No one cares who's more intelligent than who. What matters is who can support their positions with evidence and arguments. All you need do is, after making a declaration (like "This will happen sooner than you think"), ask yourself, "How do I know this is so?" That will lead you on a search for evidence which you can use to build supporting arguments.
Duly noted, though in the case of some of my pet arguments evidence is not an easy thing to find.
This sounds like you've put the cart before the horse, as if you're arguing a position for which you hope evidence is out there but that you don't know of any yet.
Concerning you, you always assume that my responses are determined by my blood sugar or by damage from diabetes, which may be somewhat accurate yet is in my opinion a bit condescending.
Have you forgotten when you took a self-imposed absence from the board because of something along the lines of having trouble thinking clearly? I got the diabetes angle from you, and reading up on the topic I discovered improper diabetes management can cause cognitive problems.
But I don't think it's just me. I think we're all looking for explanations for what's behind your change from loving, compassionate Phat to "hang 'em from the highest yardarm," "get sucked in by YouTube personalities" Phat, and diabetes seems the most likely culprit.
Its like constantly telling someone who stutters that they stutter.
Ignoring a stutter is just polite. Telling someone, "Yes, of course it's going to happen faster than we think, and you've just made a fine argument," is just lying to them, and it would greatly confound discussion to treat terrible arguments or positions as if they were of quality.
To be more specific, you are forever pointing out that *you have told me* time and time again about the fallacy of my arguments concerning financial apologetics and about how you have corrected my misinformation which (you claim) I get through parroting youtubers who peddle such information.
While you are correct as to my sources, your error is assuming they are but cons. I have found that business people make it their job to predict and plan for future possible events that will affect their bottom line. The public-at-large relies on traditional media and global politics to calm them rather than to necessarily inform them. As you know, I do not trust the wisdom of politicians nor their staffs at doing anything right whereas I am more likely to trust businessmen due to the information that they get from their respective sources.
You've just described your problem in a nutshell: you're constantly looking for that authority figure who understands what's going on and knows what's going to happen next. They don't exist, but if they do then you should be looking for the evidence behind their positions. This you never do.
I do ask myself some questions, however. (which is why I resent being told how to think) I can do it on my own.
Not that anyone can tell. What we've observed is an almost complete lack of critical thinking skills and a simultaneous loss of your empathy and compassion.
At times, I see the vast narrative which I digest as being one giant infomercial. Business people try to persuade their audience to believe and act a certain way.
Yes, yes, you've got it! They're trying to persuade you to their point of view. Ask yourself how they're trying to do this? Is it with evidence-based arguments, or with emotional appeals? If it's the former then that's great - introduce the evidence into the discussion.
To invest in certain things and not in others.
Safeway has a 401k. You have one, right? So you shouldn't be making decisions about individual investments. You should only be adjusting your 401k fund mix to be an appropriate mix of growth and safety for your age, which Safeway's 401k website helps you do.
For most of you, your bullshit detectors automatically resist such persuasions and you entrust your finances to paid experts.
You are making things up again. If you're imagining that everyone else here is wealthy with investments experts managing our extensive portfolios then you can disabuse yourself of that notion right now. Most people here are probably just like me, with only 401k's and Social Security.
God knows I am no financial expert as my chronic gambling has shown.
Write 1000 times, "The house always wins."
But I have a system, and I'll be glad to reveal it to anyone who sends me $10,000 in small unmarked bills.
Where you and I differ is that you warn me that I am easily persuaded and that my blood sugar swings can and do often alter my perspective and my critical thinking. I try and persuade you that I have good intuition whereas you challenge that and tell me to get help.
Safeway has a 401k. You have one, right? So you shouldn't be making decisions about individual investments. You should only be adjusting your 401k fund mix to be an appropriate mix of growth and safety for your age, which Safeway's 401k website helps you do.
Story of my life. I started my 401k at work when one was first offered to me (being an engineer, AKA "Intelligent Designer", I had to move from layoff to layoff such that I would refer to myself as a "high-tech migrant worker") which was around 1995, 23 years before I would retire from my civilian career. Every time my budget would allow it, I would increase my contribution until I was at the max; if you never see it to begin with, you never miss it.
Then I paid no more attention to it, just "let it ride" (or might that trigger Phat's gambling problem?). I shouldn't post actual figures, but I retired with a very healthy sum which I don't even need since I'm free of debt and my Social Security and military retirement pay cover all my monthly expenses.
When I described my finances to my older sister, she praised my genius in planning, but I really didn't do anything except have the contributions deducted and then forget about it. In contrast, we have Trump having inherited hundreds of millions of dollars (including the over 400 million his father funneled into his failing casinos) and he has succeeded in losing almost all of it through his "stable genius" "investing". He would be so incredibly much richer had he just invested it all and left it alone, but, no, he had to squander it on stupid "get rich" schemes and cons.
Phat needs to take care of his safe investments, not look for "get rich" schemes.
I've probably told this story before, so just briefly, a few decades ago I had some spare money that I decided to invest in the stock market. I spent hours analyzing company's finances, management and industry and figuring out when to buy and when to sell. After about five years I found I had been outperformed, by quite a bit, by both the Dow and the S&P. I became discouraged and abandoned the effort. Whatever stocks were in my portfolio when I quit I just left there. I was disgusted with the whole effort.
It was another ten years before I checked in on my stock account again, and to my surprise the stocks, overall, had done very well, beating both the Dow and the S&P. It turns out buy (quality stocks) and hold works.
When I worked for a company that designed computerized greenhouse control systems, they had me read an article on PID -- Proportional, Integration, Differential control theory. Basically, in order to bring a system to a desired level (eg, keeping a greenhouse at a specified temperature), you cannot just jam it into compliance because that will cause it to overshoot and you'd have to jam it in the opposite direction, overshooting again. More hardcore engineering disciplines teach about the effects of dampening (including over- and under-dampening) and how your efforts could easily send that system into oscillation which is not a good thing.
An easier analogy (and indeed an example of PID in that article) is steering a vehicle in order to keep it on course despite spurious factors throwing it off course. If you turn the steering wheel in response to every little bump or gust of wind, you will oversteer and most likely end up all over the road. PID represents a much smarter approach than overreacting to everything.
Stock performance is an example of a system that has a lot of spurious factors; just looking at a graph of a stock's performance reveals it to be very noisy with a lot of up and down action. Reacting to every little up and down is inviting failure.
But if you look at the same graph over a longer period of time you would see an overall trend up or down or neither. That is what you should want to be looking at, but it's hard to see those trends in real time.
In our retirement planning training that was part of signing up for our 401(k) plan, we were advised that in general stocks go up in value over time, so generally the safe approach in long-term planning is to buy stock and leave it alone. More specifically, they told us to buy stock at regular intervals, even when the value was going down at the moment, because over time it should go up in value (ie, when it was going down it should eventually recover and go back up again so the stocks you bought at a lower price would be worth more).
Though of course you should go for quality stocks and avoid real dogs like anything offered by Trump (eg, "Truth Social"). And, yes, I fully realize that that appellation is insulting ... to dogs.
I had 401K's when I worked that we rolled over to IRA's. My wife has a 403B (the non-profit version of a 401K). We are lucky and can max that out every year. The 403B is invested in a fund that the investment company has tied to her retirement date. They do all the work. My IRA's and the couple small IRA's I inherited from my father are in funds that our financial advisor recommends. We pay Edward Jones Investments a fee to handle our investments. I have never regretted that fee. When the markets go up, we tend to do better than the average. When the market goes down, we tend to do better than average. We are never going to hit a home run. We never swing for the fence. We have a plan. We stick to the plan.
I have a friend my age, 62, who has had a good paying gov't job since he was 24. After the Reagan PATCO episode(Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers) he was one of the newly hired replacements. It was a great gig. He was stationed in Duluth, MN. Low stress, lots of down time. He had great Fed benefits and made really good money. When he retired at 55(he was required to retire), he was making $120k/year, while actually working about 20 hours a week. A couple other friends who were also air traffic controllers retired quite comfortably.
This guy not so much. Divorced three times. Bankruptcy twice. He borrowed against his retirement numerous times. He was going to buy a bar once so borrowed $40k from his retirement. The deal fell through, but he just spent the $40k. For all the money he went through he had nothing to show for it. 20 years or so ago, he was talking about how well he was doing with his Etrade account. Then he just stopped talking about it. About 12 years ago he aske me if my financial advisor had advised me to get out of equities, because there was going to be "triple witching event"(he did not really understand what that meant and they happen every quarter) and the market was going to plummet. He was right. The market went down 400 points that Friday. By Tuesday it was all back and by the need of the week the market was up 200 or so. He missed out on all that gain. I don't see him much anymore. He seems to still be chasing the big return. He does ok. He lives off his pension and social security but delivers for Walmart part time. So, there is a need for income. Moral of story. Invest. Let the pros handle it. Keep your hands off of it.
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. -Christopher Hitchens
Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts
"God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.
If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up, why would you have to lie?
Yeah, investing is like a scab: leave it alone and don't pick at it.
The old adage (hopefully not one of the far too many we were raised on but are now no longer valid) is to buy low and sell high. Day-trading like with ETrade can afford you opportunities to buy low, but tempt you to panic into selling low instead of riding out those momentary dips.
Back to the gambling analogies -- actually, I see almost no difference between the stock market and gambling, especially after seeing Selena Gomez' scene in one of the best movies of our time, The Big Short:
After years of being the sole software engineer ("Chief Programmer and Diskette Formatter"), I finally got a job on a team with three other programmers -- nerdy jokes abounded, especially since we all were watching the new episodes of Star Trek: The New Generation. John had a timeshare in Vegas that he actually used and his brother was a professional gambler so John had learned how to be smart about gambling -- the only smart thing I know is to budget your stake expecting to lose it all and to write it off as "entertainment", which is part of what John also advised. Another skill for the successful gambler is to manage your losses and avoid the temptation of staying in a game too long trying to recoup your losses since that only increases them. I think I can understand that since in the last couple Poker classes (our OLLI has a Texas Hold 'em class followed by a practice session) I have too often chased after straights and flushes only to see my hopes dashed by the wrong river card.
Mark was new to gambling and wanted to learn. One year we were able to talk management into sending us to the computer trade show, COMDEX, in Las Vegas, so every lunch hour John and Ollie would take Mark into the conference room for training in craps. One night in Vegas, we went to the old Strip to a casino that had low-cost crap tables so that Mark could practice. Since I don't gamble, I had nothing to do but use my roll of nickels to play video poker. I did lose it all (all $2) though it took me a couple hours to do it.
Another gambling trick to keep you from getting emotionally attached to the outcome (a prime source of doing something really stupid like "Just one more hand and I can win it all back") was to think of your bets in terms of "units" instead of in terms of the value of what you are betting. Mark tried that, but he could muttering about his losses like, "That's a new pair of pants! That's a new shirt!"
Basic point is that when you do stuff like investing or gambling (basically the same thing) you need to be very smart about it, have a sound strategy and stick to it.
Divorced three times.
Your friend should have learned his lesson the first time.
I recently found a YouTuber called emilywking who gives dating and relationship advice to other women, most of which consists of explaining to them why men won't approach them and would prefer to remain single: basically we've been burned too many times plus we have too much to lose. Like what your friend lost in his divorces.
Having myself been subjected to an abusive marriage and bitter divorce I now find myself quoting Joshua at the end of War Games: "Funny game. The only way to win is not play." Of course he was talking about thermonuclear war, not dating ... but what's the difference?
I recently found a YouTuber called emilywking who gives dating and relationship advice to other women, most of which consists of explaining to them why men won't approach them and would prefer to remain single: basically we've been burned too many times plus we have too much to lose. Like what your friend lost in his divorces. Having myself been subjected to an abusive marriage and bitter divorce I now find myself quoting Joshua at the end of War Games: "Funny game. The only way to win is not play." Of course he was talking about thermonuclear war, not dating ... but what's the difference?
I'm in the same boat. Best way to not lose half your stuff is not to put it at risk to begin with, not to mention your mental health. The freedom of the single life is also hard to give up.
Oh, he lost nothing in his divorces. His last divorce his ex was lucky because she got out before she found out about all of his debts. We call him a low rent gold digger. His first marriage was when we were in college. Her grandparents owned a lot of land and had a beautiful home. Her parents were straight middle class. Once he realized that there was no money coming to her, he ran away. He married his 2nd wife because he thought she was loaded because her ex-husbands family owned a fairly big company in the area. Her kids from the first marriage would do fine but she wasn't getting anything more. She divorced him when she realized he was extremely lazy. He married the last one because she also was recently divorced and had a chunk of money from selling the marital property. It was less than 100K. In the divorce she got a small part of his 401K. His marriages were like his investing.
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. -Christopher Hitchens
Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts
"God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.
If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up, why would you have to lie?
Laura Ingraham of Faux is getting in on the rightwing fearmongering grift.
quote:It is certainly amusing that in exchange for money, Ingraham is warning her audience both that former President Donald Trump may lose the 2024 presidential election and that even if he wins, his economic performance will prove so poor that they need to buy gold and silver as a hedge.
But Ingraham’s paid missive both defies what economists and other experts say about the relative merits of the plans put forward by Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump, and provides a stark example of how right-wing pundits enrich themselves on the backs of their followers.
Im curious about what Elizabeth Warren says about gold and silver. I searched and found nothing. While it could be argued that Republicans are more likely to be buyers of gold and/or silver, the jury is still out on what qualifies Democrats as financial experts. Granted, Elizabeth Warren is admirable and I like her platform and ideology, though I cannot for the life of me understand why you and other Democrats don't see the value of hard assets over fiat dollar-based assets. It seems that you have been taught that Gold (and other precious metals) is simply a rock in the ground given value by people and, arguably, the same point is made for the US Dollar.
My point is that fiat assets (Currencies, stocks, bonds, derivatives ETFs) are backed by nothing except the people's faith while Gold, though also supported by the faith of the people has a 5000-year track record.
Fiat currencies have a 55-year run. People are not stupid enough to trust fiat assets in the long term. (I know I know...Taq and others will point out the track record of US Treasuries.) Yes, they are safe for now, but for how long? I am no expert but neither are you so we rely on other things. You rely on educated people and I rely on intuition. Perhaps we are both wrong.
Maybe what makes your position respectable is that it has a track record of safety and growth since Bretton Woods. You also may argue that Republicans (or conservatives in general) run on a track record of fear and security while you guys run on faith in Democracy as the ONLY wise alternative. That may have been true in 1945 and even as recently as the first Gulf War but it has declined a lot since then. Our enemies*competitors* have grown more powerful and are no longer afraid of the United States. Though they cannot beat us militarily they are on a path to destabilize us economically. Israel is no help either.
Curious about some of the stuff you read, I subscribed to that free newsletter where you got your information about Laura Ingraham.
So I read Exploiting Fear Is What Trump, Vance And Their Fascist Mob Do which was an editorial. I will admit that exploiting fear (and greed) instead of hope is one of the issues that will define this upcoming election. Though not as liberal as the newsletter seems to be, I am not going to support fear if it causes division and hopelessness among the people. Not everyone on the street can afford gold or even silver, and most of them own no stocks either. You and the EvC bunch along with my sister have convinced me to support hope and unity rather than fear and division, though I am not naive about possible threats to the U.S. way of life. Money does not simply grow on trees.
The article notes that the storm will reach Earth by October 5th. It is the second most powerful solar flare in 5 years. As Tangle would joke, "Doom, doom! We are all doomed!"
Re: Fear CanBe Found At Multiple Ideolgical Websites
Scientists are not selling fear. That is a ludicrous interpretation. Your use of sources also is still lacking. The DailyMail is a bit sensationalistic. When you are reading about scientific topics, don't you think there may be better sources? Here is an article on the subject from a more technical, but still readable, viewpoint.
quote:According to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, there’s a chance a G1, or minor, storm strikes Earth on Thursday, October 3, while a G3, or strong storm could hit the day after on Friday, October 4. Geomagnetic storms are caused by explosions on the Sun’s surface, such as solar flares, which can, in turn, send huge amounts of plasma shooting off into space, ultimately striking our planet’s atmosphere.
Exactly that kind of explosion occurred on Tuesday, when the second most powerful solar flare in the past few years erupted. The flare originated from an area of the Sun known for its numerous sunspots, called Active Region 3842, and, according to NOAA, was rated an X7.1. Flares are rated by their severity, with b-class flares being the weakest and x-class being the strongest. Each letter marks a 10-fold increase in power over the one lower on the scale, so an X7.1 is pretty damn powerful. In fact, it was the second most powerful of the current solar cycle.
Earlier, NOAA had warned that the flare may have led to an event called a coronal mass ejection, which is a massive expulsion of plasma and other solar particles, and that now appears to have been the case. Unlike sunlight, the solar matter doesn’t travel at the speed of light, and can take a few days to reach Earth. NOAA did not say the CME will definitely reach Earth, only saying that a geomagnetic storm is “likely” between October 3 and 5. The severity will be “dependent upon the orientation of the embedded magnetic field,” according to the alert.
While this can sound scary, the storm won’t have a direct effect on humans. The big risks are to sensitive electrical systems, such as power grids and satellites. NOAA said that threat should be “limited,” “minor,” and “mostly mitigatable.”
Scientists are not fearmongering. Sensationalistic media companies are.
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. -Christopher Hitchens
Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts
"God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.
If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up, why would you have to lie?
Gold has a crappy 5000 year record. You still have not explained how a gold backed currency will work. As a matter of fact you have explained nothing. All you have is personal incredulity about fiat currencies. Fiat currencies existed 1200 years ago. Gold has no more intrinsic value than the US Dollar. The faith and credit of the US government is more stable than a rock traded on an open market.
As for gold as an investment vehicle? It only has value for those that live in fear. Returns on mineral investments are dwarfed by returns on stocks. The S&P index and Dow index have far outpaced gold and silver. I will consider gold as an investment when it pays a dividend. When yadd dividends to ROI gold and silver returns are miniscule. Facts is facts. I get the psychological aspect. We have averaged 20% in our IRA's and my wife's 403 investments in the last year. I still throw extra at out mortgage, which is 3.75%. Investing is a much bigger return, but eliminating the mortgage has a psychological aspect.
You don't want experts. You want to explore the evidence people are basing their argumentation around. Of what value is an expert with bad evidence and/or arguments, and how will you know whether an expert deserves that appellation unless you examine and understand his evidence and arguments.
I'm going to quote back to you all those parts of the the rest of your message that contain evidence, evidence-based arguments, or unequivocally true statements:
...crickets...
Now here's some feedback about some of it.
First, you need to explain how a gold-based system is going to work when the size of the world economy is, and has been for some time, larger than the supply of gold, and the gap is growing. You always ignore this question.
While it could be argued that Republicans are more likely to be buyers of gold and/or silver, the jury is still out on what qualifies Democrats as financial experts.
Not everyone is like you. Many people understand that seeking out experts to tell them what to think is a poor solution to thinking for yourself, especially when you know how to research a topic.
My point is that fiat assets (Currencies, stocks, bonds, derivatives ETFs) are backed by nothing except the people's faith while Gold, though also supported by the faith of the people has a 5000-year track record.
The value of anything, including both gold and fiat currencies, is what people are willing to pay for it. Nothing is "backed" by anything except people's faith. The "track record" for this is forever.
You rely on educated people and I rely on intuition.
I hope I speak for everyone here (except you) when I say that we rely on facts and figures and make up our own minds. Your "intuition," which is fact-free as far as can be determined, has a 60-year record of failure.
You also may argue that Republicans (or conservatives in general) run on a track record of fear and security while you guys run on faith in Democracy as the ONLY wise alternative.
Trump relies upon fearmongering (paraphrasing, "It will be very bad for the Jewish people if they don't vote for me.") And I think almost all non-MAGA people are supporters of Democracy, believing it to be the only system that guarantees liberty and freedom.
That may have been true in 1945 and even as recently as the first Gulf War but it has declined a lot since then.
The anti-democratic authoritarian forces are all on the right, no matter what country you talk about. It is those on the left backing freedom, democracy and basic human rights.
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