⁉️ The great value inversion
Why degrees depreciate, pensioners prosper, and private equity needs retail money
Has value broken? Stalwart signals are looking funky. Electricity trades at negative prices while grids collapse from surplus; university credentials lose worth as trade apprenticeships command premiums; private equity’s titans turn to retail money.
Do these inversions reflect random noise, temporary disruptions in otherwise stable systems? Or are they symptoms of something more profound: a revaluation crisis that challenges how we price the future itself?
Frankly, it’s a big odd when abundance creates crisis and scarcity drives prosperity. Perhaps our fundamental economic grammar—that language of supply, demand, and equilibrium we’ve trusted since Adam Smith—is out of date.
Look at higher education. A new Gallup poll reveals that only 35% of Americans now view college as “very important,” down from 75% in 2010. Is this mere anti-intellectualism? Or a rational response to a labor market being hollowed out by precarious work, post-COVID fatigue, cli…