Tuesday morning news drop
The number of U.S. workers quitting their jobs in September was the highest on record. More than 4.4 million workers quit their jobs voluntarily in September, the Labor Department said Friday. That was up from 4.3 million in August and was the most in the two decades the government has been keeping track. Nearly a million quit their jobs in the leisure and hospitality industry alone. (NYT)
Will Real Estate Ever Be Normal Again? In Austin, Texas, and cities around the country, prices are skyrocketing, forcing regular people to act like speculators. When will it end? (New York Times)
How many homes do we need? It’s surprisingly difficult to answer the question of how much construction is enough. Most people (including past me) naively plot homes constructed next to population growth and conclude they’re a good match. Of course that ignores that these variables are closely linked, and people can’t come if there are no homes for them. From an economics standpoint, it ignores the huge price signal in the form of rapidly rising resale prices and rents which indicate that demand is outpacing supply. (House Hunt Victoria)
Four Things That Will Keep You Out of the Stock Market If everything in the grocery store was on sale for 30% off you wouldn’t turn around and say “I don’t trust this, I’m going to come back when the prices are much higher.” People would think you’re insane. So why is it ok when it comes to our money? If you truly want to put your dollars to work, employ them when unemployment is high. (Wealth Found Me)
The Crypto Capital of the World It has to be somewhere. Why not Ukraine? The anything-goes ethos has dogged Ukraine for years, and now the government is hoping to bury it, with an assist from cryptocurrency. In early September, the Parliament here passed a law legalizing and regulating Bitcoin, step one in an ambitious campaign to both mainstream the nation’s thriving trade in crypto and to rebrand the entire country. (New York Times)
Who Goes Crypto? In the era of financial precarity, betting on meme stocks to save for retirement might not be moral, but it’s certainly rational. (Mother Jones)
Vizio makes more money spying on people who buy TVs than it does on TVs themselves Time and again, we learn that companies spy on you whenever it suits them even companies that make a lot of noise about how they don’t need to spy on you to make money. If a company has power because of lock-in and if the company can make money by abusing you, it will abuse you. (Pluralistic)
Amazon’s Spinmasters: Behind the Internet Giant’s Battle With the Press There was a time when Jeff Bezos barely cared about public relations. But after years of increasingly hostile media coverage and growing public scrutiny of Amazon, the company has gone on the offensive against journalists. It even measures its PR team on the corrections they get on stories. (The Information)
Know How the Beatles Ended? Peter Jackson May Change Your Mind. The director’s three-part documentary “Get Back” explores the most contested period in the band’s history and reveals there’s still plenty to debate. (New York Times)