Jon Doyle

Director of Juniper a specialist Financial Planning. All views my own and none constitute advice. Above average at a lot of hobbies, not great at any.

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

@AlanJLSmith Ed Zitron is doing some incredible work on the underlying financials of AI on his blog - definitely worth a read for those of us integrating AI into many parts of our business.

Token price changes could alter the value proposition quite drastically

https://t.co/nAZyFyYCYQ

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

Can someone use AI to design reliable a home printer?

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

@DanOakesBP @nicklincoln My point was these a four very different things.

RLI cannot be eradicated - it’s an impossibility baked into the measure itself.

Eradicating Billionaires improves RLI but improves nobodies lives

It’s what makes Corbyn so pernicious

Focusing on the last two is more important

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

@DanOakesBP @nicklincoln It depends how one defines poverty

I’m not being deliberately obtuse here

But to state whether something is a problem you have to define it properly

Financial insecurity, static living standards, the Sisyphusian nature of progressing in life - all problematic but ≠ poverty

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

@DanOakesBP @nicklincoln Notice how during 2010-15 the poverty line decreased?

We were in peak austerity but because the middle got poorer the distance from the bottom to the middle decreased too.

My point is it’s not a very good measure of poverty & is often misunderstood - especially by Corbyn

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

@DanOakesBP @nicklincoln Do you know what that poverty line equates to?

For a single income family anyone earning under £55,000 per year is considered poor. (£31k per annum before housing costs)

£5,000 more you are considered rich enough to have child benefit removed.

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

@DanOakesBP @nicklincoln That’s largely a result of inflation

Global inflation has totalled 30% over the past 5 years. This naturally leads to an increase in Billionaires

Absolute poverty (UK and Global) has declined over the past 15 years

Relative Poverty is stable

Expectations has risen

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

@DanOakesBP @nicklincoln It’s not a view on poverty

It’s a view on comparison

Poverty is a problem buts its a problem not caused by the value of Amazon shares

Rent extraction? Quite possibly
Unproductive use of assets like land banking? Quite possibly
Amazon shares going up in value - not at all

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

@DanOakesBP @nicklincoln Disparity is only bad in so far as it makes one aware their situation could be better.

If we only compared ourselves to rural Zambia we’d be the “Billionaire”

Bezos own c8% of Amazon - the company he founded - how is that hoarding?

Neither of these things increase poverty

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

@DanOakesBP @nicklincoln I don’t think Nick is saying Poverty is good

He is saying that thinking of Wealth and Poverty as two sides of a zero-sum game is false (in stronger words maybe 🤷‍♂️)

The value of Amazon shares going up doesn’t remove dollar bills from the pockets of the poor

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

@dontdelay @DanNeidle you’re both significantly smarter than me - what am I missing?

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

1/ Pension and Tax nerds - I was asked by a client this week about deliberately exceeding their annual allowance, by some margin, to recover their Personal Allowance and retain Free Childcare Hours for children

My initial instinct was it wouldn’t work but the more I look into it

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

4/ What am I missing?

Is the legislation really that stupidly drafted to incentivise deliberately getting an annual allowance charge?

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

@Alan_Couzens I’m 6’2,
105kg
17% BF
VO2 Max of 46

Can now manage 90 minutes at 6:20/km pace in Zone 2 but it’s taken three years.

I swim 8km/wk too but never managed to swim Zone 2 - that’s impossible!!!

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

But learning the philosophical building blocks of how to get great outcomes (in whatever sphere you operate) is imperative.

[Naval @naval]

There’s no point in learning custom tools, workflows, or languages anymore.

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

The problem isn’t the Rolex

It’s always being charged Rolex prices but getting anything from a Rolex to Casio

[Daniel Priestley @DanielPriestley]

Imagine if government started giving away Rolex watches. Or if they gave teenagers a loan to buy a Rolex if they wanted one.

The symbolic value of a Rolex would drop through the floor. Fundamentally a Rolex is not intrinsically very valuable but it’s symbolically valuable because it signals status or success for the wearer. All of that would go away if the Government made them easy to obtain.

This is what has happened to the university degree. Prior to the 1970s, a university degree was a symbol that you weren’t poor or slow. The only people who could get a university degree were people who had a higher than average IQ from a wealthier than average family.

The degree itself wasn’t intrinsically very valuable, which is why any degree would do. If you had a French Poetry degree it was enough to signal to an employer that you weren’t poor or stupid and you could then enter the workforce at a higher point than most.

Today that signal is lost. The government has made it so anyone can go to university - even if you are a bit thick. It’s also made it so that if you weren’t poor to begin with, you will be by the time you graduate.

Employers are now skeptical about people with degrees. Today top employers are more interested in people who dropped out to start a business, or who took a year off to be a ski instructor, or who set up a YouTube channel. These are better indicators today of your social standing and your intelligence.

Decades ago the government looked at the economic outcomes of graduates and observed that university grads made more money. So in all their wisdom they tried to make everyone a university grad. They failed to realise that it wasn’t the university education that was causing the uplift, it was the symbolic value of what it secretly said about you.

Now that the symbolic value is lost, the value of a university degree is much lower. It’s as if the government has flooded the market with Rolex watches and forced every young person to buy one at retail prices on a loan.

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

@IncentiveFlows @DanielPriestley Some degrees are more equal than others

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

@DanielPriestley So my 18 year old is going to Uni but only to a course that comes with those signals - exclusivity & cognitive processing

We looked at Apprenticeships but she isn’t ready to “adult” yet

Her friend who has taken a gap year to work out their next move & travel has my full respect

[Jon Doyle @juniper_jon]

@DanielPriestley As an Employer I value the institution more than the degree

Philosophy from Durham ✅
Philosophy from Canterbury ❌

Because it still signals cognition

I also value the course:

History ✅
Business Administration ❌

Because it signals cognitive reasoning not info regurgitation