Joe,
The "good investor" is supposed to save his money and put everything he can into the stock market pyramid scheme, with the hope that he will make lots and lots of money over time. Stocks always go up, up, up, forever, amen (so they say). The fly in the ointment is that, according to M. King Hubbert (the fellow who first discovered the peak oil theory) the industrial expansion economy is basically over.
In order for stocks to go up, the economy must expand. In order for the economy to expand, there must be enough energy to run the whole thing -- normally more energy every year. If there isn't significantly more energy used every year, the economy would generally contract. If a lot less energy is used every year, it contracts a lot.
Energy has peaked out with oil, will soon peak out in natural gas, and coal is not far behind (20-25 years, a very interesting discussion is at http://globalpublicmedia.com/transcripts/645).
Ethanol is an expensive and destructive fantasy. The truth is that the economy will contract radically beginning within a few years. Stocks have nowhere to go but down, in general terms. Company pension plans, with the stock market cratered, will be an empty fantasy, since pension plans are almost universally dependent on a rising stock market.
Social Security, since it depends on the next generation paying for the previous generation, would generally be in a similar situation to stocks. If working people are struggling, how can they support retirees?
The whole scheme is to get people to blow their money on pyramid schemes like the stock market and real estate. People with more sense will realize after a while that it's smarter to spend money on renewable energy, maybe a tiny electric car, fruit trees, gardens, and a house that uses very little energy. Things that provide for your needs directly, rather than participating in the baloney money schemes that pretend to provide but won't be able to deliver within not so many years.
I don't think it's all gloom and doom, but more a matter of adjustment. The longer people believe in fairy tales like the stock market, the harder the adjustment will be.
Take care,
Brent
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Brent,
That is about as concisely and simply as it can be put. Tens of millions of us fully understand this. Unfortunately, understanding this, plus a dollar, will buy us a cup of coffee. Such is the momentum and thoroughness of the European culture's property based financial dynamic that even knowing the truth is not much conducive to change. The massive social pressures, activity and belief systems of the human hive render us rather moot at this time in history, I think.
Given the global corporate political machinery governing our daily lives, perhaps all we can do is let it play itself out, and seek personal solutions and alternatives we can live with. Preferably as far outside the machinery as we can get. Of course truly getting outside the machine means giving up nearly everything we think we need, everything we have been conditioned toward, and living on a rather primitive (by our conditioned standards) plane where at least discovery -- both universal and individual -- is possible.
Given that the pain of understanding is individual, that's not the worst route to go, in my humble opinion. Not that we get any relief from personal pain from doing so, but at least we get a more relevant, universal type that binds us to mankind in a deeper way. Anyway, that's my take on it.
In art and labor,
Joe
