Agglomeration Economics and The United States

 Back near the end of the 19th century, one of my heroes, Alfred Marshall, spoke of a concept that is now known as Agglomeration Economics.

In brief, it states that proximity has it advantages. He said that some industries seem to cluster in certain geographic areas. This was due to three basic factors:

1) A skilled labor force locally

2) The spillover of local knowledge

3) Local supply linkages

He often used the example of Sheffield cutlery makers and how many competitors clustered in a relatively small geographic area. He described it as “the mysteries of the trade became no mysteries; but are as it were in the air, and children learn many of them unconsciously.” A bit flowery, for sure but I firmly believe this is happening in the United States as I write and will continue for some time to come.

Much has been made of the urban/rural divide and how as small towns across the country are emptying out and job prospects for young people have all but disappeared. Many towns in the plains are closing schools and suffering from an acute shortage of doctors and close by hospitals. 

Yet also happening but without a huge amount of press is that mid-sized cities are also dying (some rapidly) and there is little hope that promised industrial revitalization will succeed in most localities.

Over the last few weeks, I have spent much time on You Tube watching economic development videos from a wide variety of cities. The message is always upbeat and the promises big. Visit some of these cities and what you see, sadly, is despair and a hopelessness especially among the young people. 

It is not their fault. The local kingpins are sincere, but the odds are steeply stacked against them.

Consider the Marshallian concept of Agglomeration for a few moments. It is not new. Many of you, like I, worked in advertising. Why did Madison Avenue thrive as an advertising mecca for so long? The talent pool was there. I worked at the old NW Ayer agency in the New York in the mid-70’s. Two other substantial agencies were in the same building (Marshalk and Marsteller). Twice I caught co-workers getting on the wrong elevator. They were much more carefully dressed than normal, telling a youngster like me that they were going for an interview at a competing agency in the same building. 

Why did the TV networks keep their sales teams in New York even though programming came out of the West Coast? Easy. The ad agencies spending the network big bucks were largely in New York.

In the financial world, Wall Street dominated and real shooters in the money management game at the time were New York based.

Detroit was the auto capital, Houston ruled oil and so it went.

Nowadays, we have long been in a post-industrial economy. The information age rules but the same Agglomeration effect has taken hold. 

Microsoft was headquartered in the Seattle area. Some say Paul Allen cajoled Bill Gates to leave Albuquerque and come home to Seattle. The company took off and created thousands of jobs and was a magnet for tech people.

Silicon Valley in Northern California also became a tech hub and Venture Capitalists gave the hungry and brilliant founders of hundreds of startups the funds they needed to launch. Since then, some tech hubs have emerged throughout America. The leaders are Silicon Valley, Seattle (greatly helped by tech savvy Microsoft alumni), Boston, and Brooklyn. Lesser lights but impressive are Boise, Idaho and Anne Arundel County, Maryland among others.

We have all read how Jeff Bezos started selling books from his Seattle area garage. What you may not have considered how lucky he was to have an enormous pool of locals who helped him to achieve scale and unfathomable growth as he expanded the product line for Amazon. Seattle had the three variables that Alfred Marshall outlined a century earlier. 

Interestingly, Amazon is often building their distribution centers in areas that were once vibrant manufacturing towns. Many of these localities were located on railroad, highway or river inks that allowed them to ship their products quickly and inexpensively. In fact, Amazon has warehouses in abandoned factories or locations of the former manufacturing sites.

I wish all the smaller cities and towns well. However, as their base had eroded, airlines have drastically cut the number of flights to and from their home. Major 21st century companies look for airline hubs for headquarters.

This is the new reality and turning it around is a herculean task. 

I wish all my United States readers a Happy Thanksgiving.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com

The Billionaire Myth

 These days one reads and hears a great deal about billionaires. Some seem to be admired tremendously for their accomplishments while others are pilloried as they are considered to be 21st century amoral robber barons. 

To me, I see both sides of that coin, but one thing surprises me. In a world of nearly 8.3 billion people, estimates are that there are only just over 3,000 of them. Recently, I spent a few hours talking with a very pleasant and successful man. He described someone whom I know of but had never met. My newfound friend said, “he is a billionaire these days.”

I paused and did a rough back of the envelope calculation based on his holding of a public company. To me, it looked as if he was worth something close to $30 million, not even close to a billion. Yes, he was well off but certainly not super-rich.

What people have not wrapped their head around is what a billion really is. A billion is one thousand million. Let that sink in for a few moments. Many of you, much like the gentleman I described above are millionaires meaning that you net worth (assets-debt) exceeds one million dollars. It probably took many long years to get there. A billionaire, however, has at least 1,000 times that as a net worth and 20 people worldwide have a projected net worth of $100 billion +. So, they have a hundred thousand million or more. Pretty amazing.

Forbes Magazine, who monitors the ultra-rich each year, projected last April, that there were 3,028 billionaires globally up from 2781 in 2024. It is a safe bet that the number has ticked up a bit as I type given the bull market in equities through October 2025.

The US has the highest number at 902, followed by China at 450 and 205. Some estimates are that nearly 100 live within a 10-block radius in Manhattan.

Small but wealthy countries show up well. For example, Switzerland has a projected 42 billionaires and, per capita, their incidence of the super-rich is nearly twice that of the United States. Little Monaco, the size of New York’s Central Park, has the highest per capita billionaire rate in the world.

Okay, this is a moderately fun read for many of you, but what is the point? The billionaire term is used far too loosely today. Only a tiny group of people have reached or will reach this milestone. Yet social media appears to be full of billionaire mentions.

One thing is true—authentic billionaires have wildly disproportionate political clout compared to their numbers. They can persuade politicians of all stripes to vote for their interests. Tax policy is never even handed allowing the wealthy to evade confiscatory or even reasonable taxes via loopholes or carefully crafted trusts. The old saw of “he who has the gold, makes the rules” remains a relevant comment.

Old continental money is quieter than the billionaires who make the headlines today. You rarely see families that have had high wealth for centuries on lists of the world’s richest. Some placed their money in offshore accounts eons ago; others buried some wealth in art or other low-key assets. They also shun headlines and lead a relatively low-key existence. Some mention European royalty but keep in mind that jewels, castles, and some art are owned by the government so many royals are custodians of great wealth but not outright owners.

The emphasis on publicity for billionaires and the exaggeration of many who are not has only led to more emphasis on income inequality. It is a real thing that can only shift if loopholes are closed and tax laws enforced. I have been hearing that forever in my long life but the status quo remains in place and gets worse as the middle class shrinks and half of Americans and most of the world is left behind with no piece of the action.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com or leave a message on the blog.

The Nobel and AI

 Last week, the Sveriges (Swedish) Riksbank awarded their Nobel Memorial Medal in Economics to three professors: Joel Mokyr of Northwestern, Philippe Aghion of the London School of Economics and Peter Howitt of Brown University.

The trio shared the prize shared the prize for their extensive research that illustrated the link between technological progress and long-term economic growth which leads to higher standards of living globally. 

John Hassler, the chairman of the prize committee said: “Sustained economic growth, driven by a continuous stream of technological innovations and improvements, has replaced stagnation.” Most of our historic growth has been in the last 200 years and important discoveries lifted whole societies. 

Hassler went on to stay that radical innovation is often described as “the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction….an endless process in which new and better products replace the old.” 

Creative destruction was popularized by 20th century economist Joseph Schumpeter, a colorful, brilliant but controversial character who was from Austria but spent his last years at Harvard. **

Professor Howitt of Brown tipped his hat to Schumpeter but stated in an interview that there “was still conflict at the heart of economic growth” as innovation often leads to significant job losses. Dr. Howitt stated that the conflict still needs to be dealt with going forward.

Well, what does all this have to do with Media Realism? Pretty simple to me. The biggest wrecking ball to hit the status quo over the next several years is Artificial Intelligence (AI). As positive and efficient as it will likely be it should also lead to some profound job losses. Here is where I believe the mainstream media is really missing the boat.

Each time that we have had a dislocation in the economy due to a tech or industrial breakthrough, job losses tended to be at the bottom end of the skill scale. And, new doors always opened as the emerging industries picked up much of the economic slack.

With AI, it, in my opinion, will be quite different. As AI grows, many white-collar middle management and even senior management jobs will likely disappear in my opinion. These men and women will not adapt well to becoming baristas or Uber/Lyft drivers. The business media is full of questions as to whether AI stocks are in a bubble, but very little is said about the AI revolution may really upset the employment status quo. 

As Bette Davis said in “All About Eve”, “fasten your seat belts, it is going to be a bumpy flight”.

**For more on Creative Destruction, see Media Realism, Schumpeter lives in 2009 media (1/30/2009) and Schumpeter revisited (8/22/22).

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com or leave a message on the blog.

Will America’s Population Decline Soon?

 In recent weeks, I have received requests from several Media Realism (MR) readers to address the issue of a possible imminent decline in the US population. 

I am a media and especially business news junkie and I did not see anything about the issue. The people who made the request are what I would deem to be serious people and not alarmists. So, I did some digging, and they appear to be on to something.

In several MR posts over several years, I have discussed how the entire Western world was getting older. A big issue to me was that many European countries had developed a “provider” state that had health care and old age issues covered for everyone in the nation. As the population aged, a smaller number of people would be supporting a growing group of seniors who contractually had several expensive benefits. Taxes were high by American standards but would have to spike upwards to keep the benefits intact. Something will have to give.

In the US, we had nowhere near the benefits of many nations, so the situation did not seem drastic. Yet, like much of Europe and Japan our population is aging. Also, the fertility rate was dropping. To keep population flat, the average woman must have 2.1 children. As I type, we are 1.6-1.7. In America, we have made up the shortfall with of immigrants visiting and staying in our country. Well, I have seen a few articles saying that this year, for the first time, America will have a slight decline in population as early as this year. This will be the first time a drop in population has happened.

What I first saw that in print, I was dismissive. What about the Civil War? Some 700,000 people perished, and the population base was much smaller then. Yet, it was true. The population of the United States went up during the Civil War as immigration, particularly from Ireland, was very high at that time. 

So, there are two ways for the population to grow. The first is through what demographers called natural increase—more births than death in a year. The second is via net immigration—more newcomers than people leaving. 

With fertility rates at an all-time low in the US plus a government policy to close much of the immigration door and force some non-citizens to leave, it is mathematically possible that we could have a decline this year and certainly next year in the US population. 

Some people have told me so what? A few others tell me that I worry too much, and things will work themselves out. 

Here are my concerns that emerged when I examined data largely from two solid sources—Pew Research and the American Enterprise Institute.

If we have a smaller workforce, it follows that we will have lower output. A labor shortage is inflationary as it pushes up wages. We could have a return of stagflation, the horror of the 1970’s economy.

Big cities will be affected. There will be fewer riders for public transit which is already struggling financially. Restaurants, coffee shops, fast food, hotel staff and Lyft and Uber drivers are likely to be young immigrants. 

How about construction? The majority of roofers, painters and drywall installers are immigrants. In major states such as New York, Texas, Florida and California immigrants tend to dominate construction crews of all kinds. 

Do not forget the rural areas. Roughly 2/3 of agricultural workers are immigrants. Fruits and vegetables have a very labor-intensive harvesting, and need large teams to bring the food in. Without enough workers, some foods could rot on the vine and prices at the supermarket would spike. 

An aging population such as ours needs medical professionals. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 27% of our doctors are immigrants. We need doctors and we need them now.

Financially, throughout our history immigrants have been a huge engine of growth. They tend to be fearless, hard workers who live simply until they make it, and they have appreciated the freedoms which American offers. They tend to be young, and they can contribute for a long time to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid all of which face some financial and demographic headwinds in the not-too-distant future. 

I have no problem with immigration reform and understand the importance of bringing people to America legally but if we let our population stagnate or decline, the American dream may cease to be.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com or leave a message on the blog.

The Resilient Consumer?

 Those of you who are business news junkies such as I have seen and heard commentary that the American consumer is holding up very well these days.

Credit card balances exist but, on balance, are not out of control. Retail, always a tough game, is better than many expected going into 2025.

Dig a bit deeper and ignore the top line averages and a different picture comes in to focus. According to several sources in the consumer credit industry, it appears that approximately 60% of US households are living “paycheck to paycheck”. This means they do not have anywhere near the savings cushion of six months living expenses that most financial planners recommend for a family.

With that in mind, I went back to some Federal Reserve data. Each year, they publish a mini report that measures what percentage of American households could handle a cash emergency to cover a car or appliance need, an emergency health issue or other expense to the tune of $1,000.

Things have not improved over the last few years. Some 41% of households could not cover a $1,000 surprise expense with cash or check. Some 30% would put in on their credit card (already having a balance), 11% would go to family or friend, some would ask for a delayed payment or payment plan and a small group said that they would not pay. Interestingly, when I probed about the 11% going to friends or family (outside the Federal Reserve report), it appears some cannot go to friends or family anymore as they are tapped out as well or they have never been paid back from previous bailouts. Also, on a regional basis, 57% of people in the South could not come up with $1,000 readily and 54.6% of people in the Northeast were in the same boat.

Many Americans have no breathing room anymore. Most people need a car to get to work. Fortunately, cars are much more reliable than they used to be. Old timers (meaning me) remember the horrible cars that came out of Detroit in the early ‘70’s. After four years, they were largely ready for the junkyard. As I type, the average age of on road vehicles in the U.S. is at an all time high of 12.6 years. The average new car sold in the U.S. weighs in at $48,000. This is way out of reach for the bottom 40% of Americans.

There are some Nissan and Volkswagen models in the $20-24 range that are not loaded but can provide transportation but are not good for most families. About 9% of U.S. auto loan holders pay $1000+ a month in payments according to Lending Tree data. Credit analyst Experian pegs the average payment at $700 per month. Many of those are on 7 to the new 8-year loans! 

If someone is struggling, how about buying a clunker? Well, used car prices have been on the rise and remember, 40% cannot easily deal with a $1,000 repair bill and they are still borrowing to purchase the used car.

Another straw in the wind that I have observed is the growth of BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later). They get the item they may desperately need but soon payments come due. Much the same has happened with student loans that are no longer deferred.

Most of you reading this may say that such sad statistics do not apply to me. Fair enough. Yet, if you are a marketer, you need to keep a very close eye on it. 

When the next downturn occurs (I have no idea when), the bottom half of America, already stretched, is going to be in a world of hurt. 

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com or leave a message on the blog.

Disney, ESPN, and The NFL

 Earlier this month, many of us were a bit surprised to hear that ESPN announced a non-binding agreement to acquire the NFL Network including items such as the Red Zone Channel and NFL Fantasy. The NFL gets a 10% stake in ESPN (ESPN is currently owned 80% by ABC, a subsidiary of Disney and 20% by Hearst).

This announcement comes shortly before the launch of Disney’s Direct to Consumer service which has been long awaited.

Some of you may be surprised to learn that the NFL network has been around for 22 years. Recently, it has been considered by many media analysts as a failing property that never really lived up to its original potential. ESPN, once a powerhouse in cable and in advertising revenue, has been slipping the last few years as well. Young people embraced smaller sports outlets with edgier commentary, and the rights fees became so high for some sports properties that they laid off many long-term employees in a cost cutting measure. Also, ESPN is a legacy media property in a world that is largely digital these days. 

Some see positives in that NFL Fantasy Football will merge with ESPN Fantasy Football. ESPN platforms will license an additional three NFL games that will air on the NFL network. The NFL will hold on to NFL Films and other platforms as well as the official sites for the 32 league teams. 

Okay, a lot of issues come up with this deal. Many need to be clarified but there are some questions  and observations that have come up to me and some friends:

1) Is ESPN now locked into Monday Night Football forever? Will they stay in the Super Bowl Rotation (ABC/ESPN)?

2) A few years ago, some clever Wall Street analysts thought that Apple or Amazon or even Microsoft would be smart to buy all of Disney, not just ESPN. One colorful analyst said that Apple buying Disney was a no brainer. Will Disney ever go on the block?

3) In recent years, Apple and Amazon have invaded streaming video with some excellent programming. Netflix, a strong financial performer and to date the winner in the streaming race, also got their feet wet with a slight introduction to football. The opinion of some, including me, was that if they wanted to get into sports, particularly football, they could bid up the cost of rights to the NFL and could snatch some games from the legacy media players. 

4) Also, a contender might have been Google with their popular You Tube platform. Again, they had the resources to pay up for a football package that few companies other than those referred to in item #3 could match.

5) The NFL would have to thread the needle on deals so there would not be complaints if ESPN received sweet deals relative to others who wanted the rights to the games.

6) Finally, when groups merge, there are likely to be layoffs in certain areas. For example, with the two fantasy football products reduced to one, staff reductions seem a certainty. Also, commentators and announcers will be reduced. Both ESPN and the NFL need to proceed carefully as many on air people have a significant following.

For decades, people have always referred to the Big Four in sports broadcasting—the NFL, Major League Baseball, the NBA and the NHL. In recent years, there has been no contest. The NFL is the dominant force among them. 

How this will all shake out is not clear at this point. 

It will be interesting for sure.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com or leave a message on the blog.

HOW DOES YOU 401K BALANCE COMPARE TO OTHERS?

 As many of you know, the Vanguard group has the largest assets under management of any US mutual fund company. Recently, they published some data that I think many of you will find interesting.

For calendar year 2024, here are the average and median 401k balances among their customer base by age:

                                Average balance            Median Balance

Under 25              $6,899 $1,948

25-34                     $42,640                             $16,255

35-44                     $103,522                          $39,958

45-54                     $188,643                          $67,796

55-64                    $271,320                           $95,642

65+                        $299,442                           $95,425

Source: Vanguard, 2025

Okay, viewing this will likely produce a wide variety of responses. Some will not understand the difference between an average and a median. To refresh your memory, an average is a straight mix (mean)of all participants. Invariably, a relative handful of outliers with large or even huge balances will pull an average up. They are the top 10% of participants who skew all averages upward. The median, as we have often noted in this blog, represented the 50% percentile in this large sample. Approximately, one half are above or below this statistic.

To those of you doing the arithmetic, you will observe that the median balance tends be about 35-40% of the average.

If you look at your own 401k or 403b, do not be too upset by these data. You may have a nice pension that few have today, or you may live in a low taxed or low-cost state. So, your future may be more covered than you think.

Also, the New York Times followed up with a report about a week later stating that women in Generation Z, born 1997-2022, are much more aggressive about retirement contributions than men of that age. It appears that they are more financially savvy than previous generations.

Also, keep in mind that many with current seven figure balances have their retirement funds spread across several mutual fund families. Perhaps they worked at a few companies or, if the balance reached seven figures, they moved funds to other entities.

There are more millionaires in America than ever before. Many are retired. With current market levels as I type near or at all-time highs, this is not surprising. Had they shown balances of those 75+ rather than 65+, the odds are good that balances would show a decline from the 65+ data.

Remember that equities are higher now than last year so balances would be larger than what I provided above. Again, do not forget that many of us have retirement accounts with more than one firm. 

Minimum Required Distributions (MRD) kick in at age 72 and you can begin withdrawals without penalty as early as age 59 ½.

Markets fluctuate so some years participants will gain and during others they will lose.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com or leave a message on the blog.