Thursday, May 27, 2010

"Where are We Going?"

A colleague of mine asked and I thought this e-mail might be of some humor and entertainment;

Without going into detail, I predict a general decline ala Japan from 1989 to today. YOu will see the "Herbivore" movement in Japan come to the US and (gender politics set aside) men just frankly leave their traditional roles which will have large implications for future economic growth as well as stagnation in corporate profits and thus stock prices. This decrease in economic growth, combined with a decrease in asset prices is going to impair and underfund not just private pensions, but 401k's IRA's and 457's. Spending commitments made by Obama will essentially make the future so uncertain and taxes so likely that everybody, regardless of gender, will be less incented to work. Productive, hard working people who would have normally bred future generations of workers will opt for vasectomies instead and choose a life of leisure over work. This will bode ill for current and future pensioneers who were relying upon others to essentially work for them and pay for their retirement, not to mention health care. Nothing will change until the younger generations get a rude awakening that "unfortunately, yes little Jimmy, you do actually have to produce something of value in order for society to succeed, let alone, survive," but this lesson will be delayed as the rest of the world panics and throws money into the US dollar as a flight to safety simply because its "the US" permitting us to borrow more money and live the Barbie World lifestyle where we produce nothing, but buy everything as if the US was one big shopping mall. Financial crisis inevitably ensues, Keynesian fiscal stimulus never works, economy collapses and now people will finally have the free time to study economics and figure out how we got there in the first place because nobody will have jobs.

And everybody will blame Bush.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is another problem in our modern times: our society has become so rich (relative to earlier times), so full of cheap entertainment opportunities that many people don't want to work hard to earn more.

The facts about taxation and the work-leisure trade-off that you mentioned don't make it easier for those people to pursue a career.

Anonymous said...

Love the "Blame Bush" comment. I'm 55 and in the last few years I've started learning about economics. I am just so amazed, the information and history is there for everyone to see. Why is it that all the learned leaders and talking heads ignore the empirical information and instead espouse total BS. Of course I know why, political expediency trumps facts any day regardless of the long term damages.