Of all the 50y forecasts I'm not sure this is among the more convincing..

He's still thinking about credit ratings

BERNANKE/YELLEN/GREENSPAN JOINT STATEMENT:

“.. this is how monetary policy is made in emerging markets ..”

Which of the following best characterises consumers sense of inflation in the UK?

a) violently falling
b) gradually reaccelerating
c) very slowly 'returning to normal'

I'd argue that c) captures consumer sentiment best

For the median fresh grad? Completely agree.

However I think that undersells a) the political permission structure that the policy was sold under (that remains today and b) the distribution of experiences that occur within that set which is pretty meaningful in size and variation

It's amazing that voting isn't more extreme for u30s in the UK given the amount the percentile income they'd need to earn higher than their parents to access the same set of goods and services

Netflix, CoD and holidays to southern Italy are cheap though, so there's that

Additional one-offs previous cohorts had?

- lower old age dependency ratios
- lower pension spending per pensioner
- more rapid career progression (think about avg. age of retirement)
- faster growing economy, per se

Ofc, lots of advantages that new cohorts have too but generally less significant

Even worse for those in the public sector where such a large proportion of remuneration comes via a pension which back-loads the benefits meanwhile they struggle to pay for a) student loan(s) b) a large deposit for a house incl. large stamp duty and c) nursery fees likely all at once! Madness

All of these things were easier to manage on prior cohorts (also think about childcare regulations and availability of au pairs)

Lifecycle taxation is basically ignored by gov policies and so peak tax burden relative to needs is likely highest for careerists looking to have kids for the first time

Think about childcare. High earners will typical work longer hours, live in more expensive cities and so experience the drag of progressive fiscal on income and housing.

Now overlay free childcare hours for the system but not for high earners - once again there's a progressive cross subsidy!

Now overlay a stamp duty with fiscal drag and you'll see how progressive taxation is particularly impactful on the latest cohorts of earnt income

We have a fiscal system where income is taxed progressively and so are transactions and so is consumption

That's a lot of progressive overlays

Similarly taboo to point out that lots (definitely not all) of the benefits of the uplift didn't just accrue to owner-occupiers but also those with lifetime social housing tenancy... and therefore lots of the same material interests in NIMBY policies

Everyone is familiar with house price appreciation relative to income but it feels like there's a taboo on pointing out that it significantly came from a one-off liberalisation of mortgage financing.

Student loans went from 'zero' to 'not zero but largely repayable' to 'large and largely not repayable'

You'd have thought someone would quote stats on the degree classification outcomes of each group if they were making the case for discrimination at acceptance for prior cohorts

The tool at Dr. Zhu’s hospital, which was developed by researchers affiliated with the Chinese tech giant Alibaba, was trained to look for pancreatic cancer in noncontrast CTs

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/02/w...

Why?

Is it really ~2x different in Surreyl Herts?