Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

There was a recent opinion article arguing people save too much money for retirement because they end up living more austere lives than they expected once they retire (blame the lumbago) and thus the oldest tend to be the richest segment of the population.

 

Consider the square footage of those homes though. Plus no granite countertops!

You would pay it off much faster, but it would be worth much less. I'm not sure there is a way around that basic financial premise.

 

Do people really need 3000ft2 homes?

With a 5 year mortgage you could easily buy 2 homes and build a McMansion on one property at a leisurely pace while living on the other.

 

You forgot to add states banning sales of ICE vehicles. EVs are a money racket that is partly paid by my tax income. I still don't think EVs are there yet, Hybirds are a good middle ground but only if it make sense for you. Since I do a lot of highway driving, ICE vehicles for me still.

 

I'll take an EV... as soon as they make reasonably sized & priced vehicles with a 500-600 mile range. I travel long distance quite a bit, I want to be able to drive for a day without having to find an approved charger and stop for a few hours to recharge.

All the reasonably priced sedans I see max out at a little under a 350 mile range... that just doesn't cut it, especially since I suspect that they don't get near that range in real life driving conditions (eg., 75mph highway conditions on roads that aren't flat).

 

I don't, but that is just me.

Yes, most people can't pay off a car in 5 years, never mind a house. I don't think that is the fault of the system.

 

I bought my car in 2011 on a 7yr 0% loan. Oh for those crazy times again.

 

Take good care of your dad. You will be suprised how much people appreciate that.

Maybe you are more "Alf" than human.

 

So one more “weigh in”, specific to @YMO point, because you’re throwing out stereotypes without thinking about the whole picture.

I don’t have 7 figures in retirement. I had to draw almost $200K OUT of it during my startup company phase and when not having a JOB for 10+ months. I’ve now well under $500K. Two kids in university, one of whom studying professional aviation (extra $20K per year on top of normal tuition). I also had to start all over again wrt: home equity. Could only put 10% down on this one. So think long and hard before you just assume all the old f’ks moving to Florida and democrat bashing do NOT have valid reasons from direct experience.

Let’s consider facts:
1. Government took money out of my paycheck (in my specific case well over $250K not counting what my employers paid in.). Note this is in massively pre- 40+ years of inflation (keep that in mid).

2. Currently, I’m estimated (IF I work to 70) to receive a bit over $4100 a month from SS (of course that is in today’s dollars, not what they are worth 5 more years in the future). So dividing $500K (total contribution, mine plus employers) by that amount comes to roughly 10 years, before I would be “ahead and mooching” as so many younger folks think about…

3. That does not factor that $500K could have been far more productive and valuable over time, to me, to my employers and to the economy as a whole, had it not been confiscated (to give to someone else) all along. Think about what that first $10K I paid in from 1976 to 1982 would be worth had I been able to invest it in something REAL instead of a fraudulent, leftist/progressive ponzi-scheme. So, hell yeah, any politician that stops my getting at least SOME of the real wealth confiscated from me since my first job in 1976, is going to assume room temperature rather quicker than he/she would like!

4. Social security, and the federal government also phukked our family when I was younger. My dad had a factory that employed over 200 people in the 1960’s and to the mid ‘70’s. Think of what he and his company paid in. Then he sold his share of the company to his co-founder in 1973 so we could move the family to Arizona for my mother’s early-onset of debilitating Rheumatoid Arthritis. We lived there 3+ years and then he DIED. Social security (then, and maybe still now) based widows/family benefits on the average of the last 5 years contributions. But he hadn’t worked for the last 3 1/2 years… so my mom got a pittance (yet had to support herself and her 3 kids - I was the oldest then at 17 - on insufficient cash inflow. She couldn’t work, hell, she couldn’t even do much in the way of physical house chores with her gnarled hands. So, the way I see it, the government STOLE money from our family AND breached its “promise” (ha).

5. It’s good to remember the ORIGINS of all these global, redistributionistic, Ponzi schemes. They were (and are) all driven by leftist/progressive worldviews and the economics “invented” by one particular (EVIL in my mind) economist, Keynes. The pols (both left and right) LOVED his theory that it was OK for the government to continually run a deficit, and to setup schemes which were ponzi-like because it would “stimulate” the economy and “grow it”. When critics pointed out that this would build inflation into the system, and, that in the long run, it would bankrupt the government and populace, his infamous answer was: “In the long run, we are all dead.” Think about that, they all KNEW we’d get to where we are, and yet refused to deal with it. Any politician attacking it in the 70’s and 80’s was labeled by the left as “out to starve grandma”, and “robbing from the Trust Fund”… Except there is no “trust fund”, only a bunch of “one part of the government owes another part of the government a crap ton of money. They literally borrowed against a future debt!
6. Fact. This is only possible because since the invention of the Federal Reserve, and then making THAT worse, the decoupling of the Dollar from Gold (ink 1973), the government could just PRINT or QUANTUM EASE or <insert fancy word for MAKE UP> “new money” and inject into the “system”

There’s only two “fix” categories possible
1. Continually raising taxes to fund ever growing future-come-due commitments, slowing economic growth and making the pain worse and worse over time for everyone until economic collapse and the deaths and misery that will cause. Note, this path is necessarily hugely inflationary because the the massive size of that unfunded future debt means it can only be “serviced” via money printing (as we’re getting now)…

2. Don’t raise taxes anymore and inflation gets society-destroyingly worse ever more quickly… that’s where we currently are

The ONLY “real fix” is something whereby we “plan a gradual shift” (based on age cohorts), whereby the “commitments made to younger people scale down - over decades - whilst mandating that they save for themselves in a PRIVATE manner, the amounts that otherwise would have gone directly to the fed… yes, it still means they are PHUKKED, but at least they have a way out… they have decades in which to work. Folks in their 60’s and older don’t have that option. The reality is that these unfunded future obligations MUST be brought DOWN over time.

They haven’t, and I’m not sanguine about the future on this, won’t do this because the current setup is like drunks in an unlocked and well stocked liquor store… Pols (of both “sides”) love it this way. CREATE fake money, throw it around to buy votes (and hence influence, power, and corrupt personal profits associated thereto - in collusion with the globalist Banksters all along), and LIE to the people claiming it is an “Investment”… again PHUKK Joe Biden and Democrats. That $1.7 Trillion they just printed as part of what they so cynically named “Inflation Reduction Act” was neither “investment” nor reduces inflation. It was a politically payoff to their climate buddies (again, anyone remember Solyndra during Obama?)… It, by definition, was also hugely inflationary. You and I are living that reality NOW.

So, yeah, it’s not as simple as lumping all older republicans into the rich hypocrites wanting to destroy poor people from greed.

It’s time to tar and feather pretty much every federal politician. The good news, is they KNOW it now. And THAT is the best thing Trump has already accomplished: more and more folks are waking up to the REAL problem, and it is the Deep State, and the - think about this long and hard - 10’s of Millions of people it “employs” with what is, at the end of the day, YOUR money.

So, boom. One final thought: all these comments about “can’t afford a car loan”, “mortgage”, etc. are all DIRECTLY due to INFLATION. Inflation that is intentional as, and precisely why, I describe it above.

(and that, in a short version, is precisely why MOST of the pols - and ALL the career pols both D and R out there are “destroy Trump at any cost”). He’s ripped the camouflage off the festering wound all these political maggots have been squirming in all these decades. They like their supply of free food at your expense, thank you very much.

Net: you either see this, or you don’t (alas most on the hard left refuse to even contemplate it, let alone think about it). Once you do, you can’t un-see it. I’d LOVE to be wrong. But 64+ years of experience says I’m not. Remember, I came of working Age during the Carter era, I know how much worse it can get with improper federal government policies. Also remember what it took to claw our economy back to non-inflationary growth again in the early 1980s… It’s going to hurt more this time - because the above inflationary Ponzi scheme has gone on for an additional 50 years.

 

Jesus f**k. People actually believe this unironically?

 

And some don’t? <just as incredulously>… we DO in FACT have 10’s of millions employed in federal government sucking down all our money whilst milking the “system”…

Seriously, “People actually DON’T believe this?” It’s a fact, for goodness sake… Millions for McConnel’s wife, Millions for Bidens family, Millions for Obama, Millions for Clinton, Pelosi, Schumer… pretty much all of them. Bernie’s a multi-millionaire with 3 houses… they are all getting rich selling America out, plain and simple. it’s pretty much all of them, and It is very, VERY real, but…

“None so blind as those who will not see” as the old saying goes…

Trump was in many ways a complete douche, but he is spot-on with the utter and shameless corruption and venality of our current crop of (most) R and (virtually all) D pols… It sometimes amazes me that the rabid Bernie-bro types and the Maga-types don’t see the underlying similarity of their/our issues with “the system/man” as it were…

It is important to try to not look at things from Left/Right, or D/R perspective. It really limits and blinds one to do so. (And oh so easy, unfortunately).

Both “sides” are playing everyone. (Wisdom from an ORFAS dude that has been made an OFAS dude BY government policies pretty much life-long).

 

I got mine in 2021 at 0.99%. Sure glad I pulled the trigger when I did.

That would be the same Trump who charged the Secret Service exorbitant rates to stay at his hotels while protecting him? I'm not seeing any ethical high ground here.

 

Trump was in many ways a complete douche
fixed that for you

the utter and shameless corruption and venality of our current crop of (most) R and (virtually all) D pols
fixed again.

But I am possibly willing to give the benefit of the doubt to someone only 1 term in... although they've almost certainly sold out just to get that initial term...

it is unusual for the "ruling class" to have any ethics... low, high or anywhere in-between. They got to where they are by playing every trick, taking every advantage/loophole, and/or being born into it and learning from day 1 that ethics and integrity are second to "getting theirs".

 

You'd be surprised. Walked through some ~3,000 sq. ft model homes this summer and many of them felt really cramped. I'm realizing layout is more important than overall square footage.

Plus people's needs are different after COVID. People working from home, kids being home-schooled, wanting a separate music and/or theater space, home gym, 2-3 car garage. It all adds up. Sweet spot for our family of three felt right around 4,000 sq. ft, but I'm also sensitive to noise and want enough space that my family doesn't drive me insane while I work from home.

 

I find it extremely funny when people complain about some shadowy cabal of government officials bilking Americans out of their hard-earned money for their own power and fortune, then hold up Trump of all people as exposer of this conspiracy when his administration was one of the most egregious examples of self-serving corruption in modern political history. Trump wasn't trying to clear the swamp, he was trying to re-populate the swamp with his own supporters instead. The man tried to steal an election to stay in power for fucks sake, he's not trying to end corruption or bring anyone to account.

And while yes, there's a shit-load of corruption and exploitation in our political system, specifically involving politicians, lobbyists, corporate interest groups and donors, there is no real "deep state" beyond just the usual momentum of giant, ponderous, entrenched organizations. 99.99% of people working for the government are just normal, average people doing a job.

 

Here's a case likely to create some controversy here. Yesterday, SCOTUS heard arguments for SEC vs. Jarkesy.

In short, Jarkesy was a hedge fund asshole who got busted stealing from his clients and fined. Now he is suing the SEC has no right to levy fines or conduct their own judgments because it violates trial by jury.

The conservative SCOTUS justices opened the door for someone to make this argument awhile ago, and while there's a lot of material against, it's conceivable they rule against the SEC.

In the event they did, it's highly likely you'd see immediate challenges to the independent judgment powers held by other federal agencies, like OSHA, the EPA, and the National Labor Relations board. If Trump wins also it'll be the far right master stroke as I'm sure he'd love nothing more than effectively deregulating the entire government all at once.

To me, I do not believe this would be remotely a good thing. This entire initiative is reportedly funded by the Koch brothers and the billionaires around the world like Elon and Mark Cuban love it, so we know who it benefits.