[ExI] lotta splainin to do

[spike at rainier66.com]

...> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat
Sent: Wednesday, 16 November, 2022 2:35 AM

>
> Another entertaining aside, particularly for those of us who have owned a California home for a long time: the above tax-erosion feature makes California real estate an inherently inflation-resistant value-holder asset.  The already-absurd prices of these homes would rise ever higher because of the inflation-driven property-tax erosion feature.
>
> spike
> _______________________________________________


BillK, I can think of one other purpose American dollars would still have, preventing them from ever becoming the equivalent of Confederate currency: the retirement pension that my own company owes me is payable in American dollars, with no cost of living adjustment.  

Social Security beneficiaries have COLA adjustments, which will likely lead to comically fictious inflation numbers intended to keep Social Security COLAs well below actual increasing living cost, extending the life of the Social Security program (even if not extending the life of the Social Security recipient.)  I identified this phenomenon decades ago in what I call a soft default: in theory the government continues to pay its obligations, but in perfectly transparent reality it is only paying a fraction.

My company on the other hand... doesn't adjust for inflation, never said it would.

Fortunately, it is a company of mostly engineers with many of us trained in the days when our inflation tables listed interest rates up to 15 percent.  So we put together spreadsheets when we were in our 20s and anticipated this problem: the company pension was mostly an illusion.  We knew, we took timely action, too bad for those who failed to do so.  They took engineering economics, they knew what to do and how to do it.  They were taught to play the game of life as chess rather than ping pong.

spike