If you’ve listened to Onward regularly over the past year and a half, you know that Fundrise’s CEO Ben Miller has been a perennial contrarian when it comes to assessing the outlook for the economy, especially as markets have overheated and behaved irrationally. And though Ben has recently begun pointing out once-in-a-generation investment opportunities on the horizon, this latest episode of Onward might surprise you, as Ben gives the floor to co-host Cardiff Garcia, who treats us to a fundamentally different outlook — a full-throated case for economic optimism, as we look ahead to 2024.
Ben and Cardiff’s conversation begins with an assessment of the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, where so many of the social, economic, and political upheavals that paved the way for historic inflation also set the stage for fundamentally positive effects on economic productivity, technological adoption, and true cultural change. For instance, as Cardiff explains, the disruption to spending behavior and individuals’ savings, tied to governmental stimulus initiatives, boosted the economy out of a period known as The Great Stagnation, where it had languished for decades. Today, more startups are being founded, economic inequality is shrinking, and the labor market remains tight.
Overall, Cardiff argues that unlike the policy responses to the financial crisis of 2008, which were essentially top-down bailouts of major institutions, the economic initiatives in response to the pandemic showed a real capacity for learning, as they were bottom-up and proactive, helping individuals find footing in these subsequent years, and feeding positive “creative destruction.” While the first benefit of these COVID responses was immediate stability, the second boon, our hosts argue, has yet to become fully visible: a new era of growth and productivity.
Ben and Cardiff go on to discuss which technological advancements are likely to see permanent adoption, like AI and mRNA vaccines; speculate on the positive cultural shifts heralded by pandemic pressure, like telehealth and remote work; and wonder where else we can tease out feelings of optimism from the global economic stage, despite uncertainty looming from actors like Russia and China.
As Ben points out, the current moment feels in many ways like the 1990’s, an anticipatory hush before a massive innovative boom, just on the cusp of broad adoption of the internet, and some of the most important technological and cultural steps forward in history.
All this and more in the latest episode of Onward, anywhere that you listen to podcasts.
