SOMETHING INTERESTING
People complain that the top 1% don’t pay enough taxes but take a look at this (click here to read):
The top 1% of U.S. taxpayers paid roughly $615 billion, or 40.1% of all income taxes, while the bottom 90% paid about $440 billion, or 28.6% of all income taxes.
— Steve Burns (@SJosephBurns) September 17, 2021
The top 50% of all taxpayers paid 97.1% of all individual income taxes, while the bottom 50% paid the remaining 2.9%
MARKET MOVERS
- Food prices are continuing to rise globally, up 33% in August from a year earlier. That’s more expensive than almost anytime in the last six decades. The bad news - it’s not likely it will get better anytime soon. Extreme weather, soaring freight and fertilizer costs, shipping bottlenecks, and labor shortages compound the problem. Dwindling foreign currency reserves is also hampering the ability of some nations to import food. Read more here.
- Speaking of food and consumer trends, people want fast and convenient, and Amazon is going to continue to capitalize on this. One-hour delivery is the next frontier in the delivery industry and with Amazon continuously building more and more fulfillment centers that are now closer to or inside cities, we guess they’ll fulfill customer demands faster than anyone (watch out UberEats and InstaCart!). They’ll likely utilize technology to outdo traditional supermarkets as well. Listen to the discussion here (33:48).
- Will the housing shortage ever end? Yes, but it might take a while. The US is short more than 5 million homes due to increased housing demand, a lack of construction materials, and scant labor. Home completions would have to triple production to close the gap within five to six years, and with the current labor and supply challenges, that’s a tall order. Don’t blame it all on COVID, new construction supply hasn’t been meeting demand over the last five years - the pandemic just exacerbated the inevitable. Read more here.
- Gold is out. BlackRock’s fund manager says he’s cut gold holdings to almost zero. He thinks there are “better hedges against inflation in the equity market and rather than own an asset that doesn’t produce cash flow, we would rather hedge some of the near term upside with stocks that have pricing power.” On the flip side, they see energy prices remaining firm and have been adding some tactical positions in equities to take advantage instead. Read more here.
- When “affordable housing” is at $650k a unit, you know there’s a bigger issue. See tweet here.
WHAT TO WATCH
- There’s nearly $10 Trillion worth of cash sitting in savings accounts earning nothing. According to Bankrate the average interest rate for savings accounts at a bank right now is 0.06%. The reason? People simply don’t have the stomach for the stock market or other risk assets. So their money sits at a bank earning nothing. Don’t be like some people. Put your money to work. But also, inflation makes that hard-earned cash worth less and less (remember when we said “cash is trash”?). Diversify your investments to hedge. Read more here.
- The future might be password-free. Microsoft said that all of its accounts, from Outlook to Xbox, can now be accessed without a password. Other tech giants, like Google and Apple, have also been working on passwordless authentication to beef up security on their accounts. Why? Because it’s more convenient AND secure to scan your finger for email access. Also, just use blockchain if you’re worried about security. Read more here.
- Crypto moving into the music industry. Music NFT Platform RCRDSHP, a digital collectibles platform for electronic music, closed its first investment round led by Dapper Labs and notable non-fungible token collectors Metakovan and Twobadour. The marketplace will run on Dapper Labs’ Flow blockchain, which is known for hosting the popular NBA Top Shot series of digital collectibles. Will be fun to watch how crypto, NFTs, and blockchain affect industries like music now and into the future. Read more here.
- “The next step in the cryptocurrency journey is when people start wanting to be paid in their favorite crypto instead of their national fiat currency.” Already happening. We have started accepting crypto for payment in some of our businesses. See tweet here.
FINAL THOUGHTS
You have a duty to yourself, your family, your investors or partners or shareholders, your lenders, your vendors, and your customers, and that responsibility is to attain the absolute highest and greatest profits possible, so you can stay in business successfully to honor every commitment to every one of these constituencies. - Dan S. Kennedy, No B.S. Wealth Attraction in the New Economy
That duty is not just about attaining profits, but also about keeping them. There is an old adage that says, ‘it’s not what you make that matters, it’s what you keep that can make a difference.’ When it comes to creating and managing wealth, the greater you can control and limit taxes during your lifetime, the greater resources you’ll have for your family and be able to positively impact the people and causes that matter most to you. Bottom line: the “rich get richer” because they understand how money and wealth creation works.
