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Why Chase Alpha

Why do people try to beat the market? Barry Ritholtz interviews Burton Malkiel in this podcast . I'm a big fan of both, but felt uneasy when they seemed to chuckle at investors who seek consistent market-beating returns despite decades of evidence that such a feat is incredibly rare. I don't subscribe to the idea that the markets are wise while investors are dummies. Knowledge of the returns you can expect is only a Google away. People wouldn't swing for the fences if they could live with hitting a few grounders. Could average market returns then provide for the man on the street? More specifically, would it enable him a decent retirement?
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The True Cost of Employee Turnover

Good help is apparently hard to find. Family peers now in manager-class roles occasionally humblebrag about recruiting staff. Moans about finding a 'good fit for the culture' or the paradoxical 'autonomous team player' are in essence a rehash of, "It's so hard to find good help these days." In Japan, good help finds you! As an aside, practising the lingo is vital to materialise upper-class aspirations. It's called 'affirmation'. In case you haven't heard, ' fake it till you make it ' is now complimentary. Leaving aside the views of managerial wanna-bes, how much should the business itself care about ill-suited recruits, or in fact turnover as a whole?
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Healthy, Wealthy, and Wicked

The moralisation of semaglutide weight loss is nothing new. As of writing, these drugs (Wegovy, Ozempic, Mounjaro) still need refinement. They do not yet come in oral form and must be injected. Yet, I am surprised by how short the lag has been between their introduction and the emergence of moralistic concerns. i.e.: They constitute an ' easy way out ' of healthy lifestyle choices. They exemplify, perpetuate, and exacerbate economic inequality. (Post-2020,  everything is apparently about economic inequality.) I have good reason to think this tiresome chatter will pass. via GIPHY Why?
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When I'm 六十四

Is having children to care for you in old age a good strategy? The social contract, particularly in Confucian societies, is that adults are expected to care for their elderly, reciprocating the care received as children. But how well is this expectation played out in fact?
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The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Fool

Why you should want to work. The fable of the 'The Ant and the Grasshopper' is often used to prime the work-shy for shame and deprivation.
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Do Pensions Cause Inflation? 📈

It's not the size, it's the growth. As the world ages, it's worth wondering if retiree benefits will increasingly drive inflation through supporting elderly buying power and enabling them to exit the labour supply. Let's plot pension replacement rates , a measure of pension generosity, against 2023 inflation for the G20, the world's largest economies. In short, countries' circumstances and systems are too diverse for a strong relationship between pension generosity and inflation, but let's break it down further.
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