About inflation. What, in my opinion, we are seeing is deflation though efficiencies. We are a whole lot better at producing than we used to be. Example, my old man has a farm he's retired to, my great grandfather got 30-40 bushels of corn to the acre, my grandmother got 80- 90 bushels to the acre, my old man just got 210 bushels to the acre. Same land. Look at the quality and price of laptops over the last thirty years. More for less.
Where we have inflation is medicine, housing, education, and general regulation. All four are either controlled by the government or heavily subsidized by the government. The government has 100's of trillions of dollars in debt and long term liabilities. The indebted person looooooves inflation.
Going through this now. 17 year old daughter has 99th percentile ACT score, straight A's, and about eight AP/dual enrollment courses under her belt. She will live at home, go to college with a scholarship, all her AP dual enrolment coursework will count, and come out with zero debt. Both her older brothers did the same, but not quite to the level of actually making money off a scholarship.
What are her little dumbass friends that are in the same boat doing? Going away to the "elite" colleges and going into massive debt of course. Sure they'll get a scholarship. that'll cover half the tuition ($50,000 minimum), but that's $25,000 a year, or $100,000. In addition, they are going to be borrowing for dorm, food, and books ($15,000 a year?). Starting out in a $160,000 hole is dumb as fuck.
But, but Hector they say I will earn a miiiiilion dollars a year more over my lifetime if I go to the fancy school. Yeah, well if you put $160,000 in the S&P 500 in 1990 you would have over 3,000,000 today.
For the last year, my mailbox has been full of university advertisements trying to convince my daughter to come to their "elite" college and how great of an experience it would be. We made a game of how soon they mentioned "college experience" and, of course, the diversity photos. One black male, two black females, two white females, one asian female, one or two of mixed or indeterminate race and "gender", and maybe, one white dude (or asian dude) in the background.
About inflation. What, in my opinion, we are seeing is deflation though efficiencies. We are a whole lot better at producing than we used to be. Example, my old man has a farm he's retired to, my great grandfather got 30-40 bushels of corn to the acre, my grandmother got 80- 90 bushels to the acre, my old man just got 210 bushels to the acre. Same land. Look at the quality and price of laptops over the last thirty years. More for less.
Where we have inflation is medicine, housing, education, and general regulation. All four are either controlled by the government or heavily subsidized by the government. The government has 100's of trillions of dollars in debt and long term liabilities. The indebted person looooooves inflation.
Going through this now. 17 year old daughter has 99th percentile ACT score, straight A's, and about eight AP/dual enrollment courses under her belt. She will live at home, go to college with a scholarship, all her AP dual enrolment coursework will count, and come out with zero debt. Both her older brothers did the same, but not quite to the level of actually making money off a scholarship.
What are her little dumbass friends that are in the same boat doing? Going away to the "elite" colleges and going into massive debt of course. Sure they'll get a scholarship. that'll cover half the tuition ($50,000 minimum), but that's $25,000 a year, or $100,000. In addition, they are going to be borrowing for dorm, food, and books ($15,000 a year?). Starting out in a $160,000 hole is dumb as fuck.
But, but Hector they say I will earn a miiiiilion dollars a year more over my lifetime if I go to the fancy school. Yeah, well if you put $160,000 in the S&P 500 in 1990 you would have over 3,000,000 today.
For the last year, my mailbox has been full of university advertisements trying to convince my daughter to come to their "elite" college and how great of an experience it would be. We made a game of how soon they mentioned "college experience" and, of course, the diversity photos. One black male, two black females, two white females, one asian female, one or two of mixed or indeterminate race and "gender", and maybe, one white dude (or asian dude) in the background.