Originally Posted By: Goatkiller
Recurve - here is why "people" won't be able to retire:

1960's white collar job starting Salary maybe 7-10k was a good job, car cost $3500 something thereabouts. $40-$80k for a home in the suburbs and in a lot of cases much less.

Since then.... Stock market has gone up and doubled I don't know how many times 10-15 I don't know the number, not taking into consideration all the compounding that creates.

Compare and Contrast that to someone who started working in 2000 when the Dow hit 10k for the first time. By the year 2000 those type starting positions are starting let's say $35k per year or more. 7x increase in pay. Cars $20-35k. Comparable Home $100-200k.

Now 17 years later what do you have?

Stock market has doubled only once. Wages are fairly stagnant. Staring $30 jobs in 2000 roughly the same maybe increased to $50k currently to be generous. That's not even doubled. Comparable Cars cost $40-50, comparable houses cost $200k plus.

Things don't add up economically. This country is in much worse shape than people realize. The economy is in the toilet and everything you see is just smoke and mirrors. For example...Let's take your F-250 you wonder about. The reason you see the brand new F-250 at the boat ramp is they have been allowed lenders to extend the financing terms in order to get the payments down. That's not reasonable and should be against the law but there is no consumer protection, that meaning protection for you and I who know we can't afford one. They should protect us from stupid people who would actually finance one 120 months. There is none so now trucks cost $50k for more. It has made it more expensive for us but we know better so we drive a 10 year old truck and wonder how people at the boat ramp afford a new one.

We both know they can't.

The economy is a freaking bubble. We spent our way out of the last recession I think we are in for something more serious at some point within my lifetime but they will kick the can down the road very far so who knows when that will actually happen. I might be an old man or even dead.





I don’t disagree with some of the things you said. I have a bachelors and masters in economics and for the first 3 years of my career I worked in forecasting for a big bank. All of those outside forces are there but I can tell you the consumer has protection. Yes, inflation has taken its toll. Part of my job during my forecasting days was to gauge economic strength of industries my bank was going to invest in. That requires forecasting what existing regulations will cost a company and what new possible regulations will cost a company due to changes in administrations (EPA and White House). That isn’t easy to do but you take past trends and do the best you can with that information. We had a metric that we used for each political party (lol) and used that metric to compute, say in 2024 when a general election is going to happen and there is a chance the controlling party will change, the sustainability of an industry. Anyway, all of the things you said aren’t necessarily wrong.

The things you mentioned are what adversely affect the economy. I’m only talking about people’s decisions to buy those things. Look, of course those things in the economy affects the price of anything…but a portion of that is what people are willing to pay and every bit of that is personal responsibility. Again, I’m not saying what you posted is wrong…I’m just saying that what I posted had everything to do with personal responsibility. A big part of personal financial responsibility is not buying things because everyone else is or because the government or company xyz made it easier to do so.

I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There�s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts. � Ronald Reagan