Salty Ginger Talk Newsletter

December 26, 2024

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SGT
December 26, 2024

Salty Ginger Talk Newsletter

December 26, 2024

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CURRENT EVENTS

MSNBC headliners negotiating pay cuts as ratings nightmare continues

Our take: The liberal media has seen viewership plummet over recent years. The decline is even more pronounced since the November election. As a result, networks that went all in on “Trump bad” as their primary focus have paid dearly for the mistake in strategy. No network exemplifies this better than MSNBC.

Since the election, the network has seen primetime viewership almost halve in many instances. The network's most notable name, Rachel Maddow, saw her audience average only 1.4 million viewers in 2024, including averaging just over 100,000 viewers in the key demographic of adults aged 25-54 since the election. For comparison, FOX News regularly averages over 2 million viewers in the same time slots.

This has led to MSNBC owner Comcast to publicly state they are spinning off their news networks to look at all options, including selling the networks off. To better position the networks for long-term success, they are also renegotiating contracts with their top names. Maddow, Joy Reid, Lawrence O’Donnell, and Chris Hayes have all reportedly been asked to take pay cuts.

It turns out when you are disingenuous at best (Biden has never been better, Trump colluded with Russia, the Southern Border is fine, mostly peaceful protests) or flat out lying to the American public for a long time, they eventually stop listening to you. We hope for the sake of the nation these bad actors wind up with pink slips and they can go peddle their garbage on BlueSky, where we do not have an account.

COURTESY: MSN

DEI architects welcome the current makeover happening in the corporate world.

Our take: Celebrated free market economist Milton Friedman once said that regardless of the intent of a government program, it is important to look at the actual results to see if it is effective or not. The same might be said of the DEI movement.

DEI, or diversity, equity, and inclusion, was already underway before George Floyd was killed by Michigan police. That event galvanized many in the US to push even harder for equity, which many in the corporate world leaned into. The goal of DEI is to ensure everyone has the same access to opportunities and is not barred from the table because of their gender, skin color, or sexual orientation.

While well intentioned, many DEI initiatives wound up perverting these goals into a farcial series of activities, including word association based on photographs, delving deep into the “inherent racism” many had simply because of their skin color, and quotas for leadership roles that were untethered to merit. The vast majority of Americans support the goals of the DEI movement but abhor the blatant overreach and lack of reality many of the methods that are used to pursue these goals demonstrate in the real world.

The pendulum has recently swung back towards the center. Many companies (Harley Davidson, Walmart, and John Deere, to name a few) have shut down or moved away from their previous DEI positions, instead opting for a more measured approach of ensuring they are not missing out on talent or opportunities by not pursuing the best candidates available, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Discriminating against anyone because of their skin color, gender, or other irrelevant physical characteristics is wrong—plain and simple. That includes promoting people simply because of these characteristics. It sets people up for failure, disenfranchises qualified candidates who do not possess these characteristics, and will kill a company if these practices are left in place unchecked. We are glad to see the conversation find a middle ground, where people are judged by how well they perform, not what they look like or who they sleep with.

COURTESY: MSN

 

Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell says housing affordability crisis is due to supply, not interest rates.

Our take: Fed chair Jerome Powell pointed out the obvious in a recent interview. While mortgage rates certainly play a part in housing affordability, the big problem in the housing market is supply. There are many more potential buyers looking for a home than there are homes available to buy. This will always lead to rising prices. This is stuff you learn in the first week of Economics 101.

The dearth of available houses has several contributing factors. First, aging Baby Boomers have chosen to “age in place”, staying in homes that used to be sold off when kids grew up and moved away, removing those homes from the market when young people who are starting families are looking to buy a house.

Second, the distribution of generation sizes has created an imbalance at both ends of the scale. The silent generation and Baby Boomers, aged 60 and up, have roughly 104 million people. Millenials and Gen Zers, aged 47 and below, have roughly 170 million people. Gen Xers, stuck in the middle between 48 and 59, only have 49 million people. At this stage in life, most Gen Xers already own houses. This leaves 170 million people looking for houses with 150 million people already in houses, the vast majority of which are not looking to sell. Voila! A 20 million gap between buyers and sellers.

Third, and likely the biggest driver of the lack of housing is the local bureaucracy that exists in much of America as it relates to building housing. Ask any developer or home builder about their experience in going through the permitting and approval process to build new housing, and you are sure to hear horror stories of permit costs, multi-tiered approval processes that sometimes take years from start to finish, and a lack of available building sites due to restrictive zoning laws that prevent affordable, multi-family buildings from being erected in the very markets that need housing units.

The first 2 issues are what they are. It is hard to change population distribution or to kick people out of the homes they live in if they don’t want to sell. The third issue is imminently solvable. If the politicians who decry the housing shortage actually want to solve it, slashing regulations and streamlining the permitting and approval process could get us most of the way to the solutions they claim to want.

COURTESY: MSN

TIP OF THE DAY

Focus on relationships and experiences, not material things. Relationships and experiences are by far the best things in life.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs, one step at a time.” —Joe Girard

SOURCES: