Kanye West pushes market to all-time highs
EDITOR'S NOTE
Hear me out...(and yes, I'm technically on maternity leave right now, but there's no baby yet and I didn't even send out a newsletter on Friday, so this can be my swansong!)
What is the number one over-arching concern that everyone has about the U.S. economy? Our demographics. ("The United States' birthrate fell for a fourth consecutive year in 2018, bringing the number of people born in the country to its lowest level in 32 years.")
Why? Because everything from future economic growth (productivity + population growth) to the strength of our safety net (in 1945, there were eight working-age adults for every senior citizen; it's half that now, and is on trend to hit just two-and-a-half workers per retiree by 2050) to America's relative force in the world depends on healthy population growth.
And yet you have high-profile celebrities (Prince Harry) and young voices (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) out there musing about how having more than two kids--or having kids at all--may be doing more harm than good. Just imagine what our birthrate would look like if "kid-shaming" becomes a real thing.
Anyhow, along comes Kanye West to explode this whole narrative, saying he wants "seven kids" with wife Kim Kardashian, saying marriage is "cool as hell," and that "the richest thing you can have is as many children as possible." And suddenly here's a very different thing than you've heard in a long time from our pop culture.
Now, I get it: kids are expensive, Kim & Kanye can actually afford them, hire surrogates to have them, nannies to take care of them, etc., etc. But, to that point, the pro-procreation efforts coming out of Hungary and pushed here by the likes of Marco Rubio (child tax credit), Elizabeth Warren (universal child care), et al, bear watching.
After all, values are more powerful than costs in the long run. If it's more socially acceptable to talk about the good of having more children, you can imagine politicians catering more tax incentives, or businesses creating new markets*, or parents pushing back more against the cost of schooling and sports, accordingly. And maybe then we can get that 4% GDP growth and keep those Social Security benefits after all!
So with the Dow now joining the S&P at fresh all-time highs today, I'm calling it the "Kanye West rally." (Your actual headlines are below.)
Have a great day,
Kelly
*I just paid $65 for a pair of shoes for our sixteen-month-old. Which tells you (a) I'm a sucker and needed the shoes badly in that moment, and (b) can't the Warby Parker guys come disrupt this market and bring down costs like they did with eyeglasses already??
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