If that's true, why do people have substantially more purchasing power now than they did 100 years ago? Because wages increased alongside inflation. When you only look at half of the picture, you only see half of the picture.
actually i dont. it may seem like i do, but thats not so. expectations have changed since 1913, and while technology has made life easier even on the nickel, a guy with 2 years of college and the ability to take an engine apart and put it back together again, and experience as a farm hand would be much more comfortably situated than i currently am, as a machinist or an agricultural mechanic. but these days im just a redneck ina dead end job surrounded by other people scrabbling for an ever shrinking pie.
in 1913 a guy who worked as a shopkeeper and clerk (my current job) and grew his own vegetables to sell at the farmer's market in the city could expect to save money, buy a house, raise a family and secure his later years from his wages without the requirement that he risk all his coins in the wall street slot machine. your premise fails.
If you put $1,000 into stocks each year for 25 years and earn 10% a year on your investments, you'll have about $110,000 in 25 years. You don't need hundreds of thousands of dollars to make successful investments any more than you need that amount of money to make successful investments in metals.
so, if i put $1000 in stocks every year, for 25 years and let it ride, and the stocks i pick all maintain the DOW average then ill have $110k ? yeah, no i wont. 1000 riding for 25 years, 1000 riding for 24 years, 1000 riding for 23 years.... etc etc etc will not quadruple all 25k. that would require some pretty badass returns far beyond the 7% or so the dow averages over the long term, even if we completely ignore the risk and assume you can NEVER LOSE (which seems to be the requirement for all your claims of the awesomeness of investing in stocks.) further, why not just suggest i invent a time machine, travel back to 1525, and start a savings account with the bank of england and let compound interest turn me into a trillionaire?
but even if i assume your math is right, after 25 years of deflation what will 110k buy me? an economy car to sleep in as my retirement villa? i had a 401k before the last crash with a balance of around $10k now its a grand total of 230 bucks. i guess i should have managed it myself ehh? once i stopped pumping money into it, it deflated like a worn out marseilles whore at the end of her shift.
Margin calls? You only get a margin call if you buy on margin. Tell me, Kynes, how many people even have margin privileges on their investment accounts? Most people don't even know what margin is in the first place, and you have to fill out paperwork to get it. Solyndra? Individual people couldn't invest in that company--it was owned by venture capitalists.
yes even ameritrade lets you buy shit on margin, it was the big thing before the latest "Totally Not A Crash" correction. you might remember seeing the ads on TV when day trading was the next Cant Miss Opportunity Of The Decade
and yes, venture capitalists. who sold stocks in their venture capital firms to ordinary investors, so they could follow the number one rule of wall street investing, always gamble with somebody else's money. thats how venture capital firms like Bain capital, and all the rest work. they assemble a team of wall street wunderkind, hype them as the Cant Miss Opportunity of The Decade, and sell a piece of the action to any sucker who takes the bait. when the whole enterprise fails, the Wunderkind have already been paid their salaries bonuses and commissions, the executives in charge pull the cord on their golden parachutes and sail for a soft landing at another new firm, and the investors are left with their dicks in their hands with a 5% share in a giant pile of NOTHING, and often times less than nothing, just debts.
And the risks of investing in gold or silver based on a few decades of price history? What if gold stays at $1,500 an ounce for 10 years? What if the price of silver plummets to $10? If your thesis is that neither event will occur and instead you'll see the same kinds of price increases that we've seen since the price was allowed to float, then by all means, invest your money in gold and silver. But you're still taking a risk, since we have no idea what the outcome will be.
and you still assume that gold has a price, rather than a value.
you stare at the charts and believe that Gold is moving while the dollar remains constant, completely unaware that in fact gold is stationary, and the dollar is circling the drain.
gold has a 7000 year history of being desired, and being a currency of last resort.
FYI i dont invest in shit. i buy silver when its down, i convert my meager savings into municipal bonds with a sure return, and when i get my chance to buy some land ill sell off everything i have to to get my land debt free. if i could stuff cash in my matress i would do that, but the built in carefully designed anti-savings tax that YOUR KIND have deliberately engineered into the currency makes that impossible. you have turned MY money into YOUR toy and unless i let one of YOU weenies play with my money it shrivels up and disappeaars before my eyes. and you think thats cool.
when everything else has failed, gold endures. unlike my interest in arguing with you
why dont you go to an old folks home and tell them all how pleased you are with the fiat currency scheme which turned their carefully accumulated savings into a huge pile of shit. im sure they will appreciate your gleeful explanation of why this is GOOD for them in a macro-economic sense as much as i do. maybe they'll share their cat food with you.
