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I hope you enjoy the holidays with your circle of family and friends.
We had a Christmas dinner at my wife’s parents’ house. Pigs in blankets. . . Honey glazed ham. . . and gooey toffee pudding washed down with a glass of Burgundy. What do you love?
It gave me food for thought. In living memory, millions of men have spent Christmas fighting in soggy, depressing trenches. Can you imagine?
Today I want to express a little gratitude and optimism.
Even with the wars in Ukraine and Israel, we live in the era of greatest violence in human history.
Here are more reasons why I’m positive this holiday season. . .
Americans are their own businesses at the fastest speed EVER. In 2023, marketers introduced more small businesses than at any other time in history:
Millions of Americans are leaving dead-end jobs to pursue their passions. The world will be a much happier place.
The pre-COVID average was 54 minutes. Americans save more than 60 million hours a day with remote work. Daily!
WFH is like a time machine that gives us thousands of hours of life back. We can all get a lot more done, which generates more wealth.
The time you would have spent stressing in rush-hour traffic can now be spent relaxing with your kids or getting compatibility at the gym.
I am convinced that the WFH revolution will lead to a HUGE result. Perhaps an unprecedented economic boom in our lifetimes.
Can you call it the oil producing country in the world?
It’s Saudi Arabia. . . Russia. . . or Iran.
It’s the old United States.
America now produces a record 13 million barrels of oil per day:
We have been addicted to foreign oil for decades. It’s useless.
But today, the United States sells more oil than it buys. And it’s all thanks to “hydraulic fracturing,” which releases oil and fuel trapped deep in areas that were inaccessible in the past.
Never bet on American ingenuity.
What if I told them that global inequality had just fallen to its lowest point in just 150 years?
Take a look at this chart of the Gini coefficient, the usual measure of the source of income inequality. It has fallen to levels that were last noticed in 1890!
At that time, everyone was equally poor. Today, other people around the world are getting richer in more similar ways.
Is it because we consume more resources and litter the planet?Not really.
If you’re the type of person who cares about carbon emissions… here’s some more great news.
By no means are Americans the most “green” they’ve ever been in fashionable times:
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, in London, the air has never been so good in history:
In 1800, 90% of the population lived in extreme poverty. Today, less than 10% are below subsistence level.
In 1950, one in four young people died before their 15th birthday. Today, this happens to less than one in 20 people. This progress has saved more than 120 million young people in the last 30 years alone!
If you had lived two hundred years ago, there would have been a 90% chance that you would be illiterate. Today, more than 80% of the world’s population knows how to read and write:
I started The Jolt to fight back against the stench of pessimism in the air.
Optimism is contagious. We want more.
What makes you most positive about the next decade?
Tell me at stephen@riskhedge. com.
To get more concepts like this delivered straight to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, be sure to sign up for The Jolt, a free investment charter focused on profit disruption.
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