Monday morning news drop
Everything You Need to Know About the Great Lumber Crisis of 2021 Lumber prices are coming back down to Earth, but the crisis shows how many industries can be rocked by the price of wood. (Vice)
What’s Driving the Stock, Bond & Housing Markets Right Now? Right now some people would say that variable is the Fed or interest rates. That might be true but I have my own unifying theory of what’s driving markets at the moment — money. People have plenty of it and nowhere else to put it. (A Wealth of Common Sense)
The Bond Market Is Telling Us to Worry About Growth, Not Inflation The economy remains hot, but the future is looking less buoyant than it did just a short while ago (New York Times)
Alberta's COVID-19 vaccination rates tied to levels of formal education, data shows
Researchers say correlation can help guide efforts to immunize more people An analysis of COVID-19 vaccination rates in Alberta suggests one socio-economic factor, more than others, is correlated to vaccine uptake. And it's not income, language or cultural barriers. It's education. People who have fewer years of formal education, have a different sort of trust. So they're not going to listen to the experts (CBC)
Canada needs to vaccinate 90 per cent of adults and teens. At this rate, we’ll never get there The government has detailed information on who and who hasn’t been vaccinated, income brackets and education levels. Vaccination is our ticket out of the pandemic. It’s the way to protect ourselves against a variant-powered fourth wave. Public-health experts have been saying it for months, and you will hear it, again and again and then some more, over the summer. It’s as true as truisms get. (Globe and Mail)
Trump Country Rejects Vaccines Despite Growing Delta Threat President Biden missed a July 4 target for shots after politically conservative areas balked (Bloomberg)
Five under vaccinated clusters put the entire United States at risk Clusters of unvaccinated people, most of them in the southern United States, are vulnerable to surges in Covid-19 cases and could become breeding grounds for even more deadly Covid-19 variants: Starting in Georgia and stretching west to Texas and north to Missouri + include parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee. see also (CNN)
How Canada's COVID policies stoked asset bubbles and income inequality More than any time in recent history, the rich have gotten richer (Financial Post)
Meet the Four-Eyed, Eight-Tentacled Monopoly That is Making Your Glasses So Expensive Luxottica controls 80% of the major brands in the $28 billion global eyeglasses industry. This monopolistic structure of the market leads to profits that are “relatively obscene” (Forbes)
This Is Tax Evasion, Plain and Simple The race to the bottom on corporate taxes has gone on for too long. Since the 1980s, countries have competed for business by reducing companies’ taxes. A few nations, like Ireland and Bermuda, have adopted extremely low rates and become tax havens for companies like Google and Apple. Last week, 130 countries, including the United States, agreed to a blueprint to tax their companies’ profits at a minimum 15 percent rate — no matter where the profits are booked. (New York Times)
TikTok made me buy it The video app is causing products to blow up — and flame out — faster than ever. TikTok allows certain creators and businesses in the UK and Indonesia to sell products within its TikTok Shop, though the feature doesn’t yet exist in the US. But it’s almost certainly coming. What effect that might have on American consumerism depends on whom you ask. (Vox)
What Makes a Cult a Cult? The line between delusion and what the rest of us believe may be blurrier than we think. (New Yorker)