Up until the mid-‘70s, the wealth of the rich and poor rose... together. At more or less the same rate. Then, they began to diverge... little by little at first... and then by a lot.
I worked at the second largest bank in Washington DC early in my career (around 1980). The CEO made around $250,000, about 15x more than a teller. It was around that time that boards began rationalizing ever-larger pay packages and golden parachutes. It became obvious that if one wasn't in the executive ranks of a business, one was out of luck. Who or what's to blame? The incestuous relationships that oft occurred between board members and execs? Lax enforcement? The replacement of individual shareholders with institutional ones? Simple greed of those in power? Regardless, the middle class dream of homeownership in a neighborhood with schools that actually educate our kids is dead...and it is really sad.
There is a problem in the USA, in the UK too and in other Western countries that we rarely hear of. It has become so financially rewarding to work in finance or the professions which support it, the law and medicine, that the nations` brightest go there. A long time ago, most of them might have trained as engineers or in other technical professions, but now they don`t. Making things has been downgraded, so Boeings fall from the sky and the country cannot make enough to satisfy everyone. But those in finance and their friends get to cream off an ever-bigger slice of the cake.
It`s dangerous too. Other countries, let`s say Russia and China, train for more engineers per head than does the West. If they go to work on armaments, ours may no longer cut it. Think of the Abrams tank which can`t survive the on front line in Ukraine.
I think BB has been saying the same thing, here, and in his various books, for around 20 years now Andrew, and you're both correct of course. We've got fat and lazy like hogs in a factory farm blissfully unaware of how vulnerable we have made ourselves. Importing most of what we "need" because we couldn't be bothered doing it ourselves, creating a massive armaments industry that had more to do with spending limitless dollars on pet projects than on maintaining an efficient army, while lording it over all and sundry as we felt fit. The global south, or whatever you want to call it, is, I suspect, going to hand it to us good and hard in the coming months and years
Based on you last few weeks of writings, I seem to draw this simple minded conclusion.
If a person is in their last 70's and has a comfortable home, enough cash to last at least 20 years, and a nice collection of metals at least 50% of their net worth.....why waste time messing with stocks that can fall to earth at the snap of your fingers? If I read the BPR thinking correctly, that's the basic game plan.
I, for one, made a big mistake in Q3 2008 and I don't want to repeat that mistake!
It seems a good idea to avoid the heartburn of high risk and political insanity and ride into the sunset in peace. Just a thought.
Surely there’s something between being out of the stock market altogether and “messing with stocks that can fall to earth at the snap of your fingers”—especially for those of us in our late 70s with young grandchildren. I have six grandkids, all under the age of ten. They are the ones who will suffer the most from the crimes and idiocies of the jackasses and dunderheads who’ve laid waste to the country’s future. If I can leave something “extra” for the youngsters without restricting myself to only BOGO sales at the supermarket or reaching for the oxygen tank while trading, why not?
the only thing you can really leave your grandkids is some loving memories and sunny days of fun and enjoyment .. buy them an ice cream and take them to a ball game preferably where kids play rather than pro's .. they'll remember you for those special moments and not any stash you think they might need .. it'll be a new world and they'll need all the good memories you can leave them with !
Yes, but with this qualifier: those “special moments” and the moolah are not exclusive categories. My three children (one a lawyer and the other two with earned doctorates) all received substantial dollars for their schooling from my parents. Now that the three of them have bright children of their own, their “special memories” of their grandparents have only been enhanced by an adult understanding of the love that undergirded those monetary gifts.
Spend ur time & wealth educating ur grandchildren. Teach them any skills you have, let ur knowledgeable friends teach them. Teach them how to cook &?clean. How to Make a sandwich. Guide them in their reading. Participate in their home schooling. Large monthly savings by packing a lunch… say what?
Looking back and seeing what has happened to American society it seems one should question, seriously, the decision to untie the dollar to gold in 1971. Yes we were losing our gold at a fast rate which sounds like a decent excuse to stop the tie. But now with the help of history it seems instead of retaining the value of money we "gave" politicians (Congress ) the right to decide the value of money or the right to control who gets more or less roughly. Simply the scheme of lowering interest rates to "spur growth" OR maybe better stated as decide who gets to keep personal savings OR probably better stated as wealth redistribution (and its not to the poor, as claimed). Just pragmatically saying!
Think it's time to return to a gold standard and balanced budgets? AND let society determine how to save and acquire it wealth as society desires. One can look to Rome for the same picture albeit in a different environment.
Not sure if that would solve the problem of the elites getting richer. They would just have more of the gold. All for balanced budgets and cutting all the entitlements, just don’t cut mine!!
I think Gold is the answer … all the Elites can do is create credit … inflation …. gold needs to be worked for … earned !! And if the Elite take the gold from the earners no one would work … and they will go hungry too!!
yes it is .. but that conspiracy is far greater than anyone on earth has any comprehension of .. the forces of the universe are all almost all lined up so we'll see what they tell us in June ?
It's ironic that Paul Krugman's column in today's NYT is entitled, "Return of the Inflation Truthers", in which he explains that American's don't understand that inflation has in fact come down, but makes light of the bigger problem - the erosion of purchasing power. "Now, I imagine many people wish we could get prices back to what they were in early 2020. In fact, trying to do that would be a really bad idea. Still, this is a fairly innocent source of confusion" [related to inflation]. He didn't bother to explain why it would be a bad idea!
Mr.Krugman must not realize the working class actually can count how money goes out of their pockets everyday and its rising, not going down. Who is stupid in the current situation regarding inflation. him or us.
In the 1980's, I was total that the Information Age would bring about wealth disparity.
For instance, anyone can dig a ditch, pick up garbage, work an assembly line or nail shingles to a roof.
However, one very good computer programmer is worth more than ten bad ones.
The good programmer will be properly compensated or he will go elsewhere or start his own company on his way to the top 1%.
It is possible our hyperspeed world which revolves around new technologies favors intelligence far more than was the case prior to the Information/Technology Age.
People may not like it. It may be viewed as unfair, but that is an issue to take up with God or as the democrats do, try to bring down the very people that will improve society to the level of those that can only keep it the way it was.
Well, I’m no Democrat… I really favor being libertarian and voted that way for the last 20 years. However, that being said, we need to all come together, any conservative, just to vote Republican and beat the Democrats soundly. Too big to rig as they say…
What you were implying is a meritocracy. I don’t believe we have that. We are infested with cronyism and corruption.
Also, a completely unlevel playing field. People just don’t understand the power given to the Vanguard and blackrock through ETF. They think they own a stock… They don’t, just a glorified tracking stock. And vanguard and Blackrock get to vote the Shares and own all the corporations.
This is how Tucker Carlson, the most popular host on Fox News got the axe. And this is also why the entirety of the mainstream media is just a scripted propaganda machine now.
David, you write: “It is possible our hyperspeed world which revolves around new technologies favors intelligence far more than was the case prior to the Information/Technology Age.”
This is very much a theme of Charles Murray’s important book “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010” [2012], especially his Chapter 2, “The Foundations of the New Upper Class.” Here is that chapter’s concluding paragraph:
“In an age when the majority of parents in the top five centiles of cognitive ability worked as farmers, shopkeepers, blue-collar workers, and housewives—a situation that necessarily prevailed a century ago, given the occupational and educational distributions during the early 1900s—these relationships between the cognitive ability of parents and children had no ominous implications. Today, when the exceptionally qualified have been so efficiently drawn into the ranks of the upper-middle class, and when they are so often married to people with the same ability and background, they do. In fact, the implications are even more ominous than I just described because none of the numbers I used to illustrate the transmission of cognitive ability to the next generation incorporated the effects of the increased educational homogamy* of recent decades. In any case, the bottom line is not subject to refutation: Highly disproportionate numbers of exceptionally able children in the next generation will come from parents in the upper-middle class, and more specifically from parents who are already part of the broad elite.”
*From elsewhere in that chapter: “Homogamy refers to the interbreeding of individuals with like characteristics. Educational homogamy occurs when individuals with similar educations have children. Cognitive homogamy occurs when individuals with similar cognitive ability have children.”
How to say this? Ya have to read the book. The thrust is that the great divider is no longer race or sex. It’s class, and the class divide will prove more disruptive and damaging to American life than the race hustlers and feminazis could ever imagine.
David, while I agree generally with your meritocratic sensibilities, and would never promote policy to prevent the truly talented from achievement, if the cost of a reasonable living for all is not attained, there will be mobs in the street. I remember quite well the advent of the 80's. Unemployment in Maine was over 10%. I went to work at a golf course on Miami Beach for the winter, and in the midst of the worst economy I've experienced, was able to live in a brand new apartment overlooking the pool, with a roommate, for $175 each. Great neighborhood too. Came back to Maine with a sackful of cash, after being paid $300/week. I know everything is relative, but the percentage allocations for living expenses shouldn't be this warped. My point is, we need laborers, but they have to be able to afford to live.
Very true, the one thing the poor have on their side is numbers. If the disparity between wealthy and poor becomes too great, desperate people will do desperate things.
Is there any other metric or metrics to measure us as human society or individuals to define us. Am I delusional?? I enjoyed all excerpts from Bill, Tom and Dan about extra anecdotes. All of them are very fulfilling and really demonstrate what life is all about. Different worlds, family adventures and around the world prospects. They I know you adopted money as the heartbeat of this show. Can we evolve??? Am I not in the correct??
Dan referred to big booms and big busts. Recently when some banks got shaky the fed went boom boom with printed cash for them and the boom boomed bigger than ever.
What sort of a bust can they not inflate out of existence?
Education is the Key! The failure is to educate the public in the virtues of Capitalism… or as Bill puts it Win/Win deals!! And instead of embracing ‘recessions’ as ‘quick fix’ solutions and corrections to mistakes - governments fret at the possibility of a looming recession and their intervention actually causes the long term mayhem and not just economically but politically!!
Dan great analysis and comparison .. Bill same old story all about the past ..so what happens next?
what is the future of money ? as gold and silver price creeps up the invested amount of Bitcoin value increases 'exponentially' .. the trillions of value stuck in Crypto is almost equal to the total Debt .. so the increase in assets of any kind are extremely limited as Crypto is now the preferred method of payment and STORAGE between BRIC's and their vassal's .. so what to do with all out gold ? we can't eat it and it's likely we won't be able to trade it in any of the Western Order Empire so what can we do with it ..? give us some insights into what a future that's already passed critical mass, how our old laws of supply and demand driven economies, will survive in the BRIC age of fascist centralized power ? over 900,000 Asian Students from all over south east asia are buying up any-everything of Any value in Australia from massage shops to video game shops news agent etc regardless of location even Pubs out in the back of Burke or Alice Springs are seeing this amazing influx of supposedly young students here for only one objective to ensure their families wealth stays protected under our draconian Magna Carta rules based system that used to be based on Christian Principles even tho we didn't always obey them .. so what's the new system based on???
I worked at the second largest bank in Washington DC early in my career (around 1980). The CEO made around $250,000, about 15x more than a teller. It was around that time that boards began rationalizing ever-larger pay packages and golden parachutes. It became obvious that if one wasn't in the executive ranks of a business, one was out of luck. Who or what's to blame? The incestuous relationships that oft occurred between board members and execs? Lax enforcement? The replacement of individual shareholders with institutional ones? Simple greed of those in power? Regardless, the middle class dream of homeownership in a neighborhood with schools that actually educate our kids is dead...and it is really sad.
I would also add “financial engineering” to your list. Is that also an unintended consequence of ditching the gold standard for fiat?
Agree!!
There is a problem in the USA, in the UK too and in other Western countries that we rarely hear of. It has become so financially rewarding to work in finance or the professions which support it, the law and medicine, that the nations` brightest go there. A long time ago, most of them might have trained as engineers or in other technical professions, but now they don`t. Making things has been downgraded, so Boeings fall from the sky and the country cannot make enough to satisfy everyone. But those in finance and their friends get to cream off an ever-bigger slice of the cake.
It`s dangerous too. Other countries, let`s say Russia and China, train for more engineers per head than does the West. If they go to work on armaments, ours may no longer cut it. Think of the Abrams tank which can`t survive the on front line in Ukraine.
I think BB has been saying the same thing, here, and in his various books, for around 20 years now Andrew, and you're both correct of course. We've got fat and lazy like hogs in a factory farm blissfully unaware of how vulnerable we have made ourselves. Importing most of what we "need" because we couldn't be bothered doing it ourselves, creating a massive armaments industry that had more to do with spending limitless dollars on pet projects than on maintaining an efficient army, while lording it over all and sundry as we felt fit. The global south, or whatever you want to call it, is, I suspect, going to hand it to us good and hard in the coming months and years
Bill and Dan,
Based on you last few weeks of writings, I seem to draw this simple minded conclusion.
If a person is in their last 70's and has a comfortable home, enough cash to last at least 20 years, and a nice collection of metals at least 50% of their net worth.....why waste time messing with stocks that can fall to earth at the snap of your fingers? If I read the BPR thinking correctly, that's the basic game plan.
I, for one, made a big mistake in Q3 2008 and I don't want to repeat that mistake!
It seems a good idea to avoid the heartburn of high risk and political insanity and ride into the sunset in peace. Just a thought.
Jim Marshall
Surely there’s something between being out of the stock market altogether and “messing with stocks that can fall to earth at the snap of your fingers”—especially for those of us in our late 70s with young grandchildren. I have six grandkids, all under the age of ten. They are the ones who will suffer the most from the crimes and idiocies of the jackasses and dunderheads who’ve laid waste to the country’s future. If I can leave something “extra” for the youngsters without restricting myself to only BOGO sales at the supermarket or reaching for the oxygen tank while trading, why not?
the only thing you can really leave your grandkids is some loving memories and sunny days of fun and enjoyment .. buy them an ice cream and take them to a ball game preferably where kids play rather than pro's .. they'll remember you for those special moments and not any stash you think they might need .. it'll be a new world and they'll need all the good memories you can leave them with !
Yes, but with this qualifier: those “special moments” and the moolah are not exclusive categories. My three children (one a lawyer and the other two with earned doctorates) all received substantial dollars for their schooling from my parents. Now that the three of them have bright children of their own, their “special memories” of their grandparents have only been enhanced by an adult understanding of the love that undergirded those monetary gifts.
Spend ur time & wealth educating ur grandchildren. Teach them any skills you have, let ur knowledgeable friends teach them. Teach them how to cook &?clean. How to Make a sandwich. Guide them in their reading. Participate in their home schooling. Large monthly savings by packing a lunch… say what?
Looking back and seeing what has happened to American society it seems one should question, seriously, the decision to untie the dollar to gold in 1971. Yes we were losing our gold at a fast rate which sounds like a decent excuse to stop the tie. But now with the help of history it seems instead of retaining the value of money we "gave" politicians (Congress ) the right to decide the value of money or the right to control who gets more or less roughly. Simply the scheme of lowering interest rates to "spur growth" OR maybe better stated as decide who gets to keep personal savings OR probably better stated as wealth redistribution (and its not to the poor, as claimed). Just pragmatically saying!
Think it's time to return to a gold standard and balanced budgets? AND let society determine how to save and acquire it wealth as society desires. One can look to Rome for the same picture albeit in a different environment.
Not sure if that would solve the problem of the elites getting richer. They would just have more of the gold. All for balanced budgets and cutting all the entitlements, just don’t cut mine!!
I think Gold is the answer … all the Elites can do is create credit … inflation …. gold needs to be worked for … earned !! And if the Elite take the gold from the earners no one would work … and they will go hungry too!!
🤔 Misguided? Every bit a full blown, expertly planned conspiracy to bring an end to this empire. Well done!
yes it is .. but that conspiracy is far greater than anyone on earth has any comprehension of .. the forces of the universe are all almost all lined up so we'll see what they tell us in June ?
Yes brother, hopefully you will be in a safe place this summer as the cities burn…
It's ironic that Paul Krugman's column in today's NYT is entitled, "Return of the Inflation Truthers", in which he explains that American's don't understand that inflation has in fact come down, but makes light of the bigger problem - the erosion of purchasing power. "Now, I imagine many people wish we could get prices back to what they were in early 2020. In fact, trying to do that would be a really bad idea. Still, this is a fairly innocent source of confusion" [related to inflation]. He didn't bother to explain why it would be a bad idea!
Paul Krugman has to be the man with the lowest IQ ever to have a PhD after his name (and that's difficult to do).
I dunno, Dave. The universities are chock-full of worthy competitors--and have been full of them for many decades.
Mr.Krugman must not realize the working class actually can count how money goes out of their pockets everyday and its rising, not going down. Who is stupid in the current situation regarding inflation. him or us.
In the 1980's, I was total that the Information Age would bring about wealth disparity.
For instance, anyone can dig a ditch, pick up garbage, work an assembly line or nail shingles to a roof.
However, one very good computer programmer is worth more than ten bad ones.
The good programmer will be properly compensated or he will go elsewhere or start his own company on his way to the top 1%.
It is possible our hyperspeed world which revolves around new technologies favors intelligence far more than was the case prior to the Information/Technology Age.
People may not like it. It may be viewed as unfair, but that is an issue to take up with God or as the democrats do, try to bring down the very people that will improve society to the level of those that can only keep it the way it was.
Well, I’m no Democrat… I really favor being libertarian and voted that way for the last 20 years. However, that being said, we need to all come together, any conservative, just to vote Republican and beat the Democrats soundly. Too big to rig as they say…
What you were implying is a meritocracy. I don’t believe we have that. We are infested with cronyism and corruption.
Also, a completely unlevel playing field. People just don’t understand the power given to the Vanguard and blackrock through ETF. They think they own a stock… They don’t, just a glorified tracking stock. And vanguard and Blackrock get to vote the Shares and own all the corporations.
This is how Tucker Carlson, the most popular host on Fox News got the axe. And this is also why the entirety of the mainstream media is just a scripted propaganda machine now.
Ugh.
David, you write: “It is possible our hyperspeed world which revolves around new technologies favors intelligence far more than was the case prior to the Information/Technology Age.”
This is very much a theme of Charles Murray’s important book “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010” [2012], especially his Chapter 2, “The Foundations of the New Upper Class.” Here is that chapter’s concluding paragraph:
“In an age when the majority of parents in the top five centiles of cognitive ability worked as farmers, shopkeepers, blue-collar workers, and housewives—a situation that necessarily prevailed a century ago, given the occupational and educational distributions during the early 1900s—these relationships between the cognitive ability of parents and children had no ominous implications. Today, when the exceptionally qualified have been so efficiently drawn into the ranks of the upper-middle class, and when they are so often married to people with the same ability and background, they do. In fact, the implications are even more ominous than I just described because none of the numbers I used to illustrate the transmission of cognitive ability to the next generation incorporated the effects of the increased educational homogamy* of recent decades. In any case, the bottom line is not subject to refutation: Highly disproportionate numbers of exceptionally able children in the next generation will come from parents in the upper-middle class, and more specifically from parents who are already part of the broad elite.”
*From elsewhere in that chapter: “Homogamy refers to the interbreeding of individuals with like characteristics. Educational homogamy occurs when individuals with similar educations have children. Cognitive homogamy occurs when individuals with similar cognitive ability have children.”
So "implications that are even more ominous" is what we're supposed to take from all that?
How to say this? Ya have to read the book. The thrust is that the great divider is no longer race or sex. It’s class, and the class divide will prove more disruptive and damaging to American life than the race hustlers and feminazis could ever imagine.
A useful summary of the book can be found at https://alexandbooks.com/archive/coming-apart-by-charles-murray
David, while I agree generally with your meritocratic sensibilities, and would never promote policy to prevent the truly talented from achievement, if the cost of a reasonable living for all is not attained, there will be mobs in the street. I remember quite well the advent of the 80's. Unemployment in Maine was over 10%. I went to work at a golf course on Miami Beach for the winter, and in the midst of the worst economy I've experienced, was able to live in a brand new apartment overlooking the pool, with a roommate, for $175 each. Great neighborhood too. Came back to Maine with a sackful of cash, after being paid $300/week. I know everything is relative, but the percentage allocations for living expenses shouldn't be this warped. My point is, we need laborers, but they have to be able to afford to live.
Very true, the one thing the poor have on their side is numbers. If the disparity between wealthy and poor becomes too great, desperate people will do desperate things.
Is there any other metric or metrics to measure us as human society or individuals to define us. Am I delusional?? I enjoyed all excerpts from Bill, Tom and Dan about extra anecdotes. All of them are very fulfilling and really demonstrate what life is all about. Different worlds, family adventures and around the world prospects. They I know you adopted money as the heartbeat of this show. Can we evolve??? Am I not in the correct??
?
You are correct Ibrahim. Money does not make the man. But we're here mainly to get tips on wealth preservation and surviving the coming collapse.
Dan referred to big booms and big busts. Recently when some banks got shaky the fed went boom boom with printed cash for them and the boom boomed bigger than ever.
What sort of a bust can they not inflate out of existence?
Education is the Key! The failure is to educate the public in the virtues of Capitalism… or as Bill puts it Win/Win deals!! And instead of embracing ‘recessions’ as ‘quick fix’ solutions and corrections to mistakes - governments fret at the possibility of a looming recession and their intervention actually causes the long term mayhem and not just economically but politically!!
Dan I suspect it is because the financial account of the various segments has skyrocketed from roughly 2T to 6T from 2018 to current (4 years).
Dan great analysis and comparison .. Bill same old story all about the past ..so what happens next?
what is the future of money ? as gold and silver price creeps up the invested amount of Bitcoin value increases 'exponentially' .. the trillions of value stuck in Crypto is almost equal to the total Debt .. so the increase in assets of any kind are extremely limited as Crypto is now the preferred method of payment and STORAGE between BRIC's and their vassal's .. so what to do with all out gold ? we can't eat it and it's likely we won't be able to trade it in any of the Western Order Empire so what can we do with it ..? give us some insights into what a future that's already passed critical mass, how our old laws of supply and demand driven economies, will survive in the BRIC age of fascist centralized power ? over 900,000 Asian Students from all over south east asia are buying up any-everything of Any value in Australia from massage shops to video game shops news agent etc regardless of location even Pubs out in the back of Burke or Alice Springs are seeing this amazing influx of supposedly young students here for only one objective to ensure their families wealth stays protected under our draconian Magna Carta rules based system that used to be based on Christian Principles even tho we didn't always obey them .. so what's the new system based on???
Thanks for your time