Todd brought up his historical perspective. Absolutely nothing wrong with what he wrote but I can offer an older perspective.
Back in my days you could flip burgers, wait on tables, pump gas AND walk away from college with no debt. Those were the days before guaranteed school loans. All the latter did was encourage the colleges to jack up tuition cost to maximize what the school could get paid. There was a boom in colleges/university building and younger students graduated with debt.
The middle class manufacturing jobs have fled overseas in search of greater corp profit. Blame David Rockefeller for that idea. Post WW II a guy with a high school diploma can work in a factory, build cars or make Maytag washers, marry, buy a home and raise a family. Those jobs are gone now so when these kids with $100k in debt graduate from college, they become indentured servants who can't use bankruptcy (Dubya's reform of bankruptcy laws meant that school loans cannot be forgiven by bankruptcy) to escape their debt burden. Sally with her degree in women studies flips burgers until she's 65 at which point her loans are paid off and she can start saving for retirement.
Now throw in inflation. If you watch that Mike Maloney series
linky you'll understand why we have inflation. We must not b/c of the bovine feces the econ professors said but b/c of the nature of the fractional reserve banking system. It crashes w/out inflation. Sally the student can't keep up with it. BTW, I mentioned the Fed Res picking the winners and losers.
Look up the Cantillon Effect. Those closer to the money spigot when the Fed Res hits the return key benefit. It takes a while for the effect of fresh dollars to be felt so the big boys who get the newly created dollars win b/c they can buy up assets first beffore the dollar devalues. So who were the big winners? Member banks (they bought equity, bought back their own shares) and hedge funds (who bought equity and real properties). The little fish won a little b/c of equity prices and sometimes residential property values. The stock market does not reflect the economy (it is part of perception management) but the pursuit of captial returns and fear of missing out has driven many from safer methods of generaating wealth into the stock market or real property. The only thing the average Joe got was 1) Time & 2) Inflation. Inflation is simply the creation of fresh money (actually currency) without a corresponding increase in goods/services. It's too much money chasing too few things. Period.
If you remember recent history, after the housing bust of 2007 the financial world was on the brink of collapse thanks to MBS (mortgage backed securities) and derivative trading. It survived ONLY because of TARP (troubled asset relief program) and subsequent QE (quantitative easing - nice way to say the Fed mashes down the return key to create more digital dollars). There has been no economic recovery since 2007 and everything has been on life support since. The wheels will fall off when the dollar collapses (good read is Ferguson's
When Money Dies). If you believe the recent governent stats about how healthy the economy is, it's because of massive government hiring, overspending and old fashion lies. Nomi Prins has a book (Permanent Distortion) on the subject and the over-leverage of 2008 has minimally increased tenfold.
Here's the lies: the housing market was never allowed to properly deflate. Banks kept homes off the market for fear of them selling underwater of the loan that was foreclosed on. They waited until fresh money went in to reinflate the bubble. Housing prices will deflate (but I can't say with respects to dollar terms). The stock market is used to transfer the risk from the big investment firms to the common man. The main source of wealth of most Americans can vanish when those two things happen. Sidenote: commercial real estate collapsed with the covid lockdown and office vacancies and businesses send employees away to work from home.
If you understand how the fractional reserve banking system works, you'll understand why the US has been funding foreign wars (Ukraine, Israel) includling the Taliban (conflict means lower cost access to resources). Those newly created dollars have to go somewhere and a lot goes the defense industry, graft by politicians and then some to the recipient nation (where more graft happens - we should have learned this from the aid to Republic of China/KuoMinTang during WW II).
I'm not saying don't own your home. You need a place to hang your hat. Rather, I'd shy away from real property (both residential and commercial) unless it's income producing (ranch, farm, timber, mineral, water rights).
It's only a matter of time before it ends and fractional reserve banking works until it doesn't. We're approaching the "doesn't work" moment.
but that begs the question, why? How much are we paying for the 8x erector and all the correction to get a good image?
