November 15, 2021
Good morning! Are you starting to think about the Feast of Thanksgiving? Thoughts of the holy day surfaced the last couple days as a bit of snow, ice, and freezing temperatures awakened us to the proximity of this most favourite of days. For the second year in a row most of our family will not gather, and it makes me exceedingly sad… maybe next year? On the bright side, there are seven new people who are new to our family since two years ago. Have you seen the price of rutabagas?! Through the roof! They’re not all sitting on a boat in the Port of Los Angeles, are they? Oh, a belated Happy Birthday to my faithful, longtime reader, Sandy… sorry, never got it said yesterday.
- “There’s white gold in them thar hills!”
- Lithium, that is — for batteries.
- The mining and manufacturing of Lithium (are elements capitalized?) are expected to increase at least ten-fold in the near future.
- “Commit and then figure it out.” (Chin)
- The rise and the fall of GE (General Electric)
- Adjusted for inflation GE once boasted a market capitalization of $600 billion.
- Over the last forty years, the net asset value of the company grew from $74 billion to a high of $224 billion, and now back down to $85 billion — and it’s being split into three different companies… not sure which will claim to have its roots in Menlo Park.
- Tom Edison probably gets too much credit and too much blame.
- And, at the same time, you could purchase Suzy and Jack Welch’s home (Jack died recently) on Park Avenue for $27,000,000.
The Business Case for Reducing Carbon and Other Harmful Pollutants
- Economists much smarter than I tell us the goals of reducing carbon and other harmful pollutants won’t change much until there is a sufficient economic incentive. (The Economist, 2021)
- Economic disincentives in the forms of penalties or fines should range in the $50 – $100 per carbon ton range and they currently are significantly less.
- Yes, there is altruism, but how many truly altruistic people do you know? (Besides yourself, of course.)
- Put it on a personal level.
- There was a time here in our little town when the penalty for an expired parking meter was $1 — and then eventually it increased to $2.
- You could pay with cash and you didn’t even need a stamp, the City paid the postage.
- I rarely put a nickel or a dime in the meter because it was cheaper on average to pay the fine on the random rare occasions I’d get a ticket.
- I did the math.
- It made no economic sense to plug the meter with money — though it would have been the RIGHT thing to do.
- Someone at City Hall eventually got wise and increased the fine to $10 — and I think it might be $20 now.
- I now pay the parking meter every single time without fail.
- It’s been years and years since I last got a parking ticket.
- ZOOM fatigue.
- It’s real.
- Pay attention.
- Executives worldwide now identify supply chain disruptions and inflation as greater concerns than the COVIDs plague itself. (Hanselman, 2021)
- Of course, did one cause the other or vice versa?
- According to the most recent data from the Minnesota Department of Health:
- 14.1% (803,168 of 5,710,000 humans) of Minnesotans have tested positive for the COVIDs plague since testing became possible
- Of those, 1.1% (8,793 humans in Minnesota) have died from the disease
- In other words, 0.153% of all Minnesotans have died from the disease (Fifteen hundredths of one percent)
- No idea how we compare to other places in the country or in the world.
