25: Notes To Self

Yo, it’s Luke!

I’m a lil late on the newsletter this week. But you know I still got you 🤝 

Here is your weekly dose of 5 noteworthy ideas & things I learned about last week. Click on each link to dive further on that topic.

1. We Are So Back

2. In Pursuit of Side Quests (Jack Raines)

The path to a rich, beautiful life is through genuine exploration. No expectation for results. Just exploring.

What’s funny about this approach is that the little, random side quests you pursue can often lead you to the most impactful places.

I’ll bet almost all of the holistically flourishing people you know lived non-linear, non-traditional lives. Their journey was a windy road. This blog post captures the essence (and importance) of that approach. Here’s 3 snippets I liked:

• “In video games, side quests have their limits. They only go so deep. You complete a few objectives, find a few treasures, and then they are finished for good. But in real life, you might discover that you are really good at the side quest. Maybe you really like the side quest. Maybe you can make some money from the side quest. You can keep pursuing the side quest, if you so choose.”

• “The side quests are where you develop skills that you had never considered, make friends that you had never expected, and visit places that you had never seen.”

• “Side quests are where the magic happens. Where you get a taste of the unknown. And that taste of the unknown, that's where the exciting stuff begins.”

3. My Favorite Recent Conversation Starter

“What’s the most important lesson your Mom / Dad taught you?”

It’s automatic.

4. Great Relationships Take Work (Vienna Pharaon)

“Behind every great relationship are difficult and uncomfortable conversations that we rarely get to see. Great relationships do not just fall into our laps. They require people to move through their fears and insecurities and do the hard work to move wounds to healing.”

5. How This All Happened (Morgan Housel)

This piece is a story about what happened to the U.S. economy (& culture) since the end of World War II. It explains a lot of what you see & hear about today.

One the most fascinating pieces I’ve read this year! Here’s my spark notes:

• 11% of Americans served in WW2. Their average age was 23. After 1945, America again diverged from patterns of saving that were promoted in Europe and East Asia … Politicians, businessmen and labor leaders all encouraged Americans to spend to foster economic growth.

• Political & economic leaders intentionally birthed “The American Consumer” to partially prevent another economic depression. The basic idea was this: encouraged spending via ads + extremely low interest rates + new pro-consumer personal finance tools (ex: credit cards) → Americans buying a lot of stuff → more money circulating to support people in jobs

• This surge in spending was massive:

• Commercial car and truck manufacturing virtually ceased from 1942 to 1945. Then 21.4 million cars were sold from 1945 to 1949. Another 37 million were sold by 1955. 🤯

• 1.9 million homes were built from 1940 to 1945. Then 7 million were built from 1945 to 1950. Another 8 million were built by 1955.

• Income rose too, so debt wasn’t a big deal. And income rose across all people. Real income for the bottom 20% of wage-earners grew by a nearly identical amount as the top 5% from 1950 to 1980.

• Then around 1973, things start cracking. Inflation surged, unemployement rose, and people were scared (Vietnam, riots, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Kennedy brothers).

• Things turned around by the late 80s. But, this new economy’s growth was different. Between 1993 and 2012, the top 1 percent saw their incomes grow 86.1 percent, while the bottom 99 percent saw just 6.6 percent growth. Trickle down economis (aka Reaganomics) didn’t work too well.

• Sharp inequality became a force over the last 35 years, and it happened during a period where, culturally, Americans held onto two ideas rooted in the post-WW2 economy: (1) That you should live a lifestyle similar to most other Americans, and (2) that taking on debt to finance that lifestyle is acceptable.

• Rising incomes among a small group of Americans led to that group breaking away in lifestyle. The lifestyles of a small portion of legitimately rich Americans inflated the aspirations of the majority of Americans, whose incomes weren’t rising. The culture of equality and togetherness that came out of the 1950s-1970s innocently morphed into a Keeping Up With The Joneses effect.

• Household debt-to-income stayed about flat from 1963 to 1973. Then it climbed, and climbed, and climbed:

• More policies compounded the issue. Tax cuts over the last 20 years have predominantly gone to those with higher incomes. People with higher incomes send their kids to the best colleges. Those kids can go on to earn higher incomes and invest in corporate debt that will be backstopped by the Fed, own stocks that will be supported by various government policies, and so on.

• None of these things are problems in and of themselves, which is why they stay in place. But they’re symptomatic of the bigger thing that’s happened since the early 1980s: The economy works better for some people than others. Success isn’t as meritocratic as it used to be and, when success is granted, is rewarded with higher gains than in previous eras.

• And so people start shouting (ex: Occupy Wall Street, Rise of Donald Trump etc). The details of their shouting are different, but they’re all shouting – at least in part – because stuff isn’t working for them within the context of the post-war expectation that stuff should work roughly the same for roughly everyone.

• Now, things aren’t all pessimistic. If everyone studied advances in healthcare, communication, transportation, and civil rights since the Glorious 1950s, my guess is most wouldn’t want to go back.

• But a central theme of this story is that expectations move slower than reality on the ground. So the era of “This isn’t working” and “We need something radically new, right now, whatever it is” may stick around.

• Which, in a way, is part of what starts events that led to things like World War II, where this story began.

• History really is just one damn thing after another.

Thanks for wanting to know more today than you did yesterday! If you liked this edition, send it over to a friend who would like it too 🤝 

Cheers,

Luke

PS: Have a topic you think I’d like learning about? Send it to me here.

PPS: Got questions you want me to answer? I made an anonymous form for that.

PPPS: you can find more rabbit holes here & my writing here.