Velocibuddha wrote:
klehner wrote:
Kay Serrar wrote:
Another strong jobs report today. Unemployment at near record lows. Infrastructure investment will help create jobs and keep the economy moving. A slowdown is inevitable no matter who is in power because the Fed has to hike rates to quell inflation. The Fed is independent and the chair of the Fed was nominated by Trump. So what, exactly, are you hoping the GOP will do for the economy? What are their economic policies that you like? Where can I read about them?
Expected response: either more deflection or <crickets>
The stock market is off 20% on the year.
Bonds are off 17%
Inflation is at 8%
And housing is completely unaffordable.
This is the worst era for savers and investors (except slum lords) since the early 80s.
To be clear...
Trump is responsible for a healthy part of this.
But the government response to COVID (largely a Democrat thing) also played a major role.
The response to COVID may have saved millions of lives.
But it also caused a 25% real erosion in the real wealth of those who saved for retirement with stocks, bonds, CDs and cash.
The party of corruption, lies, stupidity and hatred (the current GOP) is not a solution.
But there needs to be a legitimate alternative to the Democratic party.
No argument from me that a multi-party system would be healthier. But is your main gripe really that we should have been able to coordinate a response to COVID that save millions of lives and left everyone's savings completely intact. Even though no-one anywhere in the world was able to do that? Again, David Frum's "He had a hat" joke upthread seems so so apt.
Someone approaching retirement now might have started saving in the early 80s. The S&P is up 2,500% since then. If you were retiring tomorrow I appreciate it sucks to imagine retiring with X in January and seeing that become Y in 11 months. But anyone in that situation should take a step back, divorce their emotion from the math and realize how lucky they are. They got 5 numbers and won the lottery by being invested in the US all their lives. They didn't get the powerball by withdrawing it all in January. It's not a tragedy. And if they're that close to retirement and eating those types of losses they should also fire their FA.
"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek