Business

When I was a college student in Texas, I told someone at a bar that I was from Pennsylvania. The guy’s eyes lit up. “Pennsylvania?!” the man exclaimed. “That means you get to drink Yuengling whenever you want!” Yes, I mused, with a shrug and a swig of my Shiner Bock. So what? The barfly informed me he was such a big fan of America’s Oldest Brewery — established 1829 — that he and his family would haul cases of the traditional lager, Smokey and the Bandit style, back to the Lone Star State any time they traveled east of the Mississippi. Fast-forward (just!) a few years, and Yuengling is now available in twenty-six states. Texas, my old friend would be tickled to know, was the first western state to get a taste of Yuengling back in 2021.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and its related technologies — machine learning and the metaverse — represent a watershed in the evolution of the global economy. Like other such shifts, its emergence is likely to favor certain interests, notably a handful of technology giants, the media and a small cadre of highly skilled programmers. Everyone else faces economic danger, certain to roil domestic and international politics in coming years. Eighty-two percent of millennials fear AI will reduce their earning ability — and they are right to be worried. The first group to lose will be the usual suspects: factory and warehouse workers as well as professionals with largely routinized occupations suited to automation.

Few developments have more cheered progressive activists than the perceived resurgence of labor unions. This has been sparked by largely symbolic efforts to unionize in places such as Starbucks and Amazon, as well as more sizable wins by the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild and United Auto Workers, the country’s most important private labor union. In 2022 strike activity more than doubled from the previous year. Yet ultimately these wins may turn out to be largely Pyrrhic.

Barely three years after the death of George Floyd, it appears the era of the corporate DEI officer is rapidly coming to an end. Or at least experiencing a major contraction. Across American business, the number of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion roles grew by 55 percent following the protests of summer 2020, reported the Society of Human Resource Management. At the start of 2022, the entire DEI “industry” was worth an estimated $9.4 billion. In 2023, it’s a very different story. According to the workplace trends consultancy Revelio Labs, DEI jobs shrank by one-third last year. The key problem with the DEI industrial complex is not the idea that American workplaces should be more representative of America — but the means often used to achieve those ends.

More than 650,000 people have fled California since Gavin Newsom took office, many returning to the Dust Bowl homelands their forebears abandoned for the coast. The Democratic governor has called reports of an exodus “greatly exaggerated,” though inaccurate may be the better word: only 600,000 Jews fled Egypt. More than 200 companies ditched California in his first thirty months in office and, much like Newsom’s ex-wife, they’re heading for Trump country. Ever the optimist, Newsom says the solution to population depletion is to guarantee abortion up to the moment of birth. He’s even offered tax breaks to companies that relocate from pro-life states.

Scientifically, the jury is still out on whether women are better multitaskers than men. A 2013 study suggested that women do, in fact, outperform men, while a 2019 German study found no demonstrable differences between the sexes. In my entirely unscientific opinion, I think the stereotype is real. Women are engaged in all kinds of things at the same time. At any given moment, I’m engrossed in my work while also contemplating the contents of my freezer, making a mental note to order more diapers, and simultaneously clipping my daughter’s toenails. A New York Times piece on why women do the household worrying described a woman’s mental load as a “combination of anxiety and planning that is part of parenting.

A brave Edward Snowflake from the Vanguard Investment Management Group (over $6 trillion global assets under management!) has leaked us an image of the badge employees are asked to wear at the company so as to signal their LGBTQ+ allyship and opposition to 'white supremacy’. Confused? Let’s deconstruct this particular piece of Woke Heraldry, or ‘Flairs’ as Vanguard likes to call them. The pink triangle was once the tag used by the Nazis to identify gay men in the concentration camps and the green circle represents a ‘safe space’. Duh. Not too excited about displaying a symbol invented by literal Nazis? Tough. Silence is violence, don’t forget.

No single industry was happier to see the government release Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) data Monday than the media. While there wasn’t any sort of significant media bailout, journalists successfully turned the news of the program into profitable clicks of their own. Newsweek: ‘Religious Organizations Receive $7.3 Billion in PPP Loans, Megachurches Amass Millions’ Forbes: ‘Vocal Opponents Of Federal Spending Took PPP Loans, Including Ayn Rand Institute, Grover Norquist Group’ Associated Press: ‘Kanye West? The Girl Scouts? Hedge funds? All got PPP loans’ Deadline: ‘Who Got PPP Loans?