I don't have a dime in the markets. Pulled my money two years ago and haven't looked back.
But the vast majority of folks out there are shitting themselves whenever the market moves down. Their sacred little 401-K's are taking a beating. They won't be able to retire by the golf course. They won't be able to fly anywhere and complain about how the people there aren't acting like they did in the old National Geographic magazine that they looked at when they were kids.
This is going to be hard on these folks. These sheeple have been fed these dreams of theirs with their mother's milk. These dreams are the only options available. They have saved 15% of their salaries since forever in the hope for the golden years. Now it appears that the boyz on Wall Street used them the same way that shepherds use sheep. Their golden years are in the same category of illusion as the myth of unlimited oil and American geopolitical superiority.
All of these things tie together. We took too much for too long. Our dreams of retirement was a dream of taking even more. We got the idea from the liars on Wall Street that their wizardry would allow us to put an apple into savings and when we retired we could take out five apples. The reality is folks, if you save an apple now, you can eat an apple when you retire, the other four apples that they promised were so much hot air.
Now, if you plant the apple, work hard at growing it into a mature tree, care for the tree, harvest the fruit, you can develop a means of getting back more than one apple. But the boyz on Wall Street didn't do that. They skimmed 10-15% off the top to line their own pockets, then they used the rest to pay off the early adopters of their Ponzi scheme, and then they left the bulk of the 401-K investors bupkis my friend.
So what I am going to be amused watching is the reactions of the boomers when they realize that they have been taken for fools. The children of the sixties are now a bunch of sad, aging, middle management doofuses with delusions of grandeur and lumbago. These are not the stuff of revolutionaries.
They had better get used to cat food.
3 comments:
Man I am so tired people calling everybody else a "sheeple." It seems like every survivalist labels anyone that doesn't think like them, have the same goals, have the same amount of money, etc etc etc a "sheeple." Y'all should focus on yourselves and your preps and leave everyone else do what they want.
I can accept that criticism. I think that sometimes a label like "sheeple" does in fact lead to sloppy thinking and a holier than thou outlook. I apologize for that aspect of the thought and will try to do better.
But there is another side of the statement. The "sheeple" are a real phenomenon. The great mass of people do in fact react as a herd and can be dangerous. When a herd mentality takes over, it is a dangerous thing. It is essential to your health and long term happiness to be very cognizant of the "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds".
By prepping, one opts out of the day to day delusion that everything is going well. But that (the idea that everything is going well) is a mass delusion that affects the greater bulk of your society and as such has a real effect on you and your future. It may be somewhat derogatory to refer to them as sheeple, but the tag does seem to fit. You must watch them carefully, because when you get enough sheeple pissed off, they are capable of metamorphosing into something much less pleasant.
Mockum - fair point
Degringolade - what you say is true. Sheeple is a derogatory term but true nonetheless. Anyone who thinks they can just give their money to someone else to invest for their retirement and not pay any due diligence is in for a rough time.
Fact is that there are dishonest parasites out there looking to steal your money. 401k is the big pay day for these crooks.
Conservative financial advice is to get out of shares at least 7 years before retirement in order to protect the soon to be retiree from market fluctuations.
I'm Gen-X and distrust Boomers and their "free ride for us - everyone else pays" attitude (from cradle to present day). I also saw that they would be cashing out at roughly the same time as each other. Sellers > Buyers = lower price. So I cashed out before them.
None of what I did was rocket science. By the way it's not to late to protect yourself. Boomers haven't retired yet and their greed and vanity won't allow them to take a loss. Cash out and watch from the sidelines. Popcorn is still cheap so grab a cold one, kick back and thank your lucky stars you're not wearing the pain. And when the Boomers start screaming for Uncle Sugar (taxpayer) to bail 'em out - tell them the kitty is bare and the dream of the easy life is just that - a dream
Post a Comment