We hear from a biologist, a veteran and others on what matters to them in 2023.
A computational biologist at Columbia University, a veteran in Hawaii, the mayor of Minneapolis, a retiring couple in Michigan, a hydrologist in Louisiana, an economist in Argentina, an N.G.O. leader in Nepal and a housing leader in the Bronx. |
For my first newsletter of the new year — which Times subscribers can sign up for here — I asked all of these people and many others to tell me about their hopes for 2023. Some wrote short; some went long. All of them had interesting things to say about what really matters to them in the year ahead. |
One of my favorite responses was from Claudia Sahm, an economist who has contributed to Times Opinion's pages and is best known for the Sahm rule, which stipulates that an increase of half a percentage point or more in the unemployment rate is bad news — in short, indicating that the economy is in the early stage of a recession. She said she hopes her own rule will "break" for the first time in 2023 — that the jobless rate will go up somewhat, as is predicted, but there won't be a full-blown recession. |
I also enjoyed an email from the Louisiana hydrologist Bob Jacobsen, who said he hopes the government and media will change how they describe flooding risks. Over any 30-year period, he wrote, "a flood level with a 1 percent annual probability has a greater than 1-in-4 chance of occurring." |
And Hans Olsen, the chief investment officer of Fiduciary Trust Co., told me he's looking forward to higher interest rates in 2023 because they'll shake out investments that make sense only when money is essentially free. "Failure is more meaningful when money has a real price," he said. "It's elegant, and it's the way things should be." |
What I love about my job is the opportunity to speak with fascinating people and share their ideas with the world. For this New Year's newsletter, I'm letting them speak for themselves. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
Forward this newsletter to friends to share ideas and perspectives that will help inform their lives. They can sign up here. Do you have feedback? Email us at opiniontoday@nytimes.com. |
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