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why should he be "better" than the small town law firm guy?
The point isn't to make a normative judgment, but to note that in my example, the social-worker guy is "abnormal". He'd be widely panned as being the weirdo, and from a cultural viewpoint, the elitist. The small-town lawyer meanwhile stands for "real America".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pub-911
The Carter years were not some golden age, but they were easily ahead of what went before and came after.
The "executive dining room" jokes remind me of the British sitcom "Are You Being Served?", once frequently aired on PBS. I don't mean to exacerbate the attempts at whimsy here.
But returning to the topic at hand, the Carter years were a severe frustration for investors in the stock market. 1981 wasn't exactly pleasant either, but then things took off, around mid-1982. Thereafter, the Reagan years became memorable for anchoring what was probably the greatest stock market boom in history. And I say this without in the least being a Reagan fan.
The point isn't to make a normative judgment, but to note that in my example, the social-worker guy is "abnormal". He'd be widely panned as being the weirdo, and from a cultural viewpoint, the elitist. The small-town lawyer meanwhile stands for "real America".
The "executive dining room" jokes remind me of the British sitcom "Are You Being Served?", once frequently aired on PBS. I don't mean to exacerbate the attempts at whimsy here.
But returning to the topic at hand, the Carter years were a severe frustration for investors in the stock market. 1981 wasn't exactly pleasant either, but then things took off, around mid-1982. Thereafter, the Reagan years became memorable for anchoring what was probably the greatest stock market boom in history. And I say this without in the least being a Reagan fan.
You can thank vokner for saving the usd with his interest rate hikes. It was risky business jumping off the gold standard, enduring stagflation in the 70s, and forcing the Middle East OPEC countries to back the usd with oil. "Oil shock" lol...
The carter doctrine made it clear we were willing to do it at the points of our bayonets.
In economic terms, 1973 to 1976 was quite a mess. 1977 to 1980 went better than that. What you are saying here is that the time in between one epic market fail in 1981-82 and another epic market fail in 1987, things actually went pretty well? Have I got that right? You do know about the already looming S&L crisis I suppose...
Yes, that’s true… wealth/income divide is of course its own separate issue. One of the points in the present discussion, I gather, is that “the elite” are better at converting income into wealth, whereas Proles who hit the lottery or start a lucrative business or become highly-compensated employees, are going to mismanage that income, and will fail to inculcate in their children a deft respect for money.
Yet another thorny subject is pecuniary vs. all other considerations. Who is the “elite” – the guy who fluently speaks 5 foreign languages, who works as a social-worker at the city department dealing with fresh immigrants, earning $35K/year… or the small-town jock, who barely makes it through the state U law school, but opens a smashingly lucrative injury-law practice, and has his face festooned all over highway billboards? “Normal America” is evidently pop-culture mass consumption, reality-TV and football. The social-worker guy, who has read Rumi in the original Persian, and Thucydides in the original Greek, is not “normal” – even though he’s forced to subsist on peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches
Murray's book really hit home with me because I straddle the two realities. Many of my grad school friends or acquaintances I have made professionally are living in DC, NYC, etc. They like to discuss politics, educational news, live in the best neighborhoods, mingle with other highly compensated professionals, etc. But my friends from growing up are all in the trades, or car salesmen, etc. They like to drive nice trucks, drink bud light, go camping, and have friends over for BBQs. Many of the former don't know any of the latter personally. The worlds are becoming increasingly segregated from one another. Especially as high income and wealthy parents put their kids in private schools (where they meet other kids to wealthy parents, etc., etc.).
You can thank vokner for saving the usd with his interest rate hikes.
Yeah, Vokner. He was quite a guy. But the dollar rides high on the share of global GDP that is produced by the US and by our long and deep involvement in international trade.
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Originally Posted by Thatsright19
It was risky business jumping off the gold standard...
No risk at all. All the potential risk lay on the side of foolishly trying to keep an already long-dead system alive.
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Originally Posted by Thatsright19
...enduring stagflation in the 70s...
Well, reaction to the Arab Oil embargo was badly played by Nixon's crew.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thatsright19
...and forcing the Middle East OPEC countries to back the usd with oil. The carter doctrine made it clear we were willing to do it at the points of our bayonets.
Hmmm. Like boycotting the Moscow Olympics, the Carter Doctrine was a bilateral jab at the USSR.
To answer your questions about why someone might feel guilty about sending their kids to private school: Hypocrisy. Is that really so impossible for you to understand?
What's hypocritical about sending your kid to private school?
Everyone on this planet strives to give their kids a better life than they have. Idiots like this guy are just lying to themselves about that.
Yes, that’s true… wealth/income divide is of course its own separate issue. One of the points in the present discussion, I gather, is that “the elite” are better at converting income into wealth, whereas Proles who hit the lottery or start a lucrative business or become highly-compensated employees, are going to mismanage that income, and will fail to inculcate in their children a deft respect for money.
Yet another thorny subject is pecuniary vs. all other considerations. Who is the “elite” – the guy who fluently speaks 5 foreign languages, who works as a social-worker at the city department dealing with fresh immigrants, earning $35K/year… or the small-town jock, who barely makes it through the state U law school, but opens a smashingly lucrative injury-law practice, and has his face festooned all over highway billboards? “Normal America” is evidently pop-culture mass consumption, reality-TV and football. The social-worker guy, who has read Rumi in the original Persian, and Thucydides in the original Greek, is not “normal” – even though he’s forced to subsist on peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches
In the United States, the "elite" are the people with the parents who impart the work & educational ethic to be successful and who lucked on in the gene pool to have above average intelligence. That includes immigrants who arrived off the boat with nothing but the shirt on their back.
What you choose to do with all those advantages is up to you. You can pick a path where you are fluent in 5 languages and work as a social worker. You can pick a path where you spend your lifetime accumulating wealth. The kid with the single mother parent with no education and no work ethic who had the misfortune of being born with average intelligence doesn't have those opportunities.
Your personal injury lawyer example is wildly incorrect. You have pretty much zero shot of passing the bar exam with an IQ below 110. That's a standard deviation above average. That personal injury lawyer might not have the intellect to invent particle physics but they're still pretty bright compared to the general population.
Proles don't become highly compensated employees unless they have unique or rare job skills, .... unless they're doing something nobody else wants to do. Forest Gump can make pretty good money pumping septic tanks. Unless you're doing something the rest of us have no interest in doing, that isn't the case.
In economic terms, 1973 to 1976 was quite a mess. 1977 to 1980 went better than that. What you are saying here is that the time in between one epic market fail in 1981-82 and another epic market fail in 1987, things actually went pretty well? Have I got that right? You do know about the already looming S&L crisis I suppose...
I mean to say that 1982-2000 was a wondrous and probably inimitable golden-age for investment- under both Republican and Democratic presidents. Most asset classes - stocks, bonds and real estate – did splendidly. Since then, we’ve been struggling – again, under both Republican and Democratic presidents. I don't say this as a doomsday curmudgeon, or a cheerleader for some halcyon time when life was simpler and America was "great". The whole world, investment-wise, prospered in the 1980s and 1990s. And since 2000, American assets have done better than nearly anywhere else. So it's not us-vs-them.
Maybe there are protracted lags between implementation of policy, and its effect on the economy. Maybe Reagan got lucky, and Carter the reverse. I don't know, or pretend to have a verifiable theory. But regardless of the cause or the correlation, something clicked in the worldwide economy, starting around 35 years ago. And it has been more or less broken for the entire 21st century thus far.
Returning back to our topic, it seems to me that one distinction between "the affluent" and everyone else, in terms of multi-generational continuity, is that the affluent were well positioned to benefit from the increase in asset prices throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Others, say the younger Baby Boomers hailing from working-class families, who were the first in their family to graduate from college and to join the professions, may have been able to earn high salaries during that time, but didn't have enough money in the market to enjoy strong capital appreciation.
Your personal injury lawyer example is wildly incorrect. You have pretty much zero shot of passing the bar exam with an IQ below 110. That's a standard deviation above average.
Nope. 115 is a single standard deviation above the mean on normal curve. Regarding IQ, 68.26% of the population falls within one standard deviation of the mean (IQ 85-115).
I mean to say that 1982-2000 was a wondrous and probably inimitable golden-age for investment- under both Republican and Democratic presidents. Most asset classes - stocks, bonds and real estate – did splendidly. Since then, we’ve been struggling – again, under both Republican and Democratic presidents. I don't say this as a doomsday curmudgeon, or a cheerleader for some halcyon time when life was simpler and America was "great". The whole world, investment-wise, prospered in the 1980s and 1990s. And since 2000, American assets have done better than nearly anywhere else. So it's not us-vs-them.
Maybe there are protracted lags between implementation of policy, and its effect on the economy. Maybe Reagan got lucky, and Carter the reverse. I don't know, or pretend to have a verifiable theory. But regardless of the cause or the correlation, something clicked in the worldwide economy, starting around 35 years ago. And it has been more or less broken for the entire 21st century thus far.
Returning back to our topic, it seems to me that one distinction between "the affluent" and everyone else, in terms of multi-generational continuity, is that the affluent were well positioned to benefit from the increase in asset prices throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Others, say the younger Baby Boomers hailing from working-class families, who were the first in their family to graduate from college and to join the professions, may have been able to earn high salaries during that time, but didn't have enough money in the market to enjoy strong capital appreciation.
Or maybe the federal reserve dictates the economy and not presidents. Maybe being able to drop rates and flood the world with cheap money and debt caused the investment environment from then until 2001....and then even more aggressive fed policy was needed to paper over the madness with even greater madness.
The dollar illusion from 2006...right before the crash. It's the best piece I've ever seen written on the subject other than perhaps the Chinese central banks call for a change to the international system published in 2009. https://www.google.com/amp/www.spieg...40054-amp.html
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