Is Time on Your Side?
Measured in gold, the dollar has lost 99.111% of its value since 1971. We got the full value of the dollar 54 years ago. Our children get only a chemical trace of it.
Tuesday, May 26th, 2026
Bill Bonner, from San Martin, Argentina
The latest news, Common Dreams:
‘Biggest Wealth Divide in Modern History’...Shocking Reality of US Economy
Data released by the University of Michigan and Gallup this week showed US consumer sentiment cratering even as stock markets hit record highs.
“Absolutely incredible,” commented Kobeissi Letter. “Over the last six years, the S&P 500 has risen +130% while US Consumer Sentiment has collapsed by -55%, to its lowest since data began in 1952. We are witnessing the formation of the biggest wealth divide in modern history.”
What’s going on?
How about this: the rich are getting richer; the poor are getting poorer.
But this is not just a financial divide...it is evidence of a fraudulent economy...and of a demographic chasm, now opening up in American society.
Looking back at the Thomas Massie defeat, we see how the wealth divide played a leading role. First, it was a defeat that was completely paid for by Big Money people who may have never even set foot in Kentucky. Massie consistently voted against foreign aid...even to Israel. The Israel-Firsters wanted him out. They got him out — at a cost of $32 million dollars.
Second, this was a battle won by Boomer voters. IJR:
Seventy-two percent of voters between the ages of 26 and 35 supported Massie, while 16.2% backed Gallrein, according to a Quantus Insight poll from May 13. A majority of voters ages 66 to 75, 61.8%, supported Gallrein and 27.1% of that age group supported Massie.
Massie also held a 37-point lead among voters ages 36 to 45 and a 16-point lead among those ages 46 to 55, according to the poll. Gallrein led among voters ages 56 to 65 by a 54% to 36% margin.
A separate poll from Friday found that voters ages 18 to 29 supported Massie by 81.5%, while voters ages 30 to 44 supported him by 70.7%, according to Big Data Poll. Voters over the age of 65 supported Gallrein by a 61.1% to 38.9% margin. One month prior, 78.5% of voters ages 17 to 29 supported Massie and 65% of voters over the age of 65 supported Gallrein, Big Data Poll found on April 8.
The same survey found that Gallrein only held a lead with voters over the age of 65.
Why the big gap? The Boomers, apparently, still cherish the post-WWII idea of a virtuous Israeli state...and can’t imagine that it could be contrary to Americans’ real interests. But a deeper cause may be the aforementioned wealth divide.
In a delightful essay signaled to us by our old friend, Doug Casey, John Carter explains that the Baby Boomers did not get rich simply because they were lucky:
‘The baby boom generation took out tens of trillions of dollars in debt in their descendants’ names to pay for social welfare programs that only baby boomers will enjoy.’
We could add that they also entertained and flattered themselves with unnecessary wars at a cost of $10 trillion or so. And now, who will pay America’s $39 trillion in government debt? Not the boomers.
Speaking as a boomer, our lives have been marked, from cradle...to fast-approaching grave...by improvement. There were technical improvements — air conditioning, power steering, cleaner air, TV, TikTok, the internet, open heart surgery, and so forth.
We also were generally able to find jobs, with rising incomes and rising assets. And all we had to do, in the 1970s, was to buy a nice house and some nice stocks...and then follow Bernard Baruch’s advice. He said he got rich thanks to his ass; he bought property and sat on it.
For boomers, if you avoided getting your ass killed in Vietnam, or wasting it on idleness, drugs, alcohol...fast cars or fast women...things generally turned out alright. Carter writes:
‘For the boomer, deferred gratification always had a payoff.’
‘For the zoomer — and the millennial, and generation X — this has simply not been the case.’
And here’s the key insight:
Boomers have profited from a kind of generational Cantillon effect: they were born close to the time when inflation first began in earnest, meaning that the money they were lavished with would always be worth more than whatever spare change their children could scrape together
Richard Cantillon was an associate of John Law. He noticed that the first people to get the inflated money benefitted from it most. They could spend it as if it were real.
Later, the value of the fake money went down. As we’ve pointed out many times, measured in gold, the dollar has lost 99.111% of its value since 1971. We got the full value of the dollar 54 years ago. Our children get only a chemical trace of it.
We were lucky. And faithless. We didn’t plant trees for our grandchildren. We cut them down to enjoy a warm fire for ourselves.
We could but on our ‘baggies’ and surf the big waves...in the job market, the housing market and the stock market. We could increase our dollar wealth as much as 50 times (in the Dow).
And the house we bought for peanuts in 1975 is now so expensive our own children can’t afford it.
More to come…
Regards,
Bill Bonner
Research Note, by Dan Denning
The higher inflation is, the less the future is worth. That’s a basic breakdown of the economic concept of ‘time preference.’ In a world with sound money and interest rates set by the market, deferred consumption is rewarded. You can lend your savings to borrowers and earn interest, or invest. You have what is called ‘low time preference.’ You can afford to wait.
But inflation accelerates a general decline in all values, not just monetary. As a result, the average ‘time preference’ is compressed. People value what they can get in the here and now, before their money loses more purchasing power. High time preference becomes the norm. The future is too far away to worry about. Long-term economic planning at the household level stops.
For Millennials and Zoomers, accumulating assets has become almost impossible post-Covid. The 40% rise in the monetary base has led to a large inflation in financial and real assets. The Boomers own the largest portion of stock market wealth in America.
But they also have the most to lose in a mean-reverting stock market crash. That could make them ‘high time preference’ when it comes to realizing stock market gains. An entire generation of ‘dip buying’ investors may become sellers at the exact same time. What then?
I don't know about you guys but as a boomer I worked my butt off starting at age 15. I have worked my whole life, as have most of our dear readers. I got myself well educated and into a professional field. I told my three sons that they must separate themselves within their generation, i.e. they must have more and better negoitionable skills than their generation peers. They listen and they acted. I have very a successful IP attorney at the partner level, a police chief of city with 50 thousands citizens and an entrepreneur with multiple businesses. All of whom are below 50 years of age, and all of whom have more higher net worth than me. So yeah, I agree it is harder to find sucess in today's economy but it is still possible. Oh, yeah none of my boys knocked up anyone in high school, they all have been married 1 time only, and they all got themselves educated so there is that. You can still do what you want in America but you better have a great work ethic.
Yep. Our fearless leaders will fight to the death over need to use ever-expanding lists of pronouns--or not. Mention the constitutionally required hard money and all you'll hear is crickets.