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GORDON GREB |
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Why fear the future while
brave Mr. Bush is our chief?
By GORDON GREB
of TheColumnists.com
As most Generation X readers probably wouldn’t
know what it would mean, you won’t see any headlines proclaiming,
NEW DEAL ERA ENDS. But it’s fast coming.
And time for people like you and me to get ready as we enter
the fifth year of the 21st Century.
My credentials for advice-giving are outstanding. Experience and wisdom are written all over me. Warren G. Harding occupied the White House when I was born. I’m a survivor of the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights Movement, and other crises too numerous to mention. Wisdom gets knocked into your head pretty good after real-life experiences like those of the Anti-Vietnam War movement and the Gay Liberation Day Parades in San Francisco. So I must warn you not to leap to any conclusions about what I plan to do.
After many days and nights
of listening to America’s “talk radio” I’ve
come to the conclusion resistance is futile. While accommodating
oneself to the new American Way of Life will not be easy, it’s
what lies ahead. This means you should expect to be
“outsourced” from your job, thrown into the street
without health insurance, find no more funds available at the
unemployment office.
Undoubtedly you will find
yourself being challenged to behave like a rugged individualist
selling apples on the street corner. Why not? That was the basic
training experience which prepared all our young men and women
to win World War II (becoming Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation).
While I needn’t warn you of the
coming difficulties, the fact is you’ll need to take one
side or the other. Your choice in 2005 will be to join the opposition
as an old fashioned Nay-Sayer or join the growing number of Americans
who have become the Born-Again Compromisers.
While disheartened and
disillusioned liberals will try to fight this inevitable future,
hoping somehow these changes can be stopped, the fact is that
America is headed for a presidential repeal of everything which
was enacted 70 years ago by Franklin Delano
Roosevelt. Radical Republicans now have the political power to
do what they want, having gained control of the White House,
Congress and the Supreme Court. So
it’s time now to adjust to this new reality.
George Bush, our newly
re-elected man in the White House, knows exactly what he wants
to do and he intends to do it. He sees a Major New Crisis ahead
and he is
determined to take drastic action to defeat this terrible new
enemy which threatens our very survival. No, not aliens from
foreign lands, but a disaster of catastrophic proportions--a
slow, menacing Financial Frankenstein! (Oh, you thought I was
going
to mention the Bush administration’s escalating national
debt or the growing trade imbalance, especially with China).
No, George Bush's crystal ball tells him--and everybody else
he chooses to talk to--that we are face-to-face with something
far
worse: the insecurity of Social Security!
The solution to this problem is so simple it’s a wonder Franklin Roosevelt didn’t think of it first--privatization.
Bush thinks taxpayers should
be allowed to keep money they’re contributing to Social
Security and let them invest it where Wall Street thinks it will
do the most good-- stocks, bonds, money market accounts, options,
puts, calls, mutual funds, and investment deals of all kinds.
That’s what helped get Donald to the top floor of Trump
Tower. So why not you?
I’ve already experimented with what Bush is proposing long ago. I began investing in the stock market 50 years ago. That’s when the Dow Jones average was below 500 and three million was the average number of shares traded in a day. Yes, I can hear you saying, “This guy must be rich!”
Being Mr. Average Investor
I bought a book explaining how to do it, but had no idea
what to buy. My choices became Southern Pacific Railroad, Kaiser
Pemanente Cement, and Peabody Coal. For weeks and months they
just sat there and stared
at me on the financial pages, going nowhere. In my ignorance
I was willing to be guided by a “salesman” with Dean
Witter, who made matters even worse (for me,
not him).
I never realized a penny
of profit with all this buying and selling. Investing is a full-time
job and not for amateurs. What saved me from bankruptcy was Joe,
my barber, who advised me to buy Sheraton Hotels. In the l950s
in San Jose, this guy was buying houses (on credit) and reselling
them (at a higher price). I made enough money from his advice
to offset the losses on what my broker was getting me into. Finally
I sold out, was happy to come out even, and spent my savings
on a three-month trip to Europe.
That was the wisest investment I’ve ever made. It gave me rich and valuable experiences and let me live for awhile like a rich American on $5 per day.
So I won’t object to George Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security. Since so many true believers in the Bush ideology can’t be persuaded to keep Roosevelt’s New Deal, the program that helped make America great the past 50 years, it seems useless to try to argue. Instead of trying to fight the propaganda machine from the White House, I’ve decided to return to the life of a “rugged individualist” and cut my personal spending program--saving every penny coming in for a rainy day.
While I may seem to be
emulating Arnold Swartzenegger, here are some examples of My
Personal Economy Measures to Survive as a Private Individual
in America: I’m saving hundreds of dollars by canceling
cable TV (using the free antenna), buying secondhand records,
cassettes and CDs, keeping my l987 Toyota Camry that gets 30
miles to the gallon instead of driving my newer 4-wheel drive
gas-guzzling SUV, and
cutting up “junk mail” into scratch pads instead of
tossing this useable paper into the garbage can. My cost-cutting
list is too to long to itemize here. But believe me, it’s
happening! Furthermore I’m saving up to invest in the stock
market when we have that
inevitable repeat of the stock market collapse of l929. That’s
when to buy. Wait for the panic!
Maybe privatization isn’t
the answer for me in my lifetime. But when members of Generation
X finally wake up to what following the Pied Piper of Privatization
really means, we’ll see whether it pleases these followers
of Bush in the long run. They may be headed for a new "Survivor"
Show--not likely to be enjoyed on television.
©2005
by Gordon Greb. The illustrations are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd.
E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted
on Jan. 17, 2005.
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can comment on this column online. Please address your message
to either "The Editors" or Gordon Greb. To send an
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