"Where does this leave us? It’s undeniably true that housing, health care, and college are too expensive in this country, but because it exaggerates the cost of college and fails to include health benefits as compensation, the index overstates its case when it claims the four essentials to a good life are out of reach. And it completely ignores many other important expenses, from food to computers, whose prices have fallen. Also worth noting is that in treating male wages as the benchmark, it leaves out the upward trends in female work and pay, though these issues are discussed in the report itself (and get complicated because two-worker families take on new costs through daycare and the like).

In general: No one should defend America’s college costs, its health-care prices, or its big cities’ housing regulations, but the reality is not as grim as this viral chart suggests."

FM this sort of article is designed to sell
gold and other things, not that the left is worth listening to either.

Maybe consider consuming less volatile material?

IMO college is about to have a major reality adjustment.

Housing cost are going up (because of demographics and regulations)

Oil is the number one cost of doing business, i.e. it is less expensive.

Interest rates have never been lower

The US has a growing working age population, but Europe, China, Japan do not

Things are going to be very good for the construction industry

The current BS is caused by state governments and are NOT from organic causes

FM:

Pat and Alan raise some good points. And there is certainly a difference between thriving and surviving, but recessions are more about surviving. I can appreciate that many are not faring well in the current pandemic/recession. I am in my mid 60’s, and I have survived enough economic downturns to know what they are and how to get through them, and yet when I see the charts/graphs/news stories about surviving economic hardship, one of the first thoughts I have is to wonder: What is considered “survival”?

There are many things that I would consider to be non-essential luxuries, but seem to be “gotta have it” necessities for some of the people who complain about not having money. How over-extended are some of these people with respect to the purchasing of housing, clothes, automobiles, electronics, and lifestyle choices? Are there people wearing $200 sneakers telling you on their smart phone how broke they are while watching cable television? Having grown up in a working-class, immigrant household, I understand what it is to be poor, and that ain’t it.

Have people taken on unnecessary debt to pretend that they are successful, or to succumb to peer pressure, and then feel there is a crisis because they can’t maintain that illusion of being well off when the money gets tight? Some people have always been this way. Perhaps things are different now, but I am not sure how or why.

As to your “bullet points”:

All of the government relief money will have to come from somewhere. Perhaps we should all get used to paying taxes again. Even those that got tax cuts are holding their hand out for more money. Go figure. Given their love of tax cuts and their hate of funding the federal government, I wonder where they think the money is coming from.

What percentage of small businesses closed during the Great Recession, and how does now compare to then? Or 2001? Or 1991? Or 1987? Or 1980? Or 1973? Is it apocalyptic, or is it cyclical?

America’s ongoing inability to properly address its racial issues and its selfish, all or nothing political polarization might well cause another civil war. That would be unfortunate, because a little civility, empathy, understanding, and cooperation could prevent that. Perhaps those qualities have become un-American.

I am surprised at the jump in firearm sales, as I would have thought that anyone in America that wanted to own a firearm would have at least one by now.

Mortgage and rent delinquency is what happens during recessions. Hopefully those who find themselves homeless will have the luck and resolve to find other living arrangements. Perhaps the upside will be a sensible rethinking of real estate valuation.

Part of America’s saving grace is that the dollar is the current international currency. I have no idea what America, or the world for that matter, will look like when that is no longer the case. It may take more than buying another AR-15 to resolve that issue.

You seem especially angry about things that are beyond your control. I would suggest helping those that you can, and see what the world looks like after all of this shakes out. It’s really all you can do. I’m not sure what you were expecting to get from a group of woodworking business owners.

TonyF

I believe that most of us are naturally just a little left or right of center. If you're a little left of center, you tend to get your news from a different source than those who are a little right of center. And therein lies the problem. Left leaning news will pull you ever more to the left, and right leaning news will pull you farther to the right. More than you would naturally be.

It is important for me personally to think of this when dealing with friends and family who share opinions that are shocking to me and are otherwise completely out of character. Even in my own immediate family, I have to consider where my college age daughters are getting their information from which they are forming their opinions.

In order to understand the fear and hyperbole coming from FM, we simply need to understand where he's getting his news.

It is scary to me what I hear coming from my college age daughters mouth. It is equally scary what I hear coming from people like FM. Not what they're saying which is total bullshit, but that these otherwise intelligent people actually believe it. That on one hand a kid that I raised believes anarchy is the solution and that all cops are racist and on the other hand a guy that once worked for me so I feel like I know him a little actually believes another civil war in this country is inevitable. If my daughter and FM met in person they might actually kill each other, when in fact they're both intelligent, sensible people. What the hell happened? Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person on the planet who isn't radicalized.

I spent the last 3 months remodeling a house in the evenings all by myself, listening to the waves on the beach. No radio, no TV. The world is not so bad when you don't listen to the news.

When I see the graphs, and read the predictions, and see the reality, I can only retreat into my world, and how I see it.

It has been this way, mostly, for the 30 years I have been in business, and before that, it was all about inflation. But still dire predictions. The end is near!!! But then it never arrives.... But I assure you, it is coming!

There is a basic structural problem we seem to forget: Someone takes gross, highly speculative real data, and distills it into something that predicts the future. This alone, if you have ever worked with statistics is more art than addition. Or more exploitive than speculative. Or explosive. At any rate, the results of all the computations and algorithms is no sure thing.

Pick you favorite prognosticator and follow them for a year or two. They are doing no better than TV psychics. Or horse race handicappers.

What is real, and within your control is your business, your income and your stuff. For some the purchase of a second jet ski is not going to happen. And that is pretty damn close to the end of the world.

For others, it may be they have to close their doors. Big corps do it because it is financially advantageous to do so, so they are no indicator of what to do. If you determine you must close, then do so earlier rathe than later in order to conserve your resources.

With the Fed gov out of control, and the rich succeeding in pulling off another Great Transfer of Wealth (as in 2008), this will be the new normal - keeping everyone and everything off-kilter, unstable and unpredictable. Now that we can vote to print more money, we are doomed.

But with riots in every major city, the rural poor going hungry, businesses failing at such a high rate, it just could be that the rich finally get eaten by the poor. That is, the poor get laws passed that help them work their way to a share of the real pie, not the Show Pie often traipsed out to get the hard working to work harder, in order to send more cash up the line to the Crying Wealthy.

If the masses really understood the disparity in wealth, and most importantly, the Why, then the riots would get ugly, and be more focused. But real change could be made to happen.

We can only hope. Or, what do we do?

Backstory, I worked for DJS as young man in my early 20's and I learned enough in his shop in six months I was there that I was able to start my own business to live securely if the system holds together for the rest of my life. I feel affinity and loyalty to the man still 20 years later despite us parting ways. I'm forever thankful to him.

DJS, for as long as I have known you I have thought you were incredibly bright and a good and decent man but had the ability to have huge blind spots to what is going on around you. Whether it was your source of information being a foreman who was stealing from you and an installer that was off in his head as badly as one can be, to how you can put two sentences together in the same thought process calling me full of bullshit for believing a civil war is inevitable (not what I want by the way) and then saying you think you are the only person on earth that is not radicalized. The two trains of thoughts simply do not go together even if you were using hyperbole on the latter. Just as how two months ago you said everything was great financially in one comment, followed up by how worried you were with the debt so you were saving every penny you could in the next.

Just as I told you two years ago right here in this forum you'd be shocked to hear what you daughter came home speaking after a couple years away at university when you were telling me how great the world was and sending her off to college on a volleyball scholarship. And you called me nuts (not your exact language but the jist). But I was correct as you yourself just said. And I'm telling you now, not as someone who WANTS these things to come to pass or revels in them, but as someone who is telling you what the likely outcome is. I'm not getting this from the news but family, friends, neighbors and work associates- both left and right. The numbers and stats from the news may confirm at times but I just keep my eyes open.

We have lived an anomaly in human history in America in the past 60-70 years and because it is all most have ever known you take it for granted it will continue. It will not, it cannot. That math and the culture do not lie.

DJS, I wish you, your family and your business the absolute best. I thank you for what you did for me. I think I did right by you during my time there and my post here is not in any way negative or hostile. I genuinely like you and want the best for you. I just think you are dead wrong on this. I hope you can enjoy the waves the rest of your days. God bless-

Thank you Woodweb for 18 years of learning. I just can't take the PC'ness and I miss the old school people here who had their eyes open to more than what their own personal situation of the moment consisted of and comments had great depth to them. It's just not worth my time anymore.

FM,

Your going to throw 18 years of being on this site away because you think your opinion and predictions are right and someone else is wrong.

i don’t think this but I could say your post is the dumbest thing I have ever read and you are wrong, but I would never do that, so far we live in Countries where we can have an opinion and freedom of speech. You have an opinion and I have an opinion, sometimes they are different and sometimes they are the same.

You were the one who started this post, did you think everyone would agree with you? I know of companies that do not allow people to talk about politics or religion, it is only a matter of time before the conversation upsets someone.

My advice is let’s try our best to avoid our amazing ideas and opinions and stick to helping each other out with the wood working part.

I put a post on here for a manual for a unique door machine, Andy Shook send me a PDF of a manual and parts list and tooling. I can not express how that made my day and I remarked about the amazing people on this website.

It would be sad to see someone leave.
Anyways all the best.

This thread is like the Liberal Media......wanting to scare the crap outta everyone preaching gloom and doom...blah blah blah. I survived the '90-'91 recession, the Dot-Com recession of the early 2000's and the Great Recession and I'll survive anything else that comes my way. When one door closes, another one opens.

Anything else? There's a day when the last door doesn't open.