iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ditto Price:Sales ratio.

"TRIGGERING PROGRESSIVES is a sport for America’s right-wing culture warriors. Donald Trump and his supporters crow about driving them 'crazy'" But check the left side of these graphs. Just living w/ Dems makes Pubs *crazy.* Dems don't have that problem (much). www.economist.com/graphic-deta...

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 6h

Luv this little bit from NIPA 5.10 Fixed-assets Table. There are holding gains attributable to general inflation, labeled "Neutral," and then there's… "Real" nominal holding gains. Oxymoron alert. fred.stlouisfed.org/release/tabl...

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Also, this. Sheesh. PLUS those taxes have been deferred for years or even many decades. You're paying the taxes in super-cheap 2026 $s. I'm like, "GOI." (I do prefer interest-only mortgages though there's a significant rate penalty. Didn't go for it on my last mortgage.)

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I’ve long suspected that this was true, and indeed: “‘buy, borrow, die’ is not a dominant tax avoidance strategy for the rich” repository.law.umich.edu/law_econ_cur... “The Role of Unrealized Gains and Borrowing in the Taxation of the Rich”

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/27/o... "I would like to propose a better Turing test than Turing’s: Can a machine experience social anxiety? Can it lie awake at 4 in the morning replaying the stupid thing it said at dinner?" This is not a Turing test! 1/

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Graph and data: fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Z31E And here's another graph explaining: Velocity of Wealth. Top 20% spend ~6% of their wealth each year. Bottom 80% spend more like 25% Do the arithmetic: less concentrated wealth means more spending. Which causes production. Which creates wealth.

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Rich people just sit on their wealth like Smaug the Dragon, don't turn it over in spend which causes production which creates more wealth... Updating this year-old post with recent Velocity of Wealth numbers. Using somewhat different measures but the story’s the same. Graph/data link in reply. ⬇️

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Red counties are only maintaining population growth due to immigrants flooding in, from: 1. Other countries (until recently), and 2. Bluer places (60% from Blue or competitive counties). Not a Red-happy electoral picture… shorturl.at/8iFuS (I was able to read this w/ my unpaid login account.)

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This is wild, new from @economist.com. Link below. Republican counties have (increasingly) higher birth rates than Dem counties. But they also have (increasingly) higher mortality rates. So Red counties’ “natural” population growth has gone negative since 2019. So... 1/

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Republicans and 2024 Trump voters here don't look anything like Real Americans to me... www.gelliottmorris.com/p/2026-09-25...

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

News-based: www.policyuncertainty.com/us_monthly.h...

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Maybe some good explanation for the historically abysmal economic sentiment index? #Vibecession fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Z0BP

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

If you look at the *distribution* of the NIPAs’ (balance-sheet-incomplete) Income - Outlays = Saving, the results are completely implausible. Bottom-80% have been spending down their assets for decades? Annual "Total" saving here = NIPA’s Household income + accrued holding gains - outlays.

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Shall they always be with us? Between quarter and a third of Americans don't believe in the principles upon which this country was founded. Even as they fervently pledge allegiance.

Quotes from the from the Declaration of Independence, Gettysburg Address, and Pledge of Allegiance.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

…with liberty and justice for all.

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

(BTW, can roughly double the HH net new borrowing $# to get HHs + firms NNB.) Here's an update covering 1959–2025, trendline slope still zero to four digits. Notable is the big increase in volatility since the dot-bomb.

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Not clear how Koo's excellent paper on leveraging/deleveraging cycles pertains to the long-term empirical regularity revealed in the graph's *trend line.* Up/down variance is just random ~noise? (For the HH sector at least, net new borrowing is a v small contributor to asset/wealth accumulation.)

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

This seems like such an eye-popping empirical regularity, I can't imagine why econs haven't examined or exploited it. The trendline slope is zero to four digits, over seven decades. For every dollar of Personal Consumption Spending, household wealth increases by 40 cents (nominal $s).

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Egg-price volatility's been crazy since 2015. Pourquoi? Je ne sais pas.

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Productivity, output per hour worked, is more than 5X what it was in 1947. Here vs Hours worked per capita. Only since Covid have Americans started reaping the productivity benefits by capturing more Free time. Less work hours over a lifetime for people, families, communities… #Freedom FTW.

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

James Carville has been reincarnated as the bond market, and…

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Rubio, translated: Violent imperial states. Not just sovereign states. Ah, those were the good ol’ days…before the violently territorial Tzarist, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires in Europe all collapsed in 1917-18. (Y: The German and Soviet empires sought to continue that…)

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Ya think? When people like this are looking for a political home in America, there’s one party that welcomes, embraces, and elevates them.

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Deleted prev bleet, fixed an error. Top 1% HHs (ranked by income). Totals, 2000–2023: NIPA HH Income incl "yield" property income: $53T Accrued capital/holding gains: $16T. (Adds 29% to NIPA income.) This assumes Top 1% gets share of total HH-sector gains proportionate to its asset holdings.

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Here (handy) is accrued cap gains as a percent of total Haig-Simons *property* income. But to your Q: Summing 2000 through 2023 (again, handy), total H-S income incl cap gains was ~24% greater than NIPA income. /3

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Ontology alert: www.irregular.com/research/add...

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

nickanderson.substack.com/p/raising-th...

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

I’m really mystified what the contention is about here. e.g. p. 923. The big issue in the original thread was that labor gets no value added credit for output from firms even though it accounts for 70% of that value creation. This was just a very small (in dollar terms) side issue.

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Wyoming MAGA/Freedom Caucus Republicans were thoroughly routed in last night’s primary. chatgpt.com/s/t_6a85cd7e...

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Per national accounting as practiced, households’ (people’s) “value-added“ is approximately zero. They're outside GDP’s “production boundary.” 🙄 ~70% of firms' NVA is paid to people/households, who presumably are…adding that much value to production? But firms get all the credit for it. 👀 1/

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Here without the (tongue in cheek) "let’s euthanize people" language (and, w/o "rent" language that just confuses ppl). Property income is unearned. It's received simply for owning stuff, assets. At least: tax it @ much higher rates and much more progressively than hard-earned labor compensation.

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

PS is earned labor compensation + unearned property income & (net) transfers, minus spending, taxes, & interest payments. BUT, property income. Should be total return on assets, right? It's not. In NIPA it's just yield. Interest + dividends + proprietors & rental profits.

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

“It is ironic, then, that the USA, in using military force, caused another power to close the Gulf and led to the demise of [the Carter] doctrine.” phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/midweek-up...

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

First two words fully contradicted by the next three here, no?

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

For a sense of magnitude, and proportion: Total U.S. Household Assets, per household: $1.4M. That's $551,000 for each person in America. Think of that the next time you hear, ”We can’t afford it.“

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Note to weak-kneed centrist Dems who haven’t noticed what Republicans have done over the last several decades.

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

AI firms: no moats? HT and FT gift link: bsky.app/profile/jwma...

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Film you’ve watched more than six times with a gif.

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

“I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

👍👍 www.facebook.com/share/p/1LBd...

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Better: nonfinancial corps’ (negative) equity issuance as a % of NFCs’ outstanding equity. N.B.: Rule 10b-18, giving firms "safe harbor" for share buybacks, took effect Nov 17, 1982. fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XDba

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

👍👍 For nonfinancial corps — actual production firms — net equity issuance (shares issued - buybacks & M&As) has been negative for decades. In aggregate, equity doesn't fund productive investment; it actually competes with investment for firms’ free cash flow. fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XAPD

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Ammana vote for Republicans cause this should have said “More Than.“

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Steve Roth @steveroth.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

If this Mediazona analsyis of Russian weekly military deaths is safe, they've been declining since Nov 2024. Currently @ 500-1,000/wk. (Ignore big bars at right; much of the data's not in on those weeks yet so that's statistical noise.) peterturchin.substack.com/p/war-in-ukr...

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