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At this point, companies view all workers as necessary evils to be squeezed for every ounce. I would love to see that change.
Become a union organizer. The middle class in this country rose and has now fallen along with the health and influence of unions. After all, a bargaining table with only one chair occupied should not be expected to function very well.
Maybe it is all about perspective. Stocks tanked at the onset of the first Iraq war due to fear of the unknown, and not the second time because we had a little "history" under our belt. The power of knowledge and insight from the past.
Become a union organizer. The middle class in this country rose and has now fallen along with the health and influence of unions. After all, a bargaining table with only one chair occupied should not be expected to function very well.
I have only been in a union for a few years of my 40 year career, but I do believe you are correct. Why any middle class worker thought that weakening their respective influence would turn out well is beyond me. A rising tide lifts all boats!
I believe what we are seeing in wage growth and benefits is the direct result of destroying unions and portraying them in a bad light. Not that the unions played their cards right, but it was a calculated effort to make the rich even richer. And it worked perfectly!
in either case trying to learn in advance from the past rarely works out the 2nd time . each time is just different enough i find .
This is also true, but not mutually exclusive. If we are talking about market timing here (and I suspect we are), we share the same dilemma. Now if we were to live 1000 years, then maybe we would have the patience and insight to master the art!
many things have a statistical basis but no historical reason . such as our markets .
you can go back as far as 1871 and look at all 30 typical accumulation stage's and retirement time frames spanning the typical 30 years .
all of them , 117 rolling periods all fell out within 2% or so of each other .
there is no historical link as far as what caused one time frame to do what it did vs others and really no historical reason why equities would be a good long term investment . but there is a great statistical reason .
the reason is NO MATTER what happened in any time frame over those 30 years the outcomes mysteriously all worked out very close .
retirement too . no time frame has history repeating reason for a 50/50 mix standing up well , but there is a high statistical reason .
so many times we confuse history repeating with history not repeating , but a high statistical chance repeating no matter what the reason were for each time frames fail or success.
most failed retirement time frames were because of returns and rates . but the worst case was inflation that caused it .
preparing for high inflation would have been a poor idea since 1966 .
many things have a statistical basis but no historical reason . such as our markets .
you can go back as far as 1871 and look at all 30 typical accumulation stage's and retirement time frames spanning the typical 30 years .
all of them , 117 rolling periods all fell out within 2% or so of each other .
there is no historical link as far as what caused one time frame to do what it did vs others and really no historical reason why equities would be a good long term investment . but there is a great statistical reason .
the reason is NO MATTER what happened in any time frame over those 30 years the outcomes mysteriously all worked out very close .
retirement too . no time frame has history repeating reason for a 50/50 mix standing up well , but there is a high statistical reason .
so many times we confuse history repeating with history not repeating , but a high statistical chance repeating no matter what the reason were for each time frames fail or success.
most failed retirement time frames were because of returns and rates . but the worst case was inflation that caused it .
preparing for high inflation would have been a poor idea since 1966 .
I actually suspect that there is always a historical cause/effect relationship surrounding every large economic event. It is just that we can only find those relationships in hindsight and sometimes not at all, because there are too many moving parts and one of them is psychology, which can prove rather irrational in the short term.
And because we cannot forecast successfully, we have learned that given certain allocations and enough time, we can achieve the best possible long term outcome.
This is very much indicated by the fact that we would advise a young person just starting out to have a equity heavy allocation and a person nearing retirement to have a much more balanced allocation.
I have no plans to prepare for inflation, yet it would be foolish to not consider that adding stimulus to a strong(ish) economy might add to inflationary pressures.
Still to your point, we could head into deep recession, making this a prescient move. Or the DPRK might launch a nuclear attack, resulting in economic turmoil (among other things). So yeah, no telling how it might all turn out.
Either way, I am not thrilled to pay for tax cuts with debt. And would like to see the scales tilted in favor of the middle class, given my druthers.
Yeah, but your argument no longer makes sense. It doesn't matter for the companies if the demand is sustainable or not.
They care if they are investing for the long term. Debt led growth is both weak and subject to severe corrections like in 2008.
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And getting higher wage growth is easier said than done. Here are some causes of the low wage growth.
Oh, it isn't hard at all! We did it for our entire history prior to 1980. Wage growth was particularly high from the early 1930s to 70s. High income taxes, wage and benefit supports, balanced trade. Done. It worked great in spite of a very inefficient union system.
The only problem is that the oligarchs like it just the way it is. They hatched a scheme to subvert the symbiotic nature of consumer capitalism, via globalization, finance and fiat currency, and gutting of unions. That was about 40 years ago. It's working fabulously. For them.
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