[ExI] A world drowning in excess savings

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] A world drowning in excess savings

 

On Tue, Feb 18, 2020 at 9:35 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

 

>> Who is doing this “excess saving”? 

 

>…Well, ordinary people among others... 19.1 Trillion dollars is in retirement and pension plans.

 

Why that bad old Dave Ramsey.  That ne-er-do-well is encouraging young people to save for their own retirement in a pension plan one the very remote tiny risk that Social Security will fail or be grossly inadequate when it is time for them to retire, because the government had borrowed the money out of the fund with no realistic plan to pay it back.  This is absurd of course: the government would neeeever do that.

 

My own grandfather predicted exactly the course of Social Security in 1974, using only a slide rule and an almanac.  He estimated inflation rates and increased life spans, and estimated that this whole Ponzi scheme would transition to a pay-as-you-go in about 2035, at which time those who rely on it for their retirement would be in for a rude awakening.  He was a smart man.

 

> Companies?

 

Yes, in dividends and in 1.2 trillion dollars worth of stock buybacks in 2018 alone, the first full year after Trump's big corporate tax cut. Companies did NOT use the money from the tax cut to invest in their own company.

 

 John K Clark

 

A wise course is to diversify one’s investments into other companies, in case one’s own fails.  Get into some international funds and even put a little into the oddball stuff like BitCoin, since that is currency not dependent on any particular government’s stability, and it is international.

 

Note that none of this discussion requires mention of a political party or any politician.  These are universal concepts that span time and party.

 

Dave Ramsey is all about helping lower-end families live responsibly now so that later they may live alively.

 

spike

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