Paul Rosenberg – You work long, hard days, but you never have enough to be secure. Your husband or wife probably works too, and yet you still never get ahead. Now think about this: Your great-grandparents worked hard, and they did get ahead. You work just as hard, but you don’t make the same progress.
Was great-grandpa really that much better than you? Not likely. So, how was it that he could get ahead on one income, but you can’t?
Take a good look at this graph:
The top line shows how many years of living expenses your great-grandfather would have accumulated as a hard-working young man. The bottom line shows what you can save.
After working for five years, great-gramps had seven years of living expenses in the bank. Continue reading
Charles Hugh Smith – Rising economic inequality tends to generate political instability for all the obvious reasons: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the rich say let them eat brioche and next thing you know, the ungrateful wretches are tearing down the Bastille and a youthful army officer has to restore order with a whiff of grapeshot. After which he launches a war of conquest that kills hundreds of thousands and bankrupts nations.