TIL: The US military is 35% smaller today than at its 1987 peak.

TIL: Roughly 1/3 of new arrivals to the US come for work, family, or school, but the mix of countries within those reasons differs significantly. While Indians are likely to come for work and family, they are less likely to come for school.

TIL: While the annual number of wildfires in the US has not increased significantly since 1983, the number of acres burned has.

TIL: In 2020, there were 22 natural disasters in the US which caused >$1B in damages (mostly tornadoes, hail storms, and hurricanes).

TIL: The average Social Security monthly benefit has doubled since 1970.

TIL: 2/3 US eighth graders are not proficient in reading and math, though gains have been made among almost all racial groups over the last 30 years.

TIL: US spending per public school student has increased ~40% over the last 30 years.

TIL: "Transportation and material moving" is one of only 5 US industries (plus healthcare support; business and financial operations; computer & mathematical; and life, physical, & social science) to gain employment (+839K) during the pandemic.

TIL: Per-enrollee spending on Medicare is >2x as expensive as private insurance plans, presumably due to the increased care burden for older populations. Prescription drug spending has been relatively constant since the creation of Medicare Part D.

TIL: 47% of the 23.7M US government employees work in education. The largest areas of growth in the last 40 years have been air transportation (presumably TSA), corrections, and health.

TIL: Although US government annual spending increased by ~140% (+$3.7B) from 1980–2018, the % allocation for any category hasn't changed more than a few percentage points (and spending on national defense has actually decreased by 6 percentage points).

TIL: Although US government total revenue increased by ~140% (+$3.3B) from 1980–2018, the mix of sources is mostly unchanged (the biggest change is a reduction in corporate income tax from 10% --> 5%).

TIL: The number of single people living by themselves has 4x'ed over the last 60 years (~4% --> ~11% of total population).

RT @accessnow: If you live in California, you should support SB1130, which will help all Californians get access to high-quality, future-pr….

"The trick, as the great religions teach us, is counterintuitive: not to seize control, but to gain some balance and even serenity in absorbing what you can’t.".

TIL: As an industry, VC loses money on 50% of capital invested, with biopharma generally providing more outsized returns.

TIL: Overall biopharma industry returns are inversely correlated with the amount of funding.

TIL: Biopharma IPO valuations have doubled in the last 5 years, but 60% are trading below their IPO price.

TIL: Total VC funding to biopharma has increased in the last few years, despite no growth in the number of new companies. The lack of new companies is driven by the fact that most new companies are created in-house at a VC. The combination implies more funding per round.

TIL: PacBio, Clovis Oncology, and OncoMed all raised >$100M VC rounds in 2009, and all currently trade publicly at a valuation lower than the valuation implied by those rounds.