This Time Will Be Different?
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Category Archives: Money Matters
This Is Why I’m Invested In AAPL
Are Right-Wing Boycotts Working?
Kind of. Insightful analysis.
Sentences to Ponder
“In Canada and Japan, public-university tuition is now about $5,000 a year. In Italy, Spain and Israel, it’s about $2,000. In France, Denmark and Germany, it’s essentially zero.”
From “Americans Are Losing Faith in the Value of College. Whose Fault is That?”
I Miss College Football
Semi-pro ball just isn’t the same.
My Cougie friends are homeless and Deion Sanders has turned over the Colorado roster of “student-athletes”. Neon Deion also got mad at some of his new “student-athletes” for not fighting during practice. Asked about the importance of team culture, he said:
“‘I’m not welcoming to that word, culture. That’s all I heard when I was in Jackson. Culture, culture, culture, culture, culture. Now culture, culture. What the heck does that mean?’
In this context, it was defined for the Pro Football Hall of Famer as creating an environment to become a good football team. For example, what little things do the players have to do every day to maximize their potential?
‘I don’t think you got to have unity whatsoever. You got to have good players.'”
Now let’s debate which is most important, fruits or vegetables, air or water, minor or major sports. The best teams create winning environments and have good players.
No promises, but this fall I will try to keep it together watching my Bruins in their final Pac-12 season. My UCLA football dream is that someday, in my lifetime, they draw as many fans as Nebraska women’s volleyball.
Pull the Plug
The College That Refused to Die. I challenge you to find a more depressing case study of a liberal arts college on life support. I felt like I needed to take a shower after reading the story of its downward spiral.
Some situations are not salvageable. This is Exhibit A.
What I’m Reading and Listening To
A real one-two punch.
Elite College Admissions Paragraphs to Ponder
From The New York Times.
“A large new study, released Monday, shows that it has not been because these children had more impressive grades on average or took harder classes. They tended to have higher SAT scores and finely honed résumés, and applied at a higher rate — but they were overrepresented even after accounting for those things. For applicants with the same SAT or ACT score, children from families in the top 1 percent were 34 percent more likely to be admitted than the average applicant, and those from the top 0.1 percent were more than twice as likely to get in.
And “The new data shows that among students with the same test scores, the colleges gave preference to the children of alumni and to recruited athletes, and gave children from private schools higher nonacademic ratings. The result is the clearest picture yet of how America’s elite colleges perpetuate the intergenerational transfer of wealth and opportunity.”
After reviewing more than 500,000 internal admissions assessments at three elite institutions over fifteen years, this conclusion.
“In effect, the study shows, these policies amounted to affirmative action for the children of the 1 percent, whose parents earn more than $611,000 a year.”
Can we stop the “equal opportunity meritocracy” nonsense?
Actors And Writers Are Up Against It
In the entertainment labor battle that’s just getting going, the Screen Actor Guild members and Hollywood writers are severe underdogs. They’re up against it. “It’ being a combination of C-Suite greed; artificial intelligence-based content; too many streaming services chasing a fixed number of people with finite disposable income; a decline in digital advertising dollars; and Peter Santenello.
I didn’t know Santenello until yesterday, when a YouTube algorithm correctly guessed I’d like his stuff. Long story short, he’s a do-it-yourself filmmaker. Tonight, after my dinner date with the GalPal, I’ll watch the bulk of this film I started last night.
It’s very good in a substantive, folksy, documentary kind of way. Not slick or sensational, in this case, an up close look at some of the poorest counties in the country. Lots of other people agree apparently. The film sits at 10 million views in 7 days.
There are Santellos everywhere you look on YouTube and TikTok and other similarly ungated, entirely democratic/meritocratic outlets.
There’s a parallel development in journalism of course, where thousands of substacks are blooming. And just as with visual media, a portion are truly outstanding.
The Santellos of the new digital landscape are saying, “We don’t need television or movie studios or newspaper companies to take our content directly to people, all we need are our cameras, laptops, editing software and open access formats.”
Santello and other insightful, creative, hardworking entrepreneurs like him have breeched Hollywood’s moat. They have no intention of sharing profits or creative control with middlemen in hierarchical organizations.
This grassroots content is as predictably constant as the waves rolling in on Santa Monica beach, down Sunset Boulevard from Hollywood. It will be very difficult for SAG members and Hollywood writers to win much at negotiations from such vulnerable gatekeepers of the past.
Right now the two sides are not talking. Some expect the strike to go into 2024.
I’ll be splitting the difference, watching Santello’s stuff while rooting for the underdogs to defy the odds and somehow pull off the upset by improving their compensation.
Most and Least Energy-Expensive States
Find your state here. Luckily, the Good Wife and I use electricity almost exclusively. Thanks to the Columbia River, only four states have less expensive electricity.
Pressing Pause 