• HOLIDAY TIME USUALLY TAKES A TOLL ON PRODUCTIVITY, much due to “the great Busyness Delusion – a collective hallucination where everyone thinks they’re incredibly busy, but most are just incredibly scattered. We’ve created a culture where being busy has become a badge of honor, with color-coded calendars, productivity apps, and AI tools sorting things left and right. But being busy is not being productive, and activity is not achievement.” Some surveys find up to a quarter of daily time is spent managing eMail, another quarter spent in meetings, and that ‘multitasking’ can reduce productivity by up to 40%, all much because of failing to distinguish between what sounds urgent versus what’s important. Busyness is good as long as it’s spent on things that matter. DCG provides courtesy ‘Lunch & Learn’ seminars for clients and contacts. Let us help improve your productivity & profitability.  [ROLLING STONE]

 

  • ‘SINGLEHOOD’ IS RESHAPING THE WORLD. The norm of relationships and marriage is rapidly being abandoned, with over 40% of women and nearly 50% of men in rich countries now living alone. Women’s options have expanded as barriers in the workplace and social stigma have fallen, along with financial ability to support themselves, versus putting up with an inadequate or abusive partner. Other factors include: (1) social media & dating apps having fostered unrealistic expectations (and excessive pickiness), as well as absorbing hours once allocated to socializing and group activities; (2) Decline in social skills while spending more time on screens, streaming, surfing, gaming, watching Netflix and even porn, often displacing sex (down by 60% according to University College London research); (3) As living alone has become easier, with absence of social & economic pressure to marry considered among the great emancipations of women, their standards have grown more exacting with a mediocre partner no longer seeming a better bet. However, all impacts considered, concern is increasing that failure of the young to settle down and procreate threatens to end Western civilization.  [ECONOMIST]

 

  • TRANSGENDERISM IS IN RAPID DECLINE AMONG YOUNG AMERICANS, based on multiple wide-range surveys from undergraduates at nearly 250 universities with both red and blue campuses. Since a 2023 peak (which reached as high as 40% at ivy league schools and 50% at some liberal arts colleges), the non-heterosexual proportion of students has dropped by more than half.  The surveys consistently found this drop not attributable to a shift in political right, religion, conservatism, or more supportive of free speech. “They are as woke as ever, just less trans and queer, and rather an independent youth fashion that operates on a plane that is separate from politics and mental health, with youth gender identity moving alongside public opinion against natal males accessing female spaces and other progressive establishment woke.”  [SKEPTIC; REAL CLEAR SCIENCE]

 

  • THE ESTATE & GIFT TAX EXEMPTION INCREASED TO $15 MILLION PER PERSON STARTING NEXT YEAR, and is an important component of Estate Planning. DCG strongly recommends updating of Estate Plans, particularly with regard to Trusts – the principal component of prudent protection for heirs, which both: (1) keep personal financial affairs out of public record; and (2) dramatically reduce Court delays & costs by avoiding the ‘Probate” process, where a Court judge is required to manage distribution of assets upon incapacitation or death. The biggest difference between types of Trusts is that Revocable Trusts allow changes or termination during lifetime, while Irrevocable Trusts transfer assets out of the personal estate with benefits of protection from creditors, legal judgments, liens or other obligations, as well as optimal effectiveness when legacies are intended for a specific purpose (like charitable bequests and/or controlling payout to minors or multi-generational beneficiaries). DCG provides courtesy strategic consultation; let us help you safeguard assets and intentions.

 

THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK 

  • “Helping those who have been struck by unforeseeable misfortunes is fundamentally different from making dependency a way of life.” – Thomas Sowell

 

  •  Tech industry layoffs last month exceeded 33 thousand workers – most computer science graduates – with forecasts anticipating over 100K for the year, highest level since the Covid pandemic. Ironically, the tech companies affected are among the first adapters of their own AI systems. For years, any American kid eyeing a stable, future-proof job was told ‘learn to code’ but the future is looking exactly opposite. Last summer, when Microsoft sacked 9,000 employees, its CEO suggested freshly-unemployed workers “turn to AI chatbots to help reduce the emotional and cognitive load that comes with job loss.”  [FUTURISM]

 

  • It’s doubtful that TDS will ever subside, since believers are both immune to logic or reason, and particularly since they marry the word ‘trump’ with a misaligned definition of Autocracy – which they’ve been taught he will exert. Reality is that Americans already have been at the mercy of an autocracy that thrives in our apathy and acceptance of known misery – a society that looks a lot like responsibility of the Democrat Party, which has consistently resisted conservative ideas while supporting and funding leftist programs & agendas promoting progressive ideology in furtherance of status quo. All the way back to the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson noted that “traditional Autocrats do not disturb the habitual rhythms of work & leisure or habitual patterns of family & personal relations, because the miseries of life are familiar and bearable to ordinary people who learn to cope.” [PATRIOT POST]