Chavez was famous, popular, and made a positive difference to a majority in his homeland. No way the staff at a Miami newspaper could ever grasp that. The knuckleheads here even chose a picture that portrays him as ham-fisted, or iron-fisted. But I suppose for the Venezuelan fat cats hiding out on South Beach, that image would fit. They got the money to hide and they “don’t need no stinkin’ middle-class”.Another frozen day, which is any winter day I can’t walk outdoors in my shirtsleeves and comment what a nice day. Thus, the next eight hours is slated for an in-depth study of advanced flip-flog memory circuits. I know that sounds like fun. I can’t understand why the babes are not lined up to date me over it. It’s almost as if they’d rather eat restaurant food, watch movies and smell flowers. But then I thought, naw, we’re dealing with adult women here. They’re probably all busy doing something constructive.
Was it another boring day in Florida? I don’t know, there are no boring days around my hut. Here is some “unjunked” candy. They’ve removed all the artificial ingredients, particular corn syrup, food coloring, preservatives, and GMO. (GMO is anything genetically modified, or a product of something that was thus modified.) This candy is good. Even the coloring is derived from beet and cabbage juice. I only know what it doesn’t have, but the flavor is as good as I remember back when one could buy real chocolate candy. Try it. Interspersing this study will be coffee, music, and other wonderful accoutrements of a well-planned and scalable retirement. Wow, that has a nice ring to it. I’d like more info on 3D printing. Years ago, Eliot had a plastic bottle designed overseas, part of an invention. He handed me the bottle, triple-molded I think he said, and it was impossible to bend the sides by hand. Whenever I see a 3D printout, I’m reminded how that bottle had cost $2,500 back in the 90s.
Then, I see this statistic that the average American my age is worth $380,000. I totally dispute that. I live in beautiful Hollywood, Florida. Take away the fancy houses and there is nobody around here got that much. Net worth is not income, rather the highly subjective and varying value of underlying assets. A house adds net worth, but only around $60,000 or roughly the part paid off. And I agree that it is wise to have six months of household expenses in cash reserve, but that’s only another $10,000. And who’s got that?
What I’d like to see is a ratio of net worth to how much cash the person could raise in two days without borrowing or selling. Call it the “Ransom Ratio”. I know hordes of people with fancy gear who don’t have twenty in cash till payday. There is probably no reliable calculator of net worth. But $380,000 implies the person retains that kind of a surplus, stable and properly invested after taxes and after paying all their bills up to that point in time. I see no evidence of such behavior in the general public.
Silver is bouncing [in price] though not anywhere as much as I’d like to see. It’s a lousy fifty cents up and down. Have the Chinese stopped buying? That’s actually somewhat of an artificial scare, in that it is the rate of growth of Chinese industry that US analysts worry about, not the overall quality or strength of that economy. Buying something made in China last month is easy as hell, but try to buy something that was invented there last month? Last year? Last century? Last millenium? Probably cannot be done.
