Links for May 2021

Links for May 2021

Holy cow, this is in the running for the best macroeconomic analysis I've ever seen! https://www.lynalden.com/fraying-petrodollar-system/

An engineering argument for Universal Basic Income: https://www.scottsantens.com/engineering-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi-fault-tolerance-graceful-failure-redundancy

A tragic personal story to illustrate the three sides of risk: https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/the-three-sides-of-risk/

The Battle of the Bubbles, from the always-on-point Ben Carlson. Whoo, some of the speculation mentioned herein puts recent bubbles to shame! https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2020/07/the-battle-of-the-bubbles/

A thought-provoking piece about education: https://americancompass.org/the-commons/our-educational-colonialism/

A timeless point about humility and success. Since the original post gives me a "404 not found" error message, here's a version from the Web Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20200109002010/https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/getting-rich-vs-staying-rich/

History isn't exact, as any decent historian would tell you: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2019/07/why-history-get-stuff-wrong-all-the-time/

This great piece draws attention to how Wall Street's incentives fail investors: https://netinterest.substack.com/p/zuckermans-curse-and-the-economics

Similar in nature, and similarly insightful: https://netinterest.substack.com/p/financing-the-american-home

Here's why you don't need alpha (that is, outperformance compared to the market) unless you're a professional money manager who's responsible for billions of dollars: https://ofdollarsanddata.com/you-dont-need-alpha/

Ben Carlson is always observant and always insightful: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2020/08/what-happened-to-the-middle-class/
     *However, I'd argue with Stephen Rose's income-based classification of rich/poor/middle-class, as described in the footnote. As noted in the bestseller The Millionaire Next Door, there are plenty of wealthy people who have a moderate income, because they're frugal and they wisely invest the money they save.
     But that's the way Americans tend to look at wealth, including the IRS: you're rich (or not) based on your income, rather than on your net worth.

Now this is interesting! Meet the man who twice tried to sell the Eiffel Tower: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2020/01/the-man-who-tried-to-sell-the-eiffel-tower-twice/

Great lessons about personal finance: https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/PF/

An interesting insider's look at the ultra-wealthy, basically the top 1% of the top 1%: https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/investment_manager.html

Could you live without money? This fascinating fellow did just that, for about 15 years: https://www.becomingminimalist.com/the-man-who-quit-money-an-interview-with-daniel-suelo/

Hat-tip to Of Dollars and Data for pointing me to some of this top-notch work: https://ofdollarsanddata.com/my-favorite-investment-writing-of-2020/