The Million Dollar Way (The Bakken Oil Blog)

Sunday, April 7, 2024

For The Archives -- Solberg Obituaries -- April 7, 2024

Locator: 46948ARCHIVES.

For the archives.

My alma mater: Augustana College (now Augustana University), Sioux Falls, SD. [Not to be confused with college of same name in Rock Island, Illinois.]

Augustana alumnus David Soul, Starsky and Hutch, died January, 2024.

His father's obituary here.

I lived in Solberg Hall my freshman year. I assume the Hall was named after David Soul's father.

David Soul obituary.

David Soul's father's obituary.

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Southwest Airlines

To the best of my knowledge I have never flown SWA and my wife refuses to fly SWA due to its unique boarding process.

I know the basics -- first come, first to board -- but never understood the nuances. To say the least, the whole process is very, very strange.

It takes a whole page of relatively small print to explain all the permutations of the process. And, of course, every passenger is looking for a loophole.

Now, that I've read the SWA guidelines and several other social media sources, I'm almost tempted to fly SWA just to see how smoothly it all goes. LOL.

I must be missing something but the SWA boarding process seems incredible bizarre, something the hippy-dippy crowd came up with during the 60s / 70s and simply never changed the process. Like I said, I must be missing something.

Whole-Life Insurance Policy -- April 7, 2024

Locator: 46947INSURANCE.

I'll come back to this some day, maybe. I'm just too tired to get into tonight but I wanted to post this screenshot so I can clear it off my desktop.

For now, just posting some numbers.

Maybe some folks will be able to connect the dots.

The Southern Surge -- Now A "Thing" In The Business / Investing News -- April 7, 2024

Locator: 46946ECONOMY.

Re-Posting

Locator: 46917ECONOMY.

Updates

April 11, 2024: Carl Q:

April 7, 2024: Exhibit A -- Japan.

April 7, 2024, link here:

The daily march of migrants across the Southern border has been a political curse for President Joe Biden. But for the economy, it may have turned out to be a blessing.

By adding millions of new workers to the labor market, the immigration surge has lifted payrolls and growth, and potentially helped keep a lid on consumer prices, according to recent research. Capitol Hill’s budgeteers also think it stands to reduce the deficit in the coming years.

In an analysis published earlier this week, Ernie Tedeschi, a former Biden White House economist, found that the post-pandemic pickup in immigration accounted for at least one-fifth of the increase in U.S. gross domestic product since the end of 2019. Though it wasn’t the only factor, the boost from migrants helped explain why the American economy has bounced back much more strongly than those of other developed countries, he argued.

This is so incredible. I first talked about this in a post on July 23, 2022, almost two years ago.

In the [2024 - 2009 = ] fifteen years since I've been blogging, I've done four deep-dives of which I'm most proud:

Netflix: "the next big thing"
Devon: best operator in the Permian
Nvidia: I pivoted from energy to semiconductor chips early
the Southern Surge, as part of a bigger story, jobs: the $7 trillion gift

I'm looking for the fifth "deep dive."

Original Post

That southern surge. The $7 trillion gift. Link here.

The linked Barron's story.

The U.S. fertility rate peaked in 2007 at 2.12 children per woman.

It is expected to level out this year at 1.70 births per woman, and remain there through 2054.

Demographics and aging trends could create significant headwinds for economic growth, as aging populations historically have experienced declines in work, productivity, and spending. But the news isn’t all bad, says Matthias Doepke, an economics professor ... with a title so long it won't fit on two lines.....

The future isn’t written in stone, he notes, while the experience of other countries in similar straits should offer the U.S. a road map to maximizing opportunities and avoiding pitfalls.

Doepke has spent much of his career studying how political and cultural changes affect economic development, with a focus on how macroeconomic conditions influence fertility choices. He recently spoke with Barron’s about the impact of demographic changes on the labor market, and the so-called demographic dividend.

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Reposting From Last Month

It started here.

Locator: 46813IMMIGRATION.

From a while ago, link here. Note how far Biden moved the unemployment rate to a better number over the last three years (his first year numbers were "Trump's numbers").