be a billionaire, but their tax burden would be greater on most of their wealth.
On that note, I recently re-watched the re-imagined adaptation of Sherlock Holmes called "Elementary" which came out about 15 years ago. Holmes is still British, but he's solving crimes in New York with the help of Watson, played by Lucy Liu. It is entertaining, but takes a few modern-day liberties.
One of those liberties is to have storylines around Holmes' father, Morland. He comes from old money, and has a lot of power in the world to do as he pleases. At some point in the story arc, new money comes into the picture and starts aggressively moving into Morland's domain. He can stave it off at first, and then must start calling on other old money players to band together. In the end, he gets betrayed by a group of his old friends; they sell out to these new players, and they set him up to be killed off because he can't (or won't?) adapt.
What we're seeing play out around us is that storyline to a point. The new money players are edging out the old money - and it becomes a matter of them adapting, or they fall behind. Life is imitating art to a degree.
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That job may never have existed!
Over on LinkedIn, someone posted a pretty good article about how the job market works with AI and some oddities with jobs not actually existing. It's a pretty good long-form piece that I have republished on my site. You can read it here:
Two stories caught my attention this week related to Disney. And they made me scratch my head…
The first was about the sale of the Lakers. Bob Iger, as the CEO of Disney, threaded a bit of a needle in protecting “his” company from the orange menace. Iger was no fan of the convicted felon, and is reportedly a democrat who sometimes used to express some views that ran that direction. But he decided he wanted to buy the basketball team, and partnered with Jared Kushner's brother to complete the sale.
I would argue that the Kushner family, long connected to the convicted felon, are about as close as you can get to him. It’s just so weird, and reminds us that people - especially the wealthy elite - are only in it for themselves and are willing to put anything aside to get what they want.
The second story was about Pat Mcaffee, the personality at ESPN who often espouses a point of view that supports the maga movement, yet claims he doesn’t want to get political with his show.
For the record, several others who espoused the opposing view were actually fired from ESPN for doing essentially the same thing. Yet, here we are.
Recently, Pat became the highest paid personality, and ESPN laid off a large number of people (who kept it about the sports and could be considered actual journalists), presumably to lean into Pat's POV - for ratings one assumes.
And what does Pat do next? He has the convicted felon on his show, and then appears with him at something called “the patriot games” (which were laughably stupid, as you might guess).
Thus throwing out any pretenses of “not being political” … how silly this all became. Very quickly.
Disney, what are you doing here? (Its rhetorical! They are protecting the company from the wrath of the orange menace, duh)...
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I can remember the teachers in my kids’ preschool making slime! From a mixture of cornstarch and school glue. It’s safe, non toxic, and fun to play with.
I made it at home to play with too.
Well it turns out that there’s an interesting thing that happens in chemistry that makes this a kind of a unique substance - and it has other uses.
You can read the details of how it works here:
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Here’s a breakthrough in Alzheimer’s research. Scientists have known that the plaque buildup is the main factor in the onset of Alzheimer’s. There are various things one can do to try and protect against the plaque buildup and the clearing of it.
But now Eli Lilly has a drug they are testing. It’s an anti-amyloid medication and in early trials it is clearing the plaque efficiently.
More needs to be done, but it has some promise as a treatment. And probably will lead to other things as well.
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Essentially, researchers used the concept of a clay pot that is soaked in water and expanded on it.
The science is that said clay pot will use evaporative cooling to reduce the ambient temperature. And there’s a fun little science experiment wherein you can take a bottle of soda and cover it with a wet clay pot to cool the drink over a short amount of time.
The group looked at shapes that can more evenly disperse the evaporative effect and can make those shapes using a 3D print.
Now there’s a use case I can rally behind.
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Last week, there was a full solar eclipse, visible from Northern Europe, and up into Iceland.
I know some people who saw it and their comment was: Beautiful.
And that reminds me that I need to point out to the slower among us... that the Earth is, in fact, round. Its easily demonstrable via an eclipse.
And please enjoy some pictures!
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