SpaceX Revenue

The sources of SpaceX revenue range from the International Space Station to the U.S. Space Force, to you and me:

By the end of 2030, astronauts on the International Space Station will no longer be saying, “Today’s urine is tomorrow’s coffee” because then, the International Space Station (ISS) will be trashed. For as much as $843 million, SpaceX will be guiding the station into the Pacific Ocean. At a deep water dumping spot called Point Nemo, the ISS will join other space junk.

In addition, SpaceX is the launch of choice for the U.S. Space Force. For a warfare systems satellite communications network and satellites that track missiles and aircraft, SpaceX won 2 contracts that total $6.5 billion. Called Customer A in its security filings preceding its IPO, the federal government is SpaceX’s largest client.

But it’s Starlink that can be called the SpaceX cash cow. Ranging from my WIFI during a recent flight to Florida to Ukraine’s troop connectivity, Starlink has 10.3 million subscribers. As a global broadband internet service from space, it uses more than 9,600 satellites in low-earth orbit. Then, according to Yahoo!Finance, they add 70 satellites per week. And, on the other end, SpaceX plans to produce a whopping 15,000 Starlink kits each day.

For our summary, Markets.com helped us out:

Our Bottom Line: Financial Intermediaries

Like all IPOs, the SpaceX Initial Public Offering moves private ownership of a company to the public. Purchasing shares from a group that (usually) includes the original owners, the company, and Venture Capital investors, buyers become owners of the company. But someone has to connect sellers and buyers. And that is why we need financial intermediaries.

Financial institutions play a hidden role in our everyday lives. Called intermediaries by economists, they link the people with money to those who need it. They include the stock markets that are a place and a process through which companies can connect to investors. Similarly, banks eliminate the need to find an individual who will pay for your house, your car, or your new factory. Banks are one of the go-to places for storing your money, paying your bills, and funding your business ventures.

Financial intermediaries have been compared to a beating heart. Like a heart keeps nutrient-laden blood flowing around our bodies, banks, stock markets, and other similar entities and institutions pump money around our economy. Whether talking about a healthy body, a healthy economy, or the SpaceX IPO, a heartbeat and a financial intermediary are crucial.

My sources and more: Thanks to Emily Peck’s Axios Markets email for inspiring today’s post. From there, searching for SpaceX, we discovered this Smithsonian article. But the best summaries of their revenue and the IPO were at Yahoo!Finance and Markets.

Please note that several of today’s sentences were in a past econlife post.

The post What Does SpaceX Get Paid For? appeared first on Econlife.

Now though, Spain is surprising everyone.

Spain’s Surprising Success

With 27% unemployment and banks needing bailouts, Spain especially suffered from the 2008 financial crisis. Then, before they had entirely recovered, Covid hit. But soon after, with their welfare state extending its safety net and tourism growing, the economy had more demand than its labor force and aging population could satisfy.

They needed immigrants.

Offering incentives, especially to attract Latin Americans that knew the language and were culturally similar, Spain welcomed three million immigrants between 2021 and 2023. As workers, the newcomers filled the empty job positions. As consumers they spent money. And, as a group, they stimulated the economy.

At the same time, Spain had hiked the minimum wage, initiated energy price controls, and offered a guaranteed income for the least affluent. They also wound up creating one third of the EU’s new jobs. Most notably, though, their disposable income grew three times as much as France’s and exceeded Germany’s by a whopping multiple of eight. Unemployment, poverty, and inequality were all down. In 2024, the Economist said Spain had the world’s best economy.

It was win/win until the housing shortage developed.

Our Bottom Line: Human Capital

Migrants brought their human capital to Spain. They brought the education, informal knowhow, and psychological equipment that compose our human capital.

Reflecting human capital, Spain has demonstrated higher value job growth in sectors Including information technology and finance:

According to an IMF economist, a 1% increase in migrants’ share of the adult population in a rich country propels the GDP to an extra 2% of growth. At three million, migrants’ share of Spain’s population could have been close to 6%. Consequently, we can hypothesize that immigration did indeed invigorate Spain’s economy.

My sources and more: Thanks to Slate Money for alerting me to The Atlantic’s “The Spanish Exception”. Because of its focus on immigration, from there we returned to this econlife. Then, we discovered this Goldman Sachs commentary that confirmed all we concluded about Spain. Related, an Economist spotlight on Portugal also displayed the rising importance of the European South. It returns us to a contradiction of the stereotypes we initially cited.

Please note that several of today’s sentences were in a past econlife post.

The post How Immigrants Saved Spain appeared first on Econlife.

A Weight Loss War

Our story starts with the GLP 1 drugs that targeted type 2 diabetes. Initially used to improve glucose control, researchers soon realized they also had a product that suppressed appetite. Taking the next step, they re-aligned their drug and entered the weight loss market. The year was 2017 when Novo Nordisk launched Ozempic.

However, we could say that the war began in 2021 when Novo Nordisk introduced its weight loss drug called Wegovy. Soon after, Eli Lilly had Mounjaro for diabetes and then Zepbound for weight loss. With more than 40% of all adults in the US defined as obese, they both recognized that the weight loss market could exceed $100 billion annually.

As a metric for judging the war’s winners, we can first go back to 2024. At the time, with Ozempic and Wegovy, Novo Nordisk could cite approximately $30 billion in sales while Lilly’s GLP 1 portfolio was moving past $15 billion.

Now though, looking at efficacy and delivery, Lilly seems to have had some recent victories. In head-to-head trials, Eli Lilly announced 23.6% weight loss over 84 weeks compared to Novo Nordisk’s 20.2%. As for delivery, instead of weekly injections, Lilly offered a four-dose single device alternative. But, this year, when Novo Nordisk introduced a Wegovy pill as an injection alternative, it had the largest drug launch in recent history with 1.3 million prescriptions in the first quarter. Its new CEO said that, at that moment, it became the pill leader.

Moving to pricing strategy, we are told that Novo Nordisk said it will slash GLP 1 prices in 2027 up to 50% to $675 a month for Wegovy and 35% for Ozempic. But also, Lilly announced a $299 self-pay option with certain doses. Both also negotiate with Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) to expand consumers’ insurance access. As Novo Nordisk’s CEO said to The Journal, few pay list price.

Then, to all of this we can add their pipeline of new and related products. The Novo Nordisk CEO cites the related health gain that their future drugs will target.

Our Bottom Line: The Prisoners’ Dilemma

With metrics that relate to efficacy, delivery, price, and pipeline, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk worry about what each will do. Like two burglary suspects, they have the prisoners’ dilemma:

Assume two burglary suspects have just been arrested. Interrogated separately at the police station, each one knows that the sentence depends on who confesses.

As you can see in the following diagram, if both confess, they each get three years. And if both don’t confess then the sentence is 6 months. However, denial could bring the longest jail time if the other person tells all:

Because oligopolies like Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have considerable market power, each one can determine a competitive strategy. However, like our prisoners, the outcome of the decision also depends on the other party.

My sources and more: Thanks to The Journal’s podcast for inspiring today’s post. From there, for more detail, we looked at Yahoo Finance for our facts. We also looked back to our previous post on competition and the prisoners’ dilemma.

Please note that several of today’s sentences were in a past econlife post.

The post How To Fight a Weight Loss War appeared first on Econlife.

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		Sunday 5.31.26 How the UN would change the GDP…
		Monday 6.01.26 Who does the most military spending?…
		Tuesday 6.02.26 When the wealthy would pay for the welfare state…
		Wednesday 6.03.26 Where the Iran War affects the internet…
		Thursday 6.04.26 How tariffs harm music…
		Friday 6.05.26 Why Fiji said no to more trash…
		Friday 6.05.26 Learn with Elaine

The post Our Weekly Economic News Roundup: From the Military to Music appeared first on Econlife.

Last updated 6/05/26

Always interesting, the Hidden Brain podcast episode on creativity was also especially useful. They start with a 19th century chemist who was surprised to have solved a complex calculation because of a dream. And, somewhat similarly, when leaving a bus, the French mathematician Poincaré solved a problem that had stumped him. Both demonstrate that moving away from your work, your brain continues to focus on it until, by surprise, it comes up with a solution. Explained in the podcast through a slew of fascinating examples, our creativity can surface effortlessly at any time. So, we need not feel guilty when we relax.

To hear more history, science, and advice on creativity, and how to stimulate it, this podcast will come in handy.

The post June 2026 Friday’s e-links: Becoming More Creative appeared first on Econlife.

Stopping repeatedly, the Mobro with its Break of Day tugboat went down the East Coast and looped the Gulf:

Fiji’s Refusal

Now, 39 years later, the South Pacific’s Fiji archipelago is also refusing to become a garbage destination. In Fiji, Australian Dial-a-Dump’s Ian Malouf and Kookai label’s Rob Cromb propose to convert non-recyclable garbage into electricity. Near a new private port, they project incinerating 900,000 tonnes of waste annually. The upside is the diesel Fiji would no longer need.

However, Fiji’s ambassador to the UN summed up the Fiji response when he said his island nation, “must not become the Pacific’s ashtray.” Tainting images of Fiji’s pristine beaches, massive garbage incineration would harm its tourism business. In addition, they worried that the emissions presented a health hazard.

As a result, they said, “No.”

Our Bottom Line: Waste Generation and Disposal

Waste Generation

You can see the U.S. and Canada are the darkest blue nations:

Waste Disposal

Whereas China had been a primary destination for the world’s waste, their increasing affluence meant they no longer needed the raw materials nor wanted the pollution. As a result, by 2021, they had banned all imported solid waste. The decision was a whopper. It created a massive shift in waste movement.

This is what China’s imported solid waste looked like in 2013:

Now, according to the World Bank’s 2026 What a Waste 3.0 report, global plastic waste shipments are down from 12.4 million tonnes in 2017 to 6.3 million tonnes in 2022. But still developed nations continue exporting waste to developing nations, with Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam the major destinations.

These are the treatment and disposal alternatives:

So, returning to our title, where is waste generation worst? There are so many possible answers. But fundamentally, It depends on whether we mean quantity or quality.

My sources and more: Thanks to the BBC’s World Business Report for alerting me to “Waste Colonialism.” From there, we returned to an econlife on recycling and the Mobro, and then found the Fiji facts at Yahoo. However, if you look at just one past econlife post, do go to Bethel, Alaska. But, by far, my best source was the World Bank’s 2026 What a Waste 3.0 report.

Our featured image is a picture of the Mobro.

The post Where Is the Worst Waste Generation? appeared first on Econlife.

But not as policy makers expected.

Musical Instrument Tariffs

Musical instrument tariffs came close to tripling from the end of 2024 to a 2026 level of 16.6%. But demonstrating the uneven landscape, pianos, violins, and horns were among the hardest hit:

Nudging musical instrument Import levels down by slightly more than 20% between the end of 2024 and the first quarter of 2026, the tariffs did precisely what they were supposed to do.

But not quite.

Tariffs impacted our higher quality professional instruments from Europe, Japan, and South Korea less than the lower quality imports from China. Chinese tariffs were the primary reason for the 70% plunge in orchestral wind instruments.

Less from China was supposed to mean more domestic production.

Instead, we wound up with a cascade of unintended consequences.

Our Bottom Line: Unintended Consequences

Demand

PIIE (Peterson Institute for International Economics) explains why tariffs constrain consumer demand:

1. Higher prices of the instruments.
2. Higher costs for other goods that diminish available funds for musical instruments.
3. Less spending from descending consumer confidence created by the economic uncertainty.

As a result, with fewer musicians entering the pipeline, at the other end, we will have a shrinking number of skilled professionals buying high quality instruments.

Supply

Meanwhile, on the supply side, steel and aluminum tariffs added to production costs. Consequently, one U.S. producer decided it was cheaper to pay Chinese tariffs than to continue making brass instruments in his Ohio factory.

So, where are we? At just 0.7% of tariff revenue, the dollar argument doesn’t work. Furthermore, instead of bringing the industry home, tariffs are pushing it beyond our borders. And of course, we want to encourage our young musicians.

Perhaps, as in the past, it all takes us back to Benoit Mandelbrot telling us that the closer we look the more we see:

My sources and more: Thanks to PIIE for inspiring today’s post and providing its facts.

The post How Will Musical Instrument Tariffs Affect Our Orchestras? appeared first on Econlife.

It is about data.

Strait of Hormuz Data Cables

The undersea fiber-optic cables that bring internet data to the Middle East, Europe, and Asia snake through the Strait of Hormuz. So, when a spokesperson for the Iranian government said they would “…impose fees on internet cables,” it jolted big and little tech. We were already worried that military maneuvers would accidentally (or intentionally) jostle the cables. But it is also possible that damaged vessels will disrupt a cable with a dragging anchor. Now, in addition, a tax could upset the free flow of data.

As much as 20% of the world’s internet and financial data flows through the Strait of Hormuz. With their cheap energy, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE hope to lure the AI investment that needs those undersea cables. In addition, the Strait of Hormuz is home to some of the cables that service our data dependencies like cloud storage, e-commerce, and streaming services.

These cables are a part of larger networks:

Our Bottom Line: Information Infrastructure

Thinking of an infrastructure, we could imagine transportation and our network of roads, airports, bridges, and all that we use for travel. We could picture the financial infrastructure that, starting with banks, moves our money from one place to another.

Somewhat similarly, our data travels through our information infrastructure. In a past post, we said the US Postal Service was a part of our information infrastructure. So too was the printing press, our stock tickers, and countless other devices and structures.

As for the internet, it has become an increasingly massive part of our information infrastructure: Moving from chips, to devices, to services, the structure grew:

Already dated, this 2021 graphic shows some of the components of our information infrastructure:

Returning to where we began, we can add invisible data to the impact of the Iran War.

My sources and more: Thanks to economist Ed Yardeni for alerting me to the data that travels through the Strait of Hormuz. From there, I discovered much more detail in this Reuters article. Then, looking for internet history, we can always go to this past econlife post.

Please note that several of today’s sentences are elsewhere in econlife.

The post Why We Should Worry About the Cables in the Strait of Hormuz appeared first on Econlife.

If we were to continue with other social welfare state benefits, the list would include universal healthcare, old age pensions, and other “transfers” from the payers to the recipients.

Looking through an economic lens, we see redistribution.

The Welfare State: Paying and Receiving

Considerably less than Spain, U.S. redistribution also transfers dollars from those that pay to the recipients.

On the paying side, a single U.S. worker earning an average $79,000 wage pays their 6.2% half of Social Security, Medicare, and income taxes. Those federal amounts bring take-home pay down to $56,000 (but there also could be a state tax bite, depending on where you live).

$79,466 quickly shrinks to $55,644:

Compared to 2024, the trend in OECD countries is higher taxes on workers’ earnings. 24 countries raised taxes, 11, including the U.S., lowered them, and 2 held them steady. But even with the U.S. on the low end, still, a vast amount is for social welfare. As a proportion of the U.S. federal budget, more than half of government spending goes to Social Security pensions and Medicare and Medicaid healthcare spending.

Hoping to echo the European social welfare state, some suggest the best solution is raising taxes from the most affluent. A look at a Tax Foundation study reveals it is much more complicated.

Our Bottom Line: Redistribution

Funding the social welfare state requires the redistribution that transfers dollars from the people that pay to those that receive benefits. It traditionally begins with the taxes we pay (like Social Security and income). Instead, the Tax Foundation says we should include much more.

On the tax side, they suggest indirect taxes like the Europeans’ VAT.

Similarly, on the recipient side, they take us beyond cash (like unemployment and child benefits) to include in-kind (healthcare and education) benefits.

Explaining, they say they are focusing on fiscal incidence.

With this broader fiscal definition, the affluent pay more. At the same time, those with less get a larger slice of redistribution that offsets what they pay. Together, they create a more progressive economy that has less inequality.

Below, the Tax Foundation shows how redistribution changes when we include more than direct taxes and cash benefits. As a result, the share of net-contributor households diminishes:

Where does this leave us? It gives us a new lens to judge existing welfare state policies and future U.S. policy. It takes us to fiscal incidence as an alternative lens for our policy debates.

Returning to our title, “Who Pays For a Welfare State?” It depends on how you define it.

My sources and more: Thanks to The Washington Post for inspiring today’s post. As my springboard though, the Post took me to the Tax Foundation.

The post Who Pays for a Welfare State? appeared first on Econlife.

Although the world economy has been way ahead, I suspect we’ve reversed the trend.

Military Spending

The World Economy

During the past 30 years, the world economy grew by 180% while military spending increased 120%. Looking more closely though, we would see that 80% of all military spending came from 15 nations and the regions varied. With Europe and China spending more, the Americas pretty much plateaued.

Below, You can see a recent rise in European military spending:

Dominated by the United States, spending was concentrated among 15 nations:

The United States

U.S. defense spending is at a new high. Although from 2024 to 2025, our spending did dip because of the Ukraine cutback. But then, the FY 2027 $1.5 trillion defense allocation was a whopper of a surge. According to the Center For Strategic & International Studies, that $1.5 trillion is close to a 40% uptick from 2026 when adjusted for inflation. Record breaking, it exceeded World War II defense spending peaks.

Our Bottom Line: The U.S. Budget

Remaining with the United States, in addition to history, we can judge defense through a federal budget lens. Becoming an increasingly larger slice of U.S. spending, in FY 2020 it was 10% while by 2027, the defense piece of the budget pie climbed to an 18% slice. And Iran was not even included.

Correspondingly, the increase in military spending has outpaced economic growth. With military spending a 3% piece of the GDP from 2022 to 2026, for FY 2027 its projection is 3.7%.

So, whether we judge defense spending by comparing it to economic growth, by contrasting what different nations spend on defense, or by looking at history, it always returns us to tradeoffs. Remembering that “Choosing is refusing,” spending more on defense, we have less for safety net programs, disaster response, and medical research.

My sources and more: Thanks to Timothy Taylor’s Conversable Economist for alerting me to the SIPRI study on military spending. From there, we went to the SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) paper, to CSIS, and to the CRFB blog update on the U.S. military.

Please note that our featured image is the Eurocopter Tiger, an attack helicopter that can add $73 million to a defense budget if you buy only one that is fully equipped. Also, I’ve interchanged defense and military as synonyms.

The post How Can We Judge the Size of Military Spending? appeared first on Econlife.