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All about the standing-upright chimps that really love to talk about themselves.

Black Friday Psychology

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Black Friday. It’s worth $59B in sales this year, if you believe the projections. More importantly, it’s a financial and cultural reference point, the day when the Holiday Shopping Season officially starts.

But Black Friday is really a state of mind.

The psychology of the day is what matters most, as the excitement and crowds fueled by a small number of loss leaders gets people to spend far more than they otherwise should on other not-so-great deals in the stores. That’s how shoppers are manipulated by a system that sees them as nothing more than pawns to be used up on a game where the take on one day is really just a way of keeping score.

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The Year Everything Changes

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2017 is still over three years away, but we can already say a lot about it. We know that there will be a new President, although it’s not clear yet which party has the edge this far out. It’s likely that whoever is elected she (as it well could be) will try very hard to take the partisan edge off of Washington and get things done. There may even be a new Congress by then with a completely different configuration. But as big as the political changes are likely to be, the real change will be away from Washingtoon.

That will be the year that the peak Baby Boomers, born from 1952-1959, hit 65 years old and start to retire. Ahead of them are at least 15 million Boomers who will have passed that threshold, with probably 10M or more retiring. With slow growth inflation should still be low and unemployment will suddenly and sharply decline. The Millenial Generation will hit the workforce (and the electorate) in a big way. Combine that with the rising optimism coming on slowly and the boom should fire up.

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The Immigration Solution

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Barataria has noted before that there are three great forces weighing on the economy today: business cycles, globalization, and demographics (the retirement of the Baby Boom, already starting). Business cycles don’t last forever, and this particularly destructive one should end about the same time the heart of the Baby Boom starts to retire in 2018. The latter is a genuinely double-edged sword, providing opportunities for young people to fill the jobs that open as the burden of retirees on public assistance grows. There is still the potential for a great period of economic expansion in the 2020s if we can manage the downside effectively.

As with everything in economics, a growing economy makes everything easier. But how can we grow the economy through this period if there is a shortage of workers? The missing part of this Managed Depression is, as always, the important policy changes that will set us up for the next economy once this phase of the business cycle is over. One part of this pending in Congress, held up by partisanship, is immigration reform.

In other words, the challenges of globalism present one solution to the challenges of demographics.

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Science & Technology

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If you peer through a magnifying glass at a bug on a leaf, you may find yourself looking at a different world.  Tiny legs might work their way along the delicate structure, as firm as a human hiker across the solid ground itself.

This world takes on the color of the mind observing it when it becomes a story.  Some may see this new thing and ask questions – how the bug came to like that particular leaf, how it is able to grip it, and so on.  Others may be content reporting the details of the situation, such as the shape of the legs and jaws of the bug.

Anytime new perspectives open up the difference between science and technology is revealed at its basic essence.  Science is a practice of asking questions far more than providing answers.  Technology is about rendering that new information into something practical and useful.  That difference may seem subtle, but it is critical to understanding how new information shapes our personal and public lives in a world bombarded with new ideas and observations.

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Dia de la Raza

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Tomorrow is an important holiday throughout the Spanish-speaking parts of the lands we know as The Americas.  Not one land but many, they are all united by the simple fact that on 12 October 1492 their worlds changed forever.  The holiday is known throughout most of these lands as Dia de la Raza, which translates poorly as “Day of the Race”.  Understanding just what “la Raza” means and where the term comes from is critical to this holiday, how it is celebrated, and how it is often impossible to take language out of a culture and still appreciate its meaning.

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