Secure assets in turbulent times: actively shape your financial future

We live in turbulent times. The last few years have given us an unbroken parade of Anxiety– and scaremongering in the headlines, in the boardrooms and at the kitchen tables.

Securing assets in times of crisis - how should that work?

Corona, globalization, outsourcing, mass layoffs, plant closings, subprime mortgages and credit default insurances, Ponzi schemes, Wall Street fiasco, recession ... one bad news follows the other.

In times of crisis, it's not just Americans who lay off Companys Millions of workers every month. The unbridled decline in employment is a devastating epidemic to which few are immune. From executives to middle management to administrators and workers, from banking professionals to retail clerks, everyone is at risk.

In recent years lost the pension plans of many People suddenly half their value or even more. What people thought were solid, reliable assets burst like a bubble. There are no more secure jobs, that's in the past. In a USA Today poll, 60 percent of Americans surveyed said they considered today's economic climate to be the worst Crisis look at their lives.

Trading time for money is a stupid trade

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Of course you already know all this. But here's something you might not know: none of this is really new. Sure, it took a severe economic crisis for people to die Eyes to open and make it clear to them that their existence was endangered. But you Income didn't come into danger overnight - it was always in danger. The sword of Damocles has been hanging over many heads for years, because there is a fine line between solvency and ruin.

People rely on the next paycheck to pay for living expenses each month, and they usually have a very thin safety cushion, and very often none at all. A salary you get if you spend your »Time against Money trades," and in times of recession, this is the least reliable source of income there is. Why? Let me tell you this: when the workforce falls, there is less disposable income around to pay you for your time.

I said yes

I don't want to get into the I-told-it-so-stuff, but... I said-it-so. And I've been saying this for years: secure jobs simply don't exist anymore. Business corporations are the dinosaurs of the 20th century, trembling on the brink of extinction. If you have a really safe Future If you want to have this future, you have to enter it yourself Hand to take.

mine Opinions According to the United States and many Western countries are heading for a financial catastrophe and it is to blame that our school system does not provide realistic financial education for the students. If you believe that your personal financial market investments will survive the future, if you want to play Russian roulette with the fluctuations of the stock market, you are jeopardizing your retirement savings. What will you do when you are 85 years old and the financial world has plummeted again after a high? This is completely out of your control. I'm not saying investing in financial markets is bad. I'm just saying they don't for sure are and that they are not wise Choice and I wouldn't bet on them for my financial future.

Don't secure your future with pensions

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Never before in human history have so many people turned to the stock market for their retirement income. This is madness. Do you think the welfare state will be there to take care of you? Then you probably also believe in the Easter Bunny. A security's greatest strength is its liquidity -- and that's also its greatest weakness. We all know the next stock market crash is bound to come and then we'll be in trouble again. Why should you get involved?

What just happened again? There was another stock market crash and it bankrupted a lot of people. Why? Because our habits and mental attitudes just don't want to change. In 1971, the American separated Economy from the gold standard. Incidentally, this was done without the approval of Congress. But what matters is that it happened. Why is that important? Because it paved the way for us to print more and more banknotes, as many as we wanted without being tied to any actual, tangible, real value. We acted absolutely surreal and that opened the gates for the biggest economic boom in history. Over the next 35 years, America's middle class grew rapidly.

From dishwasher to credit millionaire?

As the dollar fell in value and the book value of real estate and other assets swelled, common people became millionaires. Suddenly anyone could have credit anywhere, anytime, and credit cards spread like mushrooms after a spring rain. To pay off those credit cards, Americans began using their homes as cash dispensing machines, rescheduling and borrowing, borrowing and rescheduling

After all, real estate always increases in value, doesn't it? Not correct. By 2007 we had pumped as much hot air into this financial balloon as we could - but this dreamlike soap bubble came back down to earth and it crashed hard. It wasn't just the Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns that were ruined. Millions of people lost their old-age savings, their pensions and their jobs. In the 1950s, when General Motors (GM) was the most powerful corporation in America, the press took a statement from the chairman of GM and made it a motto that went by word of mouth for decades: “If GM goes down, goes the whole nation under. "

More and more people are broke

Well, folks, the not-so-great news is that GM filed for bankruptcy in 2009, and that same summer the state of California paid its bills with IOUs instead of cash. Currently, the percentage of Americans who own their own homes is declining. The number of mortgage foreclosures is higher than ever. There are fewer and fewer middle-class families, savings accounts are shrinking, if they still exist at all, and the dept of families increase. The number of people living below the poverty line is increasing rapidly.

At the same time, more and more people continue to work after the age of 65. The number of new bankruptcies is through the roof. And many Americans don't have enough money to retire -- not even close to enough. Have all this bad news yours awareness woke up? They certainly did, and you're not alone in that. people all over Welt have stopped hitting the snooze button and rolling over in bed in the morning. Fine! Now that you've woken up, seen what's going on, and realize that this isn't pretty at all, we can dig deeper. Let's see what that really means - and what you can do about it.

The rise of the robots

What did you learn about money in school? For most people, “Not much.” If you've heard anything on the subject at all, it's, “Go to school, get one Job, save, buy a house, pay off your debts and invest your money for the long term shares That might have been good advice in the industrial age, but it's outdated in the information age. Globalization was the end of well-paid jobs for workers. Their jobs migrated to China, India and Mexico... The Ascent the robot will be the end of high-paying clerical jobs.

The jobs that have not yet migrated to other continents are now being replaced by robots and more artificial Intelligence accepted. Even highly qualified specialists such as doctors, lawyers and tax consultants are not immune to this. Adidas has just announced that it will start producing shoes in Germany and the United States instead of in China or Vietnam. Apple's most important supplier Foxconn says it wants to order 1 million robots to replace 3 million workers. Graduates around the world have to pay off large student loans—the most onerous debt of all—and then can't find that proverbial high-paying job that's worth the student loan. Robots don't ask for wages or raises, they work longer hours and don't need holidays, breaks, health insurance or pension contributions.

The savers are the stupid

Once upon a time, if you saved a million in the 1970s, you got 15 percent interest per year, that is $150.000.* You could live well on that back then. Today, $1,5 million earns maybe 15.000 percent interest a year—$2008. No millionaire can do that anymore. Today's savers are the biggest losers. In XNUMX, around ten million homeowners learned firsthand that real estate is not an asset. At that time, the housing market collapsed. The mortgages were higher than resale value. The humble little home of the Stange, once the pride of the baby boomers, is now the doghouse of the real estate market.

And the children and grandchildren of the baby boomers, the so-called millennials, can neither afford nor want this "most important wealth component". With rising Taxes on real estate, the prices for your own little house will continue to fall. The following then applies to residential real estate: it is better to be small and efficient than large and onerous. And home prices are related to the labor market. Robots don't need houses. Robots live in the workplace, around the clock.

Today savers are even bigger losers as interest rates fall below zero in many countries and robots continue to crowd out workers. Nevertheless, parents still advise their children as they did in the past: "Go to school, get a job and put something on the high edge."

Economics is not a financial education

As if to defend their lack of financial education, the intellectuals shoot back: "But I had economics at school." Or: "At my children's school, a lot of emphasis is placed on economics." like John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises or Friedrich August von Hayek. These economists' theories may have been watertight 50 years ago, but today they leak and it won't be long before the dam breaks completely.

I would rather listen to two influential economic philosophers than the scientists: Karl Marx, who wrote The Communist Party's Manifesto, and Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Throws the World off.

Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1905 and experienced Russian as an adolescent Revolution. The Bolsheviks took away his father's business and everything he had worked for. In 1926 she emigrated to New York. She has experienced communism and capitalism and has compelling views on both economic systems. She criticized Western economists and academics in their ivory towers: "They may be able to close their eyes to reality ... but they cannot escape the abyss that they do not want to see."

It is said that Rand's heroes constantly fended off "freeloaders," "looters," and "Nassauers" who would rob them of the fruits of their labor. The freeloaders, looters and Nassauer plead for high taxes, workers' rights, state ownership, state investments, state Planning, regulation and redistribution. Rand describes looters as bureaucrats and state officials who use tacit threats of violence "at gunpoint" to steal revenue from others. They forcibly appropriate the property of the people who "produced" or "earned" it.

According to Rand, Nassauer are people who are incapable of creating value themselves. Because they cannot produce anything, they aim to claim the income of others on behalf of the needy - the income of those who are productive. In the name of the needy, they steal from the producers and shovel the money into their own pockets. They have only disregard for the skills of the producers. Instead, they riot about the "moral right of people" and enable "legitimate" expropriation by the state. As you know, the world is full of unproductive Nassauers, looters and parasites who portray themselves as "morally and spiritually superior do-gooders." As the title suggests, Atlas Sheds the World or Who is John Galt? (Original title: Atlas Shrugged, also published in Germany under the title Der Strik) the question: What happens when the producers simply shrug their shoulders, do nothing and contribute and withdraw? The book was published in 1957 and was initially heavily attacked and criticized. Over time, however, it became a classic. Some even say: "After the Bible, Atlas is the most important book in my life."

Karl Marx

Karl Marx was born in Trier in 1818, in what is now Germany. He is considered a socialist and a revolutionary - a man who influenced many of the modern revolutionaries of our time - such as Vladimir Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Che Guevara. Among his more famous quotes are: “May the ruling classes tremble before a communist revolution.

The proletarians have nothing to do with it verlieren as their chains. You have a world to win. Proletarians of all countries, unite!' Marx's socialist views were so irritating that he had to leave Europe for England. In London, he wrote for the New York Tribune and was well received by American audiences when he spoke about slavery, class struggle and class consciousness.

Put simply, Marx defined the class struggle as Konflikt between the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. These classes can in turn be defined as follows:

• Aristocracy: A ruling class that inherits wealth, special privileges and titles, usually a monarchy.
• Bourgeoisie: Usually a term for the middle class. If someone calls you "bourgeois", it is probably meant insultingly and means that you are petty-bourgeois and narrow-minded - a typical member of the middle class. For Marx, someone belonging to this class was obsessed with material possessions, but without much drive or ambition. It was enough for him when he was comfortable.
• Proletariat: A class of wage earners who have neither capital nor means of production, but also people who sell their labor in order to live on it, and at the same time the poorest working class.

What “aristocrats” do better

In the agricultural age, the land belonged to the kings and queens – the aristocracy. The English word peasant for farmer is derived from the French, from pays (land) and sans (without) - without land. They were people who worked on the land but didn't own it. And if you read the English one Term for real estate, real estate, Spanish, then it becomes a royal estate.

The aristocracy of the industrial age included tycoons such as Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller and JP Morgan. Ford made cars, Rockefeller gas, and Morgan made money. The new aristocrats of the information age are tech wizards who control cyberspace - people like Appel co-founder Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos from Amazon or Sergey Brin and Larry Page from Google. In the agricultural age, the rich were known as aristocrats. Today they are called capitalists.

The advice to become a proletarian?

Parents who tell their child to go to school and get a job are actually advising them to become a proletarian—that is, someone who sells their labor. But the worker does not own any means of production. If the said child then finds a well-paid job, it belongs to the bourgeoisie and rises to the middle class. Such a person gives himself satisfied with material achievements such as Study, house and car... It is enough for him if he is doing well and can keep up with the neighbors.

He is happy when he can drive past the slums, apartment blocks and quarters of the proletarians and make sure that his children do not go to school with "such children". Most of those in this class have well-paid jobs. Many are also freelancers such as doctors or lawyers or small business owners. But the real estate and means of production do not belong to them. They also work for their money.

Those who are rich do not work for money

So the first lesson in life should be, "The rich don't work for money." When I ask readers of my books, most of them don't remember that lesson. I think it's because they've firmly established, "Go to school and get a job." They weren't brought up to own the means of production. In other words, our educational system systematically prepares students for existence in the proletariat and in the middle class, not for becoming capitalists who own the country, corporations and Capital have.

No wonder that millions of people are dependent on the state, which gives them work, wages and a pension. Unfortunately, such people do not stand on their own two feet. In 1970 my father, a really good person, stood up against his as lieutenant governor of the US state of Hawaii Executive on, the democratic governor. When my father lost the election, the governor swore that, despite his doctorate, he would no longer find a job with any government agency.

Go to school and get a job?

My father died a poor unemployed person who would have liked to work but couldn't find a job. He was highly qualified but had no means of production. He was a teacher and had taught thousands of others to do the same. No wonder the class struggle is erupting on the streets of America and around the world. No wonder Senator Bernie Sanders observed during the 2016 US presidential campaign: "Something has gone fundamentally wrong when the top 90 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom XNUMX percent." Put simply, our global financial crisis has in ours schools started. The United States spends billions on them Vocational Training from teachers, but the gap between arm and Rich is getting deeper.

As Karl Marx wrote:

“May the ruling classes tremble before a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose in it but their chains. You have a world to win. Proletarians of all countries, unite!"

And as Ayn Rand said:

"You may be able to turn a blind eye to reality ... but you cannot escape the abyss you don't want to see."

This is what to keep in mind the next time you hear someone say:

"Go to school and get a job."

Don't be fooled again

Perhaps the situation will change again. But don't be fooled. Don't be lulled into the same old talk of safety that got you and the rest of the world into this unfortunate situation before. In the summer of 2008, gasoline prices in the United States peaked at more than $ 4 a gallon. Off-road vehicles disappeared from the scene and suddenly everyone was enthusiastic about small cars and hybrid vehicles.

But look at what happened next: By 2009, prices fell back below $2, and – goodness gracious! – people started buying SUVs again! I'm sorry, what? Does anyone really believe that fuel prices will stay this low? Now gas prices are way down so it is usefulto buy a gas guzzler: Can people really be that short-sighted? (I'm trying to be polite here. The word I really had in mind was "stupid.") Unfortunately, the answer is yes. We don't let ourselves be fooled just once - we let ourselves be fooled again and again.

As children we have all heard Aesop's fable of the ant and the grasshopper, but the overwhelming majority of us continue to live with the foresight of a grasshopper. Question the headlines critically. There is always something idiotic excitement that will grab your attention and distract you from the serious business of making your life. It's just chatter and rattle. Whether it's terrorism, the recession, or the latest election scandal, none of that has anything to do with what you need to do today to shape your future.

Actively shape your future

During the Great Depression (the Great Depression of 1929) there were people who amassed great wealth. Likewise, even during the greatest economic booms, such as the real estate boom of the 1980s, there were millions upon millions of people who failed to prepare for the future—who ignored all of what I'm going to talk to you about in this book . These people ended up in need and broke. Incidentally, most of them are still in need and broke today. The Problem is not the economic situation. The problem is you.

Are you angry about the corruption in the business groups? About the stock exchanges and the big banks that make all this happen? About the state because it doesn't do enough about it or because it does too much wrong and too little right? Do you resent yourself for not taking your life into your own hands sooner? Life is hard. The question is, what do you do with this realization? Whining and ranting won't make your future safer, nor will blaming the stock market, big banks, corporations, or the government. If you want to have a stable future, you have to make it that way. However, you can only direct your future if you take control of your source of income. you need your own Shop.

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