Money is rushing into stock funds at a rate higher than at any point over the last five years. And yet the Dow barely budged yesterday.
Japanese stocks, on the other hand, are moving up. Apparently, other investors are coming to think that our “Trade of the Decade” was not such a bad idea after all.
Who knows?
Bernanke, Draghi, Carney, Shirakawa… and all the others… are pumping as much money into the system as they can. They say they need more money to keep the system from falling back into recession.
They don’t mention it, but without central banks’ EZ money, zombie industries — including health, education, Wall Street, defense — would be in big trouble.
As central banks pump, the private sector is trying to wring the debt out as fast as
possible. And Gary Shilling says there will be “another five years of painful deleveraging.”
What will happen? We’ll come back to that tomorrow…
The War on Youth
Today, let’s look again at the sad plight of the young in America. They get whacked coming and going. They have few jobs and little money, thanks largely to deleveraging. But they have plenty of debt and high living costs, thanks largely to the feds’ vigorous pumping.
It’s no accident, we’ve been saying. They’re victims of dirty dealing by their parents and grandparents.
Here’s Bryan Goldberg at PandoDaily.com:
[Y]oung people need to understand how
much their grandparents’ generation has ruined things for them. The
average American retires with less than $70,000 of savings, but an
elderly man and woman receive about $275,000 in medical care during that
time — and you kids are paying for it by inheriting trillions upon
trillions in Medicare bills that granny and grandpa never intended to
pay and will be too dead to worry about soon.
You kids are beyond screwed.
It’s not hard to see how it works. Healthcare has become very, very expensive… with spending reaching over $7,000 for every single American. Who spends the money? Overwhelmingly, it is done by or for old people. Who foots the bill? Mostly younger people.
Why are the costs so high? Because healthcare costs have been collectivized. Through insurance and government, old people found they could get healthcare benefits — and that someone else would pay for them. Only 1 out of 10 dollars of healthcare spending is paid by the person who gets the service; the rest is paid by someone else, usually someone younger.
And it gets worse and worse. The baby boomer generation is big. And it expects extravagant healthcare services. But it won’t pay the costs. Someone else will have to pick up the tab. Who? Younger people.
Rotten Wood
Of course, the story is deeper and more nuanced… which is to say there’s a lot of rotten wood in this pile. Costs went up because the feds created an almost unlimited demand for healthcare, financed by an almost unlimited line of credit.
For the old-timer, it’s “use it or lose it.” If he doesn’t get the pills and the tests, it’s like a free vacation he didn’t take: lost forever.
And now, for every person who is providing something that might be described as useful healthcare… there are three others who are creating expensive new drugs, filing insurance claims, shuffling papers, defrauding the system, giving tests and threatening lawsuits.
The zombies have taken over the healthcare system.
They’ve taken over the education system too…
Here’s Goldberg again, with some advice:
If you can get into an ultra-top-tier
college, then go ahead and do it. An Ivy League degree is worth getting,
at least for undergrad. The value of a law or business degree is
becoming more and more questionable each year. But for the rest of you,
it may be worth skipping college altogether.
The world doesn’t need any more girls
with Spanish degrees from California State, Long Beach. Sorry, but it
just doesn’t. We need you gals to learn how to build software in equal
number with your male peers. They are no smarter than you, and they are
definitely way less organized and far less attentive to detail. So go
show them what you are made of.
But won’t a college degree pay for
itself? It probably won’t. According to UC Berkeley’s website, a
four-year education will cost you $210,000 in tuition and living
expenses, and a private education could run you way more. A part-time
job at Starbucks will eat into very little of that sum, and you will be
forgoing a real job during that same time. And — if I can convey just
one point in this whole article, let it be this… saving money takes
forever. Even if you do get that coveted six-figure job, you will find
that it takes forever to save $210,000. Decades even.
Yes, dear reader, education
has become another scammy rip-off. Kids are enticed to spend money, in
the hope that credentials will help them get work. They are loaded up
with debt. And then, they discover that the promised jobs don’t exist.
Would You Pay $143 for a College Lecture?
You might also wonder why it costs so much to go to college. The estimate above comes to $52,000 a year. This is $6,000 more than the average household income of $46,000.
Let’s say it costs about $1,000 a month to house a student in a dorm for the school year and give him regular cafeteria meals. That leaves $43,000 for tuition.
Maybe something big has happened since we were in college in the late 1960s. Maybe not. But from what we recall, college wasn’t worth $43,000. Not even close.
Look, let’s say you take five classes. Each class gives you two lectures a week. This is a total of 10 lectures a week. (We’re keeping the math simple in case you weren’t a math major.) There are about 15 weeks a semester… and two semesters. So, we’ll say 30 weeks x 10
lectures = 300 hours of lectures a year. At $43,000, that means each
lecture at $143.
Who would pay $143 for a college lecture by a drowsy, second-rate
professor of economics? Or a seminar with a teaching assistant? Hey, go
to the Teaching Company. You can get 30 lectures from the best
professors in the country for just $10 each… or less. And you don’t
have to park.
Or go to the Khan Academy… Or to one of the many places where you can get all the lectures you want for free.
From our own limited experience, we wouldn’t pay $143 for any of the many lectures we attended in college. None were worth it.
We had one professor who taught a course in political science.
Apparently, he couldn’t spot the fraud in his own subject. Politics has
nothing to do with science. They’re not even on speaking terms.
But the professor insisted that he was a scientist. So we stopped attending class.
Another professor led us on a deep exploration of philosophy. But he
had been so moved by Wittgenstein that he didn’t feel you could say
anything meaningful about it.
“Am I here? Are you here? What does being here mean? Who the hell knows?”
We were invited to sit around and meditate for much of the lecture.
We kept going to class to see what he would do next. Worth attending?
Maybe. Worth paying for? Nah…
A Waste of Time
Looking back on it, we see he was right. But it was an insight that
takes years of reading, thinking and reflection to understand. Like the
gallows and the grave, you have to be ready to appreciate it.
You get much more information… more ideas… better reasoning… more history… and better organization… in a $29 book.
Don’t like the idea of learning on your own? Try this: Get a
collection of 10 people together who all want to study philosophy. Hire
an out-of-work Ph.D. philosopher for $50,000 a year.
That’s eight hours a day… in a small class… for just $5,000 each.
The following year, hire an unemployed lawyer. Then an unemployed
economist. Etc. After four years you will have spent only $20,000… and
you will still be unemployed.
What happened to the education industry? Was it spoiled by too much
easy money? Students learned that they could avoid the rigors of the
real world by staying in school, at someone else’s expense. First, at
the expense of parents. Later, at the expense of taxpayers. And
finally… when the debt bubble blows up… at the expense of almost
everyone.
But the students are the biggest victims. They waste their most
glorious years — the years when Alexander conquered the world and
Chopin composed a Nocturne and three Polonaises — sitting in stifling
classes with boring professors.
After years of beer parties and trivial pursuits they come out with
such great debts they can scarcely be paid… and such dull brains they
can scarcely think.
More coming…
Regards,
Bill
