nO oNe wAntS tO woRk AnYmOrE! (Virtually unemployable)

If you are going to send out a mailer to find employees, at least use the right URL.

I got this junk mail today from "Richs" which is a food processing and sales company.  What was funny was that the cover exhorted me to apply at richs.careers.com when their actual URL is careers.rich.com.  Interestingly, one of the job openings was for a web developer.  Whoops.

Actually, it seems that no one works there at all.  There were pages and pages of job openings all over he country and in all sorts of different areas - from scale operator, to food processor, to human resources manager, to copilot of their falcon jet.

What was interesting to me, was despite the broad range of skills and job descriptions, I was qualified for none of them.   Most of the factory jobs would require a strong back and weak mind - and both are weak at this point in my life.  I suppose I could spend tens of thousands of dollars and become qualified as a jet co-pilot, but at age 63 that is kind of out of the question.  Even "Human Resources Manager" requires a Master's degree in Human Resources - and a willingness to shit on low-level employees.

As a friend of mine once remarked, "After five years of self-employment, I am virtually unemployable!"

And that, in a nutshell, explains today's economy.   The boomers are all retiring and they have all the money tied up in their 401(k) plans and their paid-for houses.   I see people buying vacation homes here on the island and paying cash for them.  Someone has money - and it ain't the younger generation.  Of course, it never is, is it?  Good news, though, kids - the boomers are dropping like flies and pretty soon, even if you don't get an inheritance, property values may take a hit, as a lot of real estate hits the market all at once.

I saw a comment online from a youngster who was blathering on about "World War II Veterans" and how lucky they have it.  I hate to break it to him, but most of those folks are already dead, as even the youngest veteran of that war (joining in 1945 at age 17) is ninety-five years old.  And not many people live beyond 95 - it pretty much is checkout time, particularly in this era of CoVid.

So the "World War II Veterans" will cease to exist very shortly.  The last veteran of that war will pass away, likely in the next ten years or so - and it will be big news when it happens.

No, it is the baby boomers - the next generation - that are the next to go - their parents are already safely in the grave.  I'm at the tail-end of that generation, and I'm 63.  The oldest Baby Boomers are pushing 80.  Give it a few years and they'll go the way of their parents.

The second prong of this "labor shortage" was entirely manufactured by Republicans.  And in that regard, it makes no sense.  Over the years, more and more laws have been passed, making it harder to hire migrant workers.  In the old days, you could hire an "illegal" to wash dishes at your restaurant or pick melons on your farm.  In many cases, these "illegals" were actually legal as well.

But in a classic example of right-wing outgroup-hating, it was decided, years ago, that immigration would be the centerpiece of the GOP.  I recall listening to a radio show back in the 1990's where a GOP operative was being queried by the host about what the next big political issue would be.  "Immigration" he replied, almost immediately.  "But immigration isn't that big an issue right now!" the host protested.  "Oh, we'll make it an issue," he replied - and they did.

You now need proof of citizenship or permanent residency in order to get a job.  And the employer can be fined out of existence if he hires someone without doing a background check.  And helpfully, the government has a background check system online. We can't do that with gun ownership, of course (ATF records are all on paper!) but boy-howdy we can do it with migrants.

Even landlords can be fined - or even lose their properties in some States - by renting to "illegals."   As a result, fewer people are actually crossing the border these days, and the ones that are, are not the traditional folks from Central America merely seeking jobs, but rather migrants fleeing violence in their home country, claiming asylum.  The stereotype of "Mexicans" crossing the border looking for jobs is largely obsolete - there are more jobs in Mexico these days (thanks to border factories) and the hassles of trying to work in America make it seem less worthwhile to try to cross.

It is ironic to me, as business owners and farmers tend to vote Republican, yet their voices are the loudest heard when it comes to "No one wants to work anymore!"  If they really want to bust the unions and keep the minimum wage down, they should be voting for more open borders, not "build the wall!"

But then again, the whole immigrant-hate thing and "build the wall!" wasn't actually about migrant labor, but rather a convenient out-group to hate (they don't speak English, have darker skin, and different habits and beliefs) in order to rally the very dumb, poor, white trash in rural areas to vote GOP.  Of course, they've added more outgroups to the pile since then!

So we have a perfect storm - about half the population is near or at retirement age, and we've cut off access to a ready-and-willing workforce that wants to come here to work.

It could be that.  Or maybe we all want to work for Rich's foods, but we just can't find the website to apply from, as they put the wrong URL in their promotional materials!

Yea, that explains it.

The Recorded Generation

Young people today have known surveillance since the crib!

An "investment advisor" from one of the investment houses I use, called me.  I don't have an assigned advisor anymore and the new guys will cold-call me, hoping to be assigned to my account, so they can have a taste of the action, if they can persuade me to buy some fund.  Yes, they are actually salesmen, not advisors, and they are on commission.

Anyway, I told the guy to send me an e-mail and he did, but he insists on talking over the phone, which is a boomer trick.  Unless the call is recorded, well, anything they say can't really be relied on.  A salesman can make all the verbal promises in the world, but unless there is some record of them, what is binding is what is in the written contract.  And salesmen know this - or knew this - back in the day, making one pie-in-the-sky promise after another, anything to make a sale, knowing that their verbal promises were unenforecable without some record of them.

I told the "advisor" that I never leave my phone ringer on (true) and he would be better off to contact me by e-mail.  I suspect I will never hear from him again.  This is not the first time this has happened, either.  People call but won't even text or e-mail because they don't want to create a written record or paper-trail of what was said.  In most cases, written records or recordings never help you - they only sink you.  The more you can put "off the record" the better off you are - particularly if you are doing something shady, like selling used cars.

It struck me, though, that in our modern era of Ring doorbells, security cameras, smart phones, and text records, that it must be hard to be a con-man anymore, as people can record your every move.  No wonder every phone call you get is some sort of scam.  No wonder I turn my ringer off on my phone!  Why bother answering one "SPAM RISK" call after another?

To young people today, though, this must seem normal.  After all, when they were infants, their parents snooped on them with a "baby monitor" which was later upgraded to a "nursery cam".  Parents put hidden cameras inside their own homes to record the baby sitter or even their own children.  Cameras are in schools, where we work, where we shop, where we play.  And if there isn't a camera installed, well, there is some jerk with his cell phone, willing to record at a moment's notice for that sweet, sweet, "Tick-Tock" karma that they all crave.

We are a surveillance generation - well the younger generation is, anyway.

I mentioned before how, when "answering machines" came out, there was a palpable fear among many people about recording the outgoing message or even leaving a message on the machine. Talking into a microphone was seen as a big deal to our parents' generation, and who are you buster to think what you have to say is worth recording?  Leave that to the announcers, like Johnny Olsen, who are paid to do this!

I don't know how many times, back in the 1980's, I would call someone one and get their answering machine, and the outgoing message was, "Hello?  Is this thing recording?  What am I supposed to say?" and so on.  The messages they left on other people's machines were about the same.  Answering machine stage fright, I called it.  The next generation had less of a problem with this.

Today, you are "on stage" all the time - and we've raised a generation of narcissists as a result.  Everyone is a "performer" or "content creator" doing a twerk on Tick-Tock in the middle of a Wendy's for Imaginary Internet Style Points - or worse yet, a "prank, bro!"   No answering machine stage fright with these folks - you can't shut them up!

Perhaps this is what Andy Warhol meant by "in the future, everyone will be a celebrity for 15 minutes" - he foresaw that technology would turn us all into actors on a stage.  Today, people put on a show about their lives - they groom their Facebook page to make everything seem more fabulous than it actually is.

And maybe this is a good thing, to promote self-esteem.  Or maybe not - when reality conflicts with the Facebook facade, who will win?  When nothing in life seems as fabulous as your Tick Tock videos, how will that make you feel?

Moreover, how does being "on stage" 24/7 affect your psyche?  At the very least, it must be tiresome.  Makeup! Lights! Camera! Action!

Even the dating scene is under surveillance.  It used to be you could meet someone and if you made awkward small-talk, it didn't follow you for life.  But today?  You say the wrong thing on Tinder and it will be re-posted 1,000 times across the Internet.    Of course, some folks are just forgoing the dating scene entirely and just monetizing their bodies on OnlyFans.   Your 15 minutes of fame may be as a porn star!

What a weird world we live in!

Now granted, maybe there are advantages to living in our surveillance nation.  Crimes caught on camera can be prosecuted - at least some of the time.  Video, as it turns out, is often a very unreliable witness.  People often start filming after an incident has started or the video is incomplete or even edited to create a bias.

These videos also heighten our awareness of crime.  Crime in general has been down, historically (like for all time) seeing an uptick only since the pandemic.  And since crimes are often caught on camera (often by the criminals themselves, who inexplicably document their malfeasance) we are far more aware of how horrendous these crimes are.  It is sad, but true, that every day, in some town or city in America, someone is assaulted or killed and - outside of the immediate area - the rest of the country never hears about it unless there is compelling video for the evening news.

But even with these advantages, I am not sure our surveillance nation is a good thing.  That being said, it isn't about to change, either.  Cameras are tiny, cheap, and easy to install.  They aren't going away anytime soon. Companies use them to prevent shrinkage (shoplifting) and discourage crime.  Not having a security camera might today be seen as negligence on the part of a company or store owner.

Dashboard cameras can catch other drivers in the act of being a jerk - or causing an accident. And body cams can either vindicate or convict a policeman or criminal - depending on what happened or how you interpret the video footage.

I said "footage" and it is interesting how people still say "video tape" or "tape recording" or other archaic terms from the Nixon era.  I wonder how long it will be before we drop these quaint phrases?  Probably when the boomers are gone...

Funny thing, though.  Even though we are all being recorded, all the time, it seems that people are more than willing to be jerks to each other - often when they know they are being recorded.  Are people being more jerk-ass than before, or are we just noticing it more, because it is all getting caught on "tape"?

Trouble for Marijuana Dispensaries? (The Folly of The Next Big Thing!)

When you price your product "high" you will get undercut by bootleggers.

No, this is not a photo of a jewelry store or high-end optician!

Suppose you went to a liquor store to get some lite beer for your friends and maybe a bottle of inexpensive gin to make Gin and Tonics for the wife.  You get there and it is a beautiful store - all nicely appointed with custom cabinets and countertops and employees in matching suits.  You look around and realize they have nothing but high-end liquor.

In the bourbon department, nothing less than $50 for a fifth.  All the Scotches are single-malt and a hundred bucks a bottle.  The gin they have are "artisanal" and the vodkas are all triple distilled and filtered high-end brand-names.  You go to the beer section and realize everything offered is an expensive microbrew in a funny bottle costing $10 (per bottle!).  Similarly, the wine section is staffed by a sommelier who looks down his nose at you when you ask if there is "anything cheaper" than a $250 bottle of red.

I mean, it is a classy place to be sure, and you can appreciate the quality of the goods - and wish you could afford them!  But this is out of your league, so you slowly walk away.  There have to be other options - and there are.  Discount liquor stores, grocery stores, even illegal moonshine (yes, it still exists today).  If the market was nothing but "high end" liquors, well, there would be a lot of moonshine to be had.

And thus is the problem for marijuana dispensaries.  I've been to a few, and some of them are like jewelry stores - with expensive glass display cases, staff wearing suits (for the men) or evening dresses (for the women) and small jars or containers of potent pot selling for pretty staggering sums.

There are others that are different, of course.  In Haines, Alaska, we went to a tiny place which was just one display case and a guy in the backroom who looked like Dr. Johnny Fever from WKRP.  He came out of the back room exhaling smoke.   But even then, the prices were pretty "high" if you'll pardon the pun.

As a result of these high prices, there is still a thriving "black market" for marijuana, even in States where it is legal.  And as a result, many marijuana dispensaries are struggling to get by.  Their plight isn't just expensive facilities, high staff wages (and huge staffs at many of them!) but also the unique situation they are in legally - often unable to deposit funds in bank accounts because the drug is still illegal at the Federal level.  Large sums of cash laying around mean that they have to hire security guards and often are robbed or burgled as a result.  It still is a risky business, even though it is legal.

Overall, the market overbuilt these fancy dispensaries and over-sold them as well, to investors.  An major "chain" of dispensaries, which touted it was going to be the "Apple store" of marijuana dispensaries, is now facing bankruptcy.   Investors rushed to invest in marijuana dispensaries, thinking this had to be "The Next Big Thing!" when in fact, it was just a thing - a commodity business with a lot of competition, legal and illegal, and a business of margins as any mercantile business usually is.

Does this mean the end of legal marijuana?  Only if DeSantis is elected President.   Yet how many MAGA stoners will actually vote for him?  More than you think.   But seriously, presuming marijuana remains legal in at least a few States, the business will continue.   Some dispensaries will go bankrupt, to be sure - whether bankruptcy laws will protect them remains to be seen (as a State Law claim, I guess it would work).  Unless they reorganize under Chapter 11, the dispensary may go bust, and some entrepreneur will buy the assets and start over again - this time without the staggering debt and overhead of a fancy building and appointments, perhaps.

Quite frankly, growing up as a stoner, I never saw the point of these fancy dispensaries.   Perhaps the new model can be a showroom with some hippie dude selling unmarked baggies of weed behind a prop dumpster.   That might be more authentic.

The insolvency of these high-end (pardon the pun) marijuana dispensaries illustrates the fallacy of trying to "get in on the ground floor!" of "The Next Big Thing!" as you will likely be wiped out as a small investor.

Just to recap, this is how the scheme works - with any "Next Big Thing!" investment hyped on the Internet.

First, someone comes up with an idea - it needn't be a good idea, either, but one that sounds good.  It could be something as stupid as delivering food, for example.  Just call it "tech" though!

Second, venture capitalists swoop in and fund the idea, taking 80% or more of the equity, leaving the remainder to the "founders".  The company is privately held at this point.

Third, the venture capitalists "loan" money to the company, because it has a negative cash-flow.  However, the interest payments on this debt insure the company will always have a negative cash-flow.

Fourth, they hype the crap out of the idea and then hype the crap out of the company.

Fifth, they do an IPO and sell stock - about 5% of the company, if that.  Stupid small retail investors throw trivial amounts of money at the stock - trivial to the venture capitalists, but dear to the small investor.  This props up the price of the stock, allowing the VC's to cash out - and sometimes even the founders  as well!

Sixth, the company flounders about for a few years, never making money, or if it does make money, never justifying the outrageous share price and P/E ratio.

Seventh, the company goes bankrupt in Chapter 11.  The shareholders are wiped out (share price =$0) and those small retail investors lose it all.  However, the loan debt held by the Venture Capitalists is converted to an equity interest (stock) and they now own the whole damn company!

Eighth, once the company is re-established, they go back to step four and cash out yet again.  In some instances, this has been done more than once - taking a company private, taking it public, going bankrupt, going private, and back public again.  The real winners are the people with the money.

As you can see, investing in "The Next Big Thing!" stocks is not only risky, it is foolhardy.   These sort of "investments" are sold based on hype and the desire by the small investor to "beat the market."  The market beats the crap out of the small investor.

There is no shortage of idiot small retail investors, either.  Consider this guy, who is supposedly a journalist but looks like a parody of a fedora-wearing "neck beard" incel.  Good Day, M'Lady!  This quote in the article jumped out at me and made me sad:

Frankly, beyond the fifty bucks I gambled away on bitcoin, I have no other investments. I'm not big on gambling. Since I don't have confidence in my ability to spot a sure thing, I've avoided investing in stocks and crypto altogether.

This is a middle-aged man admitting his net worth is essentially zero (perhaps negative) and that he has nothing saved for the future.  What is worse, is that he equates "investing" with "gambling" and I guess in this modern era, he might be justified in thinking that - if all he knew about investing was the hyped stocks on the Internet or on the financial channels.

The point of investing is not to try to "win" by beating the market, but to get a decent rate of return overall - hopefully one that beats the rate of inflation.  You can't do this by picking one stock or one commodity (the latter being a bad idea in general for small investors - commodities are best left to experts) by rather by investing in a plurality of things - diversifying - and staying the hell away from anything that sounds even remotely speculative.

It is not hard to spot the raw deals - when the carnival comes to town and the barker exhorts you to put all your money into one hyped stock (or commodity or crypto or whatever) it isn't hard to figure out it is a raw deal at 100 paces.  What is in it for the carnival barker?  Oh, right, he "wants to help people!"

What is sad about the article is the guy lost most of his money in his bitcoin "investment" and rather than point out the obvious - that throwing money at a speculative, volatile, "investment in nothing" is a bad idea, he tries to rationalize his losses by comparing them to other speculative investments, particularly in the tech sector (see steps 1-8 above).

It is sad, but a whole generation of young people are being sucked in by this siren song of get-rich-quick investing.  I guess they see this new generation of Billionaires and think, "They made it big overnight, by hardly doing anything!  Why can't I do the same?"   But what they fail to realize is that many of these Billionaires started out as Millionaires and thus the game was skewed in their favor.  What's more, their Billions (on paper) were the result of their stock prices (or crypto prices or whatever) being shot into the stratosphere because these clueless retail investors bought the hype and bought the stock.   It is a perfect feedback loop!

"I'm buying Tesla stock, because Elon Musk is a genius and this stock is going to go up, up, up!  The fact that he's the richest guy in the world proves he's a genius, so the stock must be a good buy!"   You see how the feedback loop works.  The stock went up because fanboys bought $500 worth at a time.  And over time, we see how that bubble deflated, too.

Today still, there are plebes and dweebs buying Gamestop or AMC stock because some guy on Reddit told them to.  Worse yet, they are buying "Puts" and "Calls" which obligate them to buy or sell a stock at a later date - which can often mean your $10 bet costs you $1000 down the road.

THAT is not "investing."   THAT is gambling!

Back on the Market?

 

When sales stop going through, something may be up.

There are not a lot of houses on the market on our island.  This has created an artificial "housing shortage" that has driven up prices in the last year, to astronomical levels.  Housing prices have nearly doubled (maybe actually doubled) in the last year or so.  It has all the markings of a bubble.

With prices so high, why don't people sell?  Aye, there's the rub.  Houses are not like stocks or bonds.  Cars are pretty much the same way.  During the "car shortage" of the pandemic, we all marveled at how the "blue book" value of our cars went up to the point where a three-year-old car was worth more than the sticker price when new, three years prior.  It made no sense at all.  But everyone I knew said the same thing: "I'd sell my car, but then what do I do?  I'd have to buy another one at inflated prices!"

Even people with extra cars (second or third cars) were  blasé about it.  "Well, with prices going up, I might as well keep it!" they said, not realizing that once assembly lines are roaring again, cars will flood the market.  And we are already seeing inventory increasing at local dealer lots.   RVs?  If there was a shortage of those, it is long gone!   RV dealer lots are overflowing with hundreds of rigs, each.

Houses work the same way as cars.  Yes, we could sell our house, but then we would be homeless.  I suppose if we were smart, we could live in the camper for two years, touring America and then settle down somewhere, buying a house after the market crashes.  But this isn't as an attractive a scenario as it seems - we would have to uproot ourselves from our current lifestyle and friends.  Mark would have to give up pottery for at least a couple of years.  And timing the market - even the real estate market- is tricky.

And it's not like we're desperate for money - just yet.  But wait for it...

But like with cars, some folks own more than one house - they bought a vacation home.  And having been down that road, I can tell you it is a real money pit.  Even with no major repairs, it costs $1000 a month to keep our house, with taxes, insurance, utilities, and so forth.  It might not sound like a lot of money compared to rents these days, but that doesn't include a mortgage, which could add $3000 a month to that total.  Multiply this times two houses and you can see it gets expensive.

And, like most people it seems, you drop another $100,000 on remodeling, it gets really, really expensive.   Ask me how I know this.

On our block fully half of the houses are unoccupied at any given time.  Some visit seasonally.  Some visit weekly.  Some visit hardly at all.  One nice house hasn't been occupied for well over a year, after the husband died.  Someone approached the widow and asked if they wanted to sell - as she had no plans to use the house.  "I'll just keep it!" she said, and there it sits.  Another such house went the same way - over 20 years ago.  You can imagine what it looks like in that time - there were trees growing inside the house.  But the widow refuses to sell, keeping it "for my daughter" who has already expressed that she has no want or desire for a mildew and mold-infested run-down nightmare.  Dementia is a bitch and old people do weird shit with real estate.

Another house around the corner has changed hands at least three times in the last decade (or less!).   Friends of ours lived there and we thought it was a cool house - all new kitchen and baths and whatnot.  The main entrance was a little strange - you entered into a family room and then took a sharp right into the kitchen.  It wasn't a large house, and our friends sold and moved down the street to a larger house.

Well, the buyers sold it again within a year or two and the new buyers now have it back on the market without having really ever lived in it.  It sold a few years back for $400,000 and now it is on the market for $800,000.    What changed in three years to make it double in value?   It's not like it went through a major remodel.

Well, there was a contract on it and they put a SOLD sign on it.  And today, the SOLD sign is gone and it is back on the market.  Cold feet on the part of the seller?  Appraisal didn't come through?   Bank refused a mortgage?  Buyer lost their job or something?   Who knows?  But it is an interesting sign and it seems that houses are staying on the market longer and longer.

Down the road another house was recently sold when the owner died.  A lady from out-of-town bought it sight unseen and paid asking price.  When she finally came to see the house in person, she decided she didn't want to live there and put it in long-term rental instead.   Pretty silly - buying houses without looking at them in person.  Unless you are really familiar with the neighborhood and property values, it is a bad idea.  UPDATE:  This house is again for sale.

What is interesting, too, is how many of the houses that are occupied appear to be abandoned.  We used to see people "out and about" but in recent years, many of those friends have turned the corner on old age and don't leave home as much as they used to.  The pandemic certainly didn't help matters any.  And a lot of those folks are shuffling off the mortal coil, one by one.  The baby boomers are dying off - good news millenials!

But what happens when all that boomer real estate hits the market at once?  Who will buy it?   Does the next generation have the money to do so?   We inherited a vacation home and promptly sold it. (UPDATE: The entire neighborhood was flattened during the recent hurricane).  Why?  Well, we knew how expensive a vacation home can be, having been down that road with the lake house - and that was not in hurricane-alley either! I suspect a lot of heirs will discover the same math - particularly if they have to split the house with siblings - you either have to buy them out, sell out to them, or work out some sort of time-sharing arrangement.  Most smart people just sell and keep the cash.

The plural of anecdote is not "data" of course, but actual data suggests that the market is indeed slowing down.  Some optimistic real estate agents argue it is because of a shortage of listings - not much inventory to sell.  But I think that is more spin than anything else.  Median sales prices went from a high of over $400,000 in January 2022 to $366,000 by December 2022.  Think about that for a second - if you bought at $400,000 and put down $40,000 as a down payment, you basically just lost your down payment.  If you put down less than that, you are underwater on your mortgage.

But what about vacation homes?  Well, the same deal, but when the shit hits the fan, they are more likely to drop in value that primary residences.  They are a luxury, like a boat or an RV or a hobby car, and in a recession, luxuries are first on the chopping block.  Even for "investor" owners who hoped to make money by renting out properties on AirBnB, the business is slacking off as demand is dropping (vacations being another "first thing" to go when you lose your job) and too many damn people are buying properties with AirBnB riches dancing in their heads.  We may see a collapse in this market in 2023, if not already.  Hard to feel sorry for these greedy investors who overextended themselves.

But likely, some of these "investors" are indeed over-extended, as they paid top-dollar at the height of the market, and got mortgages based on optimistic AirBnB revenue-based mortgages.  It is like the poor bastard who went out and bought a car to drive for Uber and now has to drive for Uber to pay off the note on the car.  Modern day debt-slavery!

But with AirBnB owners, I suspect the end-game will be foreclosure, if they cannot service all these mortgages on all of these properties.  Some folks own a half-dozen or more - just to rent out on AirBnB!  This creates a domino effect as these foreclosure properties hit the market all at once.

And as I noted before, a 1% difference between supply and demand can result in a 10% difference in price - perhaps far more.   A 10% difference?  That could be a market bubble - or a market crash - depending on which way it is biased.

As the real estate agents were quoted in the article, so said the real estate agents, appraisers, home inspectors, and mortgage brokers that I used to party with in Fr. Lauderdale back in 2005: "let's hope its a soft landing!"

We can hope, but so far, it is looking a little scary.

Comparing Yourself to Others - Particularly to Your Parents and Ancestors

Mom and Dad had it so easy!  Why can't I have the lifestyle they have?

One complaint you see online (and mostly that is what online social media is, these days, just people complaining..... oh, wait) is that previous generations had it "so easy" as Dad would drive off to the Office in his 5,000 lb Cadillac burning 25 cent gasoline, work for a couple of hours, take a three-martini lunch, chase his secretary around the desk and then be home by five o'clock.  Hey, that's how they showed life on "Mad Men" - and that's a documentary of life in the 1960's!   The television never lies - right?

Meanwhile, Mom could stay at home and have all the modern appliances - as well as her Black or Hispanic maid - do all the heavy lifting around the house.   She could sit on the couch, eat bon-bons, do recreational prescription drugs (washed down with Chardonnay) and watch soap operas all day long - when she wasn't banging the mailman, that is.  People had it so easy back then! 

A Pepsi cost a nickel, and a new car cost $1500.  You could buy a new house for $10,000!  Life was so sweet back then!  Not like today.  And yes, the people who say these things flunked math class and don't understand how compound interest works, much less the future value of money.

But beyond that, they fail to understand scarcity and population increase.  Population increase is one single reason why our expectations today are less than in previous generations - and why previous generations had fewer expectations than generations before.  In my lifetime, the population of the United States has nearly doubled.   Read that again - doubled.  So how does this affect the scarcity of land, the price of houses, the amount of traffic on the roads - down to the price of sugar?  Given how many more people live on the planet today, it is actually amazing that our standard of living hasn't dropped in half.

Actually, the opposite is true - while there is still a lot of privation and suffering in the world (and by that, I don't mean not having all the cable channels) the incidence of malnutrition, starvation, and disease is far less than 50-100 years ago.  We've actually improved the standard of living across the planet - at least for those on the bottom rung of the ladder.  Of course, life still sucks in a large portion of the world.  Just not in our portion.

But yea, it is a mathematical certainty that housing will cost more as the population doubles - land is a finite resource.  And sadly, we've plowed under one farm after another to build more houses for people.  And often, our land use planning makes things worse, rather than better.  To slow down development, for example, some jurisdictions dictated that a house could occupy no less than five acres of land.  The theory was, given the cost of land, it would make it too expensive to build, or at the very least, reduce density.

My parents lived in such an area in Maryland.  The result was, old farms were cut up into five-acre tracts and houses plopped in the middle of each one.   This meant that thousands of acres of farmland would never be farmed ever again.  It also meant that people had to drive further and further to get to their homes or work or shopping, as the population density was so low.  It was a pretty stupid way of zoning - but a popular one, nevertheless.

But regardless of the laws of man, the laws of nature cannot be vetoed.  More people, finite resources, and you have a formula for escalating property values, over time. So yea, I can't afford to live in the house my parents owned - even though I made as much - if not more - money than my Dad did, adjusting for inflation.  And I don't have four kids to raise and put through college, either!

So what changed?  Well comparing our lives today with those in the past is comparing apples to oranges.  I noted before that life in the 1950's and 1960's might have seemed idyllic through the rose-colored lenses of nostalgia, but the reality was something different.  Today we spend a lot more money on depreciating junk - electronics, cars, disposable furniture, restaurant meals, and subscription services.  And maybe we do this because we realize we can't afford Mom and Dad's house, so we squander on toys and bling instead.

Or maybe values were different back then.   Our parents, having lived through the depression, put more value on things like an education, owning property, and investments. They saw through the two-dimensional consumer culture.  My parents had an expensive house on a lake.  My Mom drove a Vega - the cheapest car you could buy at the time.  My parents didn't buy a color television until 1976 - until then, when we needed a new TV (every decade or so) my Dad would look at all the ads in the Sunday paper and buy the cheapest black-and-white set there was - usually $99 at Sears.

My parents had the same furniture my entire life - and much of it was bought before I was born.    Today, people go to disposable furniture showroom and buy a "suite" of furniture on time - and throw it away by the time the payments finish.   The thinking was different back in the day - you bought for all-time, not for a month or a year.

Our generation has been lured by the siren song of consumerism, fueled by a steady stream of cheap products from China.  My parents had one coffee maker - a "percolator" which was considered an expensive appliance, reserved only for special occasions (e.g., company, Christmas, Easter).   They finally broke down and bought a "Mr. Coffee" in the 1970's - and had it for well over a decade.   Cell phones, computers, flat-screen television - and all the subscription services that went with them - were just unknown.

You bought something, it never became obsolete, either.   The phone on the wall of the kitchen was 30 years old (it came with the house) and if you wanted to dial (dial) "long distance" you had to wait until "after 5 when the rates go down."    Today, you can call anywhere in the USA and talk for hours at no additional charge.  Ironically, no one talks on the phone anymore, now that it is free - we text instead.

The point is not to say, "dagnabbit!  Things in the old days were better! (or worse!)" but only that they were different and comparing life for previous generations with life today is totally an apples-and-oranges situation.  You could go down this road, but what's the point?  You could spend hours pointing out how things were "better" back then - or far worse.  The nostalgic types never bother to mention how things were back then for women and minorities, for example (and they were far, far worse than today).

The reality of today is what it is and it isn't going to change much, simply because of scarcity and population demographic trends.   Levittown houses aren't going to appear magically for $10,000, and even if they did, most people today would not accept them.  Two bedrooms?  One bath?  Ick, you have to share a bathroom?  No thank you!

The point is, you can pine for a world of yesteryear - a world you may never have known - or apply your energies to making your life better in the world you live in.  There are voices today - loud voices, but a small minority - who argue that the whole system is stacked against them, so why bother trying?  But as I noted before, it only seems like the system is stacked against you, when you stack yourself against the system.

People waste their emotional energy by arguing that only by overthrowing the entire social structure can any sort of real change take place.  But it isn't just the social structure, it is the laws of nature.  Maybe this pandemic will kill off half the country and then you can have your choice of real estate at low, low prices.  I suspect if that happened, the economy would collapse and you still would not be able to afford a place to live anyway.

That is the funny thing about real estate.  There are places in America today - Gary Indiana, Detroit, West Virginia - where you can buy a "house" for less than the price of a modest car.  Problem is, there are no jobs there to support you if you wanted to live there.  And chances are, you would not want to live there even if you could support yourself.   That is the other half of the argument - people claim they can't afford a house to live in, but what they are really saying is they can't afford the house they feel entitled to, in the neighborhood they want to live in.   It is like my friend who argued we should build housing for the homeless in the resort town of Key West.  It makes no sense at all?  What's next?  Homeless shelters at Disney World?

I digress.

Predicating your success in life on a complete overthrow of the existing social structure is never a good plan. Maybe it worked for Lenin, I don't know. It wasn't necessarily an improvement for most Russians, however.  It seems that we are facing an incredible wave of stupidity in the world today.  People want to claim they are victims. Even people who decry "victimhood" claim to be victims of the victims.  Everything is somebody else's fault, and if we could just get rid of those "other" people, the world would be perfect.  But that is a stupid world-view and by the way, it has been tried many times before and not only doesn't it work, it makes things worse for everyone involved.

So no, maybe I can't live the lifestyle of my parents.  Thank God for that.  I'd rather have my hamster with its six airbags, seven speakers, panoramic sunroof, disc brakes, and heated and cooled leather seats, than the deathtrap my Mother drove.  And quite frankly, accounting for inflation, you could buy a helluva lot more car today than you could back then.  Some things are better today than in the past.

As for real estate?  It is a bubble, once again.   And this too, shall pass, I suspect in the next six months or so, as the people paying top dollar for homes, using funny-money mortgages predicated on pie-in-the-sky AirBnB rental scenarios, default on their mortgages, one by one.  Hell, even the guy who runs Twitter stopped paying his rent!

Of course, when the housing market comes tumbling down, it will create a whole new series of woes....