So it means it made sense to do it. Even if you correctly predict the economic, political currents, sometimes it is up to the actions of individuals that are very hard to predict.
But it is basically nothing if you get laid off at age 56, and you can't find another job due to age discrimination, your COBRA runs out after 18 months, but you are not 65 years old yet for Medicare . Obamacare may be completely neutered by then, so private health insurance may cost $30k/year for a 57 year-old. You still have a mortgage, you can't afford health insurance, so you take a risk and decide to skip it, because you are healthy. Then you get pancreatic cancer, and without health insurance, your chemotherapy completely depletes your 401k in one year. Then you die of cancer at age 59, because you cannot pay for the treatments anymore.
It would not really be a great depression of there was not mass layoffs and immense job insecurity.
That's the evil thing about economic crises. People with enough capital usually can sit them out and often even benefit. People with less capital often lose everything and when the recovery comes, they have nothing that could benefit from it.
I am close to retirement and I often think how quickly your reserves can be wiped out in a long enough crisis.
In 2026, the POTUS, his family and friends are looting the treasury with brazen acts of fraud. The government is buying losing futures contracts to manipulate oil and other markets, and “mysterious people” are buying securities before scheduled, secret events to profit from it.
The US assassinated the leaders of a hostile power after they essentially gave in to our demands.
We eliminated the governments experts in a variety of strategic topics including oil, and installed toadies to run the fiscal service that disburses government funds.
People are working on undermining the FDIC and decapitating social security.
So a crash now is really disturbing. Nobody can have the level of confidence in the faith and credit of the United States as we did in 2008. The people who understand the complex issues have been purged by the government, and the rest of the leadership is complicit in criminality and is counting on loyalty to secure pardons for later. So you should be anxious.
In what sense was the GFC worse?
He had told me working with the CCC was not a bed of roses and he saw many terrible accidents to some of the workers. But he was glad it existed.
Also, back then, I believe people were on average stronger and more resilient people alive today. Having such a crash will be far worse for society then 1929.
People step up very quickly once they have to face a difficult situation. A while ago I talked to Ukrainian about their war. He said some years ago he couldn’t have imagined living in a war zone but once it gets started you get used very quickly to drones flying over you, buildings in your town bring blown up, losing power for days, hiding in the basement. It very quickly becomes normality.
You have to have people that can step up: at least in the US, I do not see evidence of that. Not in the White House, not at the SEC, not in Treasury and Commerce.
The most recent cataclysmic event (GFC/2008) at least had smart people around: Bernanke happened to be in charge and he was once of the foremost experts in the Great Depression. Paulson also had notable experience before Treasury. Who do we have now?
But you may have misunderstood something I failed to bring across. Most people in in my generation, including me will have just as a bad time as yours should that crash occurs.
The only difference is my generation will only endure it for a much shorter time than yours.
FWIW, I hate everything avocado, but I will miss my bagels with cream cheese and hot chocolate with whole dairy whipped cream on top :)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6601224-the-great-depres...
(haven’t read it yet so I can’t vouch for it)