7 June 14
“If money is your hope for independence, you will never have it. Your only real security is a strong reserve of knowledge, experience, energy, and ability.”
Henry Ford
Inflation is alive and well!
I just booked a flight to the East Coast for later this month. I do it at this time every year. Same airline. Same connections.
This year, it cost just shy of twice what the identical itinerary cost this same time last year! That is a 100% price increase in a single year!
My father’s was the last generation of Americans to have any chance of “retiring comfortably.” No possibility of that exists today. Presuming to “retire,” and live on what you’ve worked so hard all your life to accumulate, now represents an extremely hazardous personal strategy.
Inflation doesn’t have to get much worse for it to render a lifetime’s savings all but worthless, in a short number of years, months, even overnight!
Only an ability to personally generate an adequate income, and be paid in whatever represents “currency” at the time, will insure any kind of “living.”
None of us, no matter our age, dare stop working. Being “out-of-the-loop,” for even a short time, will make a “comeback” intensely difficult. Many are the one-time “millionaires” who subsequently died penniless, begging for their supper!
Our unrepayable, and growing, national debt is eating us alive! It is way past any possibility of retirement, and its existence virtually guarantees hyper-inflation. Institutions we could once depend upon (pensions, Social Security, disability funds, retirement funds, “daddy’s money,” et al), no matter the source, are weakening and faltering by the day. Virtually all are grotesquely underfunded, even without considering inflation. We rely on any of them, at our peril!
Neither Congress, nor the White House (spanning the last few administrations), have the courage, nor the interest, in even confronting, much less solving, the national debt issue, and there is no reason to believe their collective attitudes will change any time soon. The naive electorate will continue to vote for Santa Claus, even when they know and understand that the well is dry, and that Santa is broke!
Over one third of America’s erstwhile “able-bodied work-force” is, by choice, permanently unproductive. They are neither employed, nor looking for work, nor do they have any intention of ever looking for work. Forever non-contributing, and mostly unemployable! They are a fatal drag on our national economy, but are deliberately kept there by cynical, leftist politicians who are persuaded, correctly, that their votes can be easily purchased.
And finally: The President of the United States, in a shockingly disrespectful display of bad manners, chews gum during the entire, otherwise solemn, D-Day ceremonies yesterday in France!
It doesn’t inspire much confidence!
As individuals, there is little we can do to sway history, so we need to stay active, current, connected, alert, mobile, agile, flexible, and dangerous, always moving forward, and always seeking-out new opportunities.
And, we need to be prepared for large-scale breakdowns in civil order, and a host of other chilling eventualities. We must be in a position to physically protect/perpetuate ourselves and what little we still have.
We’re living through a period of deteriorating world history. It’s going to be a bumpy ride!
As George H “Babe” Ruth once said:
“Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.”
/John
