All Categories - Jay Evensen

Young adults think they will be rich some day

6/17/2022

“It is well for the heart to be naive and for the mind not to be.” — French poet Anatole France

At a time when the stock market has jumped the guard rails and begun petting bears, the optimism of youth has a certain refreshing quality to it.
Turns out that when you’re between 18 and 25, the rough boundaries for the adults we call Gen Z, the world, as it has been for the young since time began, is still your oyster.
At least, it appears to be your oyster.
A new survey by MagnifyMoney aims to measure the comparative financial optimism of various age groups in the United States. Gen Z comes across as the winner, by far, with fully 72% believing they will become wealthy some day. Only 59% of millennials feel the same, while the numbers for Gen Xers and baby boomers were 36% and 19%, respectively.
This is hardly surprising. The older you get, the less time you have left to become wealthy. Also, life’s experiences have the tendency to inject a sense of futility in many people — one of humanity’s recurring tragedies.

Can the U.S. economy keep up with China this century?

6/14/2022

Could China become the world’s largest economy in the next decade? More importantly, could it accomplish this by ignoring the lessons of freedom and prosperity that were taught and demonstrated in the 20th century by everyone from Milton Friedman to Ronald Reagan?
These may be the most important questions of the 21st century.
If I heard a consistent refrain during the China Challenge Summit held at Utah Valley University last week, it was that American assumptions near the end of the Cold War 40 years ago were wrong.

Kind deeds generate copycats, too

6/8/2022

If you want a good scare, don’t read Stephen King late at night. Read the Department of Homeland Security’s latest bulletin on national terrorism.
Careful, though. If you do, you may not want to leave your house for a while.
First, it describes the domestic terrorists you’ve been hearing so much about lately, the “lone offenders against minority communities, schools, houses of worship, and mass transit …” as the bulletin says. They are armed, dangerous and mostly random in their targeted victims.
Some of these, such as the suspect in the Buffalo, N.Y., shooting at a grocery store, are motivated by conspiracy theories revolving around “white genocide” or the “great replacement” of the white race. Others, like the suspect in the April attack on a New York City subway during rush hour, were applauded by al Qaida and ISIS.

Forgiving student loans helps the rich

6/7/2022

If you were to guess which major political party supports putting more money into the pockets of wealthy Americans, which would it be?
It’s a trick question. The real answer is both of them do, only in different ways.
Republicans tend to help the rich by adjusting tax rates in the cause of spurring economic activity. Democrats, meanwhile, might be about to help the rich by forgiving student loans.
The Biden administration has been vague on details, although reports say the president is looking to forgive up to $10,000 in federal student loan debt for those earning less than $150,000 a year.

Do these signs mean a recession is coming?

6/7/2022

My wife and I tried to visit our favorite Mexican restaurant earlier this month to mark Cinco de Mayo, but it was closed.
Finding a popular Mexican restaurant closed on Cinco de Mayo felt like finding a Fourth of July celebration without hotdogs. The world seemed a bit off kilter for a moment.
But, as I later learned, the owner wasn’t oblivious to the potential for big profits on a day normally associated with Mexican food. No, the owner was forced to close because of a labor shortage.

We're back in our partisan foxholes

6/7/2022

It didn’t take Americans long to climb back into their ideological foxholes.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was in the middle of a news conference Wednesday on a stage in Uvalde, Texas, where the latest horrific example of random gun violence had shocked the world only a day earlier, when his political opponent, Democrat Beto O’Rourke, approached.
“You are doing nothing. You are offering up nothing. You said this was not predictable. This was totally predictable when you choose not to do anything," O’Rourke said as the mayor of Uvalde tried to shout him down and television cameras rolled.

Arguments against a fireworks ban are getting weaker

6/7/2022

People who opposed a statewide ban on fireworks during last year’s drought have seen their parched arguments erode even further beneath their feet lately.
And we’re still several weeks away from the patriotic holiday season.
Those arguments went up in smoke over the weekend when a fire, believed to be human-caused, erupted in Wasatch County, on a hillside near U.S. Highway 40, and rapidly spread. Original reports were that it had reached 85 acres. That was later adjusted to 25, but it still was a troubling blaze.

How Utah succeeded and failed during the pandemic

5/17/2022

For a while now, I have taken issue with the rosy way Utah politicians frame Utah’s Covid-19 experience.
The state has done exceptionally well in the pandemic, they say, because so few people have died.
Indeed, if you look at statistics compiled at worldometers.info, Utah so far has had the third fewest deaths per capita in the nation — 1,485 per 1 million population — behind only Hawaii and Vermont. That didn’t happen by accident.
True, but it also has nothing to do with any great public policy emanating from Utah’s Capitol Hill. It has everything to do with the state’s relatively young and healthy population.

Why liberal investment requirements hurt the environment

5/13/2022

Why is gas so expensive?
The answer is complicated, but one factor has gotten little attention — ESG. That could change before November’s election.
ESG stands for environment, social and governance, three factors many on the left, including the Biden administration, are pushing as new signals to guide investors.
To put it in layman’s terms, this is a movement to push capital away from fossil fuel production and other things considered bad for the environment and toward low-carbon, climate friendly options.

President Biden isn't serious about fighting inflation

5/11/2022

Nearly two years ago, I suggested a political truism: No leader looks good in a pandemic.
Now I can add another. No leader looks good during a time of high inflation.
A key difference exists, however. The pandemic has made politicians look bad because strategies, outcomes, viral mutations and public reactions are so unpredictable. We ran out of patience with masks and social distancing just in time for Omicron. Some lawmakers, in Utah and elsewhere, looked foolish trying to pretend they knew more than doctors.
Inflation is different, though. Experience has taught us the answers

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