If the next four years in U.S. politics is simply a reprise of Trump’s first presidency with its petty corruption, its profound indifference to the well-being of the common American, and our nation’s humiliation on the world stage, we can all count ourselves lucky.
Most of us fear that Trump, now a lame duck with nothing to lose, will leave office in 2029 having:
• Transformed American democracy into an oligarchy of multibillionaires.
• Shielded himself from the rule of law, quashing all attempts to prosecute him for the crimes he committed in his attempt to overthrow of our government following his loss in the 2020 election.
• Consolidated power into the executive branch, upsetting the balance of powers that was put in place at the founding of our republic nearly 250 years ago.
• Eviscerated the Justice Department such that it’s impotent to hold the oligarchy accountable for its crimes. This, of course, is the defining characteristic of the most despicable regimes on Earth, i.e., that their leaders are above the law.
• Completed the job of of destroying the U.S. educational system, rendering our country incapable of critical thinking.
• Withdrawn the world’s largest economy from any effort to adapt to / mitigate climate change and other forms of environmental degradation.
Could it possibly be as bad as our well-founded nightmares? Maybe we’ll get off easy. Who knows?
I’m not a financial pro, but here’s some advice:
Don’t live on a budget. Make a lot of money and live far beneath your means. What value does luxury actually bring to your life, especially if it makes you nervous about running out of cash?
As I told my kids when they were growing up, “Unless you’re completely shallow, showing off your money is an idiotic thing to do. You make false friends and have people glomming onto you to sell you stuff you really don’t need.”
Warren Buffett still lives in a modest house in Nebraska, a state in which he could buy an entire country. Maybe there is something about him and his values that could benefit you.
I see.
There’s not enough land in Spain to support rooftop and ground-mounted solar at a fraction of the cost.
LOL.
It’s possible that right now, there are other civilizations observing the human race, studying us from afar, and noticing our decline into savagery and eventual extinction by turning billionaires into trillionaires.
People say that the principal weakness of human beings is that we can’t plan for the future as a species. Dogs are arguably even worse, though they aren’t consumed with greed. They don’t plot the starvation of millions of other dogs so they themselves can have enough food to last a billion years.
As an elderly man, I’ll be leaving this planet soon, but I won’t cease pondering this until my heart stops beating.
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