Assorted Links Wednesday

Smile, it's Wednesday and 8:10 PM in Texas, and time for another selection of assorted links.

11 May 2022 — 4 min read

In my view there are multiple layers, far removed from the municipal government level, that few laypeople realize have substantial impact on local community and economic development. The fact is there are actors and factors that control development patterns, starting at the metropolitan level but funneling all the way down to the half-vacant shopping center near your home. There is an economic development hierarchy at work that's often created winners and losers before municipalities have had a chance to weigh in

Banks/investors
The market
Community profile/perceptions
Development and demographic trends
Property owners
Developers

Countdown to human-free construction in less than 10 years: Accelerating sensor and software technology are speeding development of autonomous machines, and contractors need to be learning how to implement technology and retrain workers.

How long do bear markets last? Shorter, and longer, than you think:

My kind of dog show: The working-class alternative to the Westminster Dog Show.

How the inflation rate is measured: 477 government workers at grocery stores.

To calculate how much prices are rising, hundreds of government workers spend their days tracking down costs for individual goods and services

The U.S. Economic Development Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development just released a joint resource guide to help community organizations access USDA and EDA resources to build strategies to boost economic development in rural America.

The resource guide outlines programs and services that can be used to advance community and economic development in rural communities through four key focus areas:

Planning and technical assistance
Infrastructure and broadband expansion
Entrepreneurship and business assistance
Workforce development and livability

How to live on 24 hours a day: Arnold Bennett on living a meaningful life within the constraints of time. Despite having been written in 1910, Bennett addresses one of our oldest questions: how can we make the best use of our lives? How can we make the best use of our time?

If you haven't seen the movie The Founder about the man who wasn't actually the founder of the global hamburger chain, McDonald's, give it a watch.

One of the best bits of the film is a sequence where the actual founders, brothers Dick and Mac McDonald, use a tennis court to map out their Speedee Service System. They constantly change the potential layout of the restaurant with chalk on the court as a group of workers pantomime the process of serving customers.

The end of the Chamber of Commerce? After over 100 years, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is beginning to see its influence in Congress wane after the group came out in support of Big Tech, leading to many Republicans criticizing the Chamber and its lobbying efforts.

Is there a housing shortage or not? The two charts below seem to tell completely different stories. How is that possible?

Lumber prices are falling again. Thank good management in the lumber industry and rising mortgage rates that are slightly easing demand for new housing.

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The NFIB small business sentiment index held steady last month (at the lowest level since early 2020):

Small business outlook is at record lows:

Due to inflation concerns:

Retail gasoline prices hit a record high: The national average price for regular gasoline jumped to a new all-time high of $4.37 a gallon on Tuesday, breaking the previous record set in March by 4 cents.

The 2022 County Health Rankings National Findings Report is out. Here are some charts:

Truckers want more trucks than manufacturers can build. The U.S. trucking industry, at the center of the nation’s struggle to move freight efficiently, is caught in its own constricted supply chain.