The Economy and the Well Poisoners

Employment rates for the over 55 year old cohort are rising. Rising. As the older generation continues to find they can not afford to retire, there will be fewer jobs for the younger generation to fill.

Why the difficulty in retiring? One thousand dollars in 1980 is now worth somewhere between 378 dollars and 192 dollars.
There are a number of accounting differences here but essentially what people have saved is being degraded in value by the government's expansion of the money supply. Degraded a lot. So a dollar in 1980 lost 63% of its value over 20 years but had it been in the stock market it would have been worth 15 dollars. That is an annualized return of 14.4; that looks good. But, inflation corrected, it is only 5.8%.

These are bad numbers.

But in the last 12 years, it is worse...
An investment of 1000 dollars in --the Dow -- the S&P500 --NASDAQ
has changed in value 2000-2012 --- +13.1% -- -7.1% -- -38.2%
but when inflation is factored---- -15.4% -- -30.5% -- -53.8%

That is a terrible record for someone hoping to grow his savings and retire. It's a terrible record for almost anything. And one can see the erosion, the gradual increase in the household workforce as wives, then children, get jobs; as households turn more and more to leverage to make up the shortfall in their buying power. This is not a poorly understood event like earthquakes or global warming; this is the result of policy, policy developed and implemented by politicians and bureaucrats who either do not know the consequences of their actions or do not care.

But when the inevitable happens they do sympathize with us and they do rush about looking for someone to blame.