The Trump Presidency (Act V - The One Where Everybody Dies)

Status
Not open for further replies.
Fast Eddie B said:
That does not sound right.

From a CNN article:

“Less than a third of people ages 18 to 29 owned stocks on average between 2009 and 2017, according to a Gallup survey released in April. Nearly two-thirds of Americans between 30 and 64 own stocks.”
Click to expand...

Better, but owning stock vs not does not capture the full picture:

New York University economist Edward Wolff conducted a careful study of stock ownership in 2013 and found that 81 percent of the stock market worth is concentrated in the top 10 percent of households by wealth.

I spoke with Wolff and he was kind enough to update the numbers. It's gotten worse: 84 percent of the stock in the United States is owned by the top 10 percent of households by net wealth.

These are incredible statistics. More than 93 percent of the stock is owned by the top 20 percent of households. The bottom 80 percent of households owns only about 7 percent of stock.

By the way, this includes direct ownership of stocks and indirect ownership through mutual funds, trusts, IRAs, Keogh plans and other retirement accounts. Everything.
Click to expand...

Linky.

But if we want to read the original claim strictly:

On average across the United States, only 18.7% of taxpayers directly own stocks. Now, these numbers only include stock portfolios, not the roughly half of Americans who participate in the market through an employer-sponsored retirement plan, according to a Pew analysis of Census Bureau data.
Click to expand...

Linky.
 
I think it’s worth considering why so few Americans own stocks.

For those is grinding poverty, it probably is not an option.

Yet in 2014 (a year Google seems to like) Americans spent $70 billion on lottery tickets. And I believe these sales are skewed towards lower income individuals.

Lots of factors in play. Lack of education in financial matters. Huge advertising budgets for state lotteries. The simplicity of buying a lottery ticket compared to opening and maintaining a brokerage account.

I guess my point is the majority of Americans could be invested in stocks if they wished to do so, but make a choice to spend discretionary dollars elsewhere.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
I think it’s worth considering why so few Americans own stocks.

For those is grinding poverty, it probably is not an option.

Yet in 2014 (a year Google seems to like) Americans spent $70 billion on lottery tickets. And I believe these sales are skewed towards lower income individuals.

Lots of factors in play. Lack of education in financial matters. Huge advertising budgets for state lotteries. The simplicity of buying a lottery ticket compared to opening and maintaining a brokerage account.

I guess my point is the majority of Americans could be invested in stocks if they wished to do so, but make a choice to spend discretionary dollars elsewhere.
Click to expand...


Why don't you make the same comparison with spending at movie theaters and stocks? How about family vacations vs stocks? Or how about ice cream vs stocks?

Oh I know why. Because you prefer to pretend that buying lottery tickets is not entertainment. Instead you want to insult people by pretending it is done as a financial investment by a stupid person.
 
Molinaro said:
Why don't you make the same comparison with spending at movie theaters and stocks? How about family vacations vs stocks? Or how about ice cream vs stocks?
Click to expand...

I kinda did, when I used the generic term “discretionary dollars”. Lottery tickets are only one such, used as an example since such vast sums are spent there.

Oh I know why. Because you prefer to pretend that buying lottery tickets is not entertainment. Instead you want to insult people by pretending it is done as a financial investment by a stupid person.
Click to expand...

I went so far as to offer potential reasons why people may end up choosing lottery tickets over investing in a mutual fund, let’s say. I don’t see anything in my post that stated, or even implied, intelligence was a factor.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
I went so far as to offer potential reasons why people may end up choosing lottery tickets over investing in a mutual fund, let’s say. I don’t see anything in my post that stated, or even implied, intelligence was a factor.
Click to expand...

To a lot of people, lottery tickets are the stupidest form of entertainment.

I'm one of them. "Oh look, net loss again!" doesn't seem like a fun game or quality entertainment to me. But my mom seems to derive some mysterious pleasure out buying a lottery ticket every once in a while and watching the TV to see if she won.

To each their own, I guess.
 
Molinaro said:
Why don't you make the same comparison with spending at movie theaters and stocks? How about family vacations vs stocks? Or how about ice cream vs stocks?

Oh I know why. Because you prefer to pretend that buying lottery tickets is not entertainment. Instead you want to insult people by pretending it is done as a financial investment by a stupid person.
Click to expand...
With due respect, I'd think most lottery purchases are made with the hope of a financial payoff, whereas movie tickets are purely for entertainment.

No doubt that some view it as pure entertainment. I'm not sure that most do so.

I'd rather that the government didn't raise funds this way.
 
phiwum said:
With due respect, I'd think most lottery purchases are made with the hope of a financial payoff, whereas movie tickets are purely for entertainment.

No doubt that some view it as pure entertainment. I'm not sure that most do so.

I'd rather that the government didn't raise funds this way.
Click to expand...

I get the sense that most people look at it as mostly entertainment. But engaging in a sort of suspension of disbelief about the plausibility of winning is part of the fun for them. Something like that.
 
America.

Do you know what your ignoramus of a President sounds like? At his best?

A dimwit who calls up, at 2:30 in the morning, the AM radio show, Coast to Coast.

I've seen--and I do not exaggerate--numerous pro wrestlers who are far and away his intellectual superior. He's as riven with unreality as that lot of late night conspiracy theorists who rant on about chemtrails and alien abductions.

The blathering idiot is an internationally recognized, painfully obvious buffoon who is dragging down into the muck the formerly respected name of the USA.

And that's leaving out of it his borderline traitorous self aggrandizement.

I only hope Mueller is permitted to bring to conclusion his investigation, without the criminal interference Drumpf would so love to interject.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
I think it’s worth considering why so few Americans own stocks.

For those is grinding poverty, it probably is not an option.

Yet in 2014 (a year Google seems to like) Americans spent $70 billion on lottery tickets. And I believe these sales are skewed towards lower income individuals.

Lots of factors in play. Lack of education in financial matters. Huge advertising budgets for state lotteries. The simplicity of buying a lottery ticket compared to opening and maintaining a brokerage account.

I guess my point is the majority of Americans could be invested in stocks if they wished to do so, but make a choice to spend discretionary dollars elsewhere.
Click to expand...



Rough numbers:

125M adults in the USA

Assume that 25M adults own stock - it makes the numbers easy.

So, 70B (amount spent) / 100M (lottery players you think have invested unwisely) = approximately 700 USD per person per year.

How well does the stock market work for people investing 700 USD / year? What's the return on that? What are the fixed costs one would have to pay before earning the 7-14 dollars it would earn?
 
Don't have time right now, but maybe someone can calculate $20/week, earning the average rate of return from the S&P 500, and calculate its value over 20 or 30 years.

Compounding interest can result in some pretty large numbers, even with inflation figured in. Kind of a "guaranteed win" down the road.
 
It's only a guaranteed win if you don't have to file for bankruptcy, right? Or if you'll definitely never need any sort of means tested government assistance?
 
Fast Eddie B said:
Don't have time right now, but maybe someone can calculate $20/week, earning the average rate of return from the S&P 500, and calculate its value over 20 or 30 years.



Compounding interest can result in some pretty large numbers, even with inflation figured in. Kind of a "guaranteed win" down the road.
Click to expand...



Done, using future valid on 1000 investment over 20 years with annual return of 9.8% comes to 6487. That assumes no additional contributions.

9.8 is 90 year average for s&p 500

Of course it is also assumes people will invest in an indexed fund and not some risky derivatives they don't understand


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
seayakin said:
Done, using future valid on 1000 investment over 20 years with annual return of 9.8% comes to 6487. That assumes no additional contributions.

9.8 is 90 year average for s&p 500

Of course it is also assumes people will invest in an indexed fund and not some risky derivatives they don't understand


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
The Impact of Saving $20 per Week

20 a week for 20 years at 5% is 36,100 according to this site.
20 a week for 20 years at 10% is 65,000.
 
T
3point14 said:
Rough numbers:

125M adults in the USA

Assume that 25M adults own stock - it makes the numbers easy.

So, 70B (amount spent) / 100M (lottery players you think have invested unwisely) = approximately 700 USD per person per year.

How well does the stock market work for people investing 700 USD / year? What's the return on that? What are the fixed costs one would have to pay before earning the 7-14 dollars it would earn?
Click to expand...
Seems like you might be failing to consider that some lottery purchases actually generate a return.
The original post indicated that 70B is the total take for lotteries each year- it did not mention how much of that is paid back as winnings.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
I think it’s worth considering why so few Americans own stocks.

For those is grinding poverty, it probably is not an option.

Yet in 2014 (a year Google seems to like) Americans spent $70 billion on lottery tickets. And I believe these sales are skewed towards lower income individuals.
Click to expand...

The lottery is a lot like freemium games. Most don't spend any money, some spend a small amount, and a small section that has gambling addiction tendencies spends a ton. A friend used to work at a gas station and would tell me about the people that would come by on payday. They'd spend their entire check on scratch offs, scratch them right there and turn in the winners, buy more, rinse and repeat until they lost everything.

But then again everyone buys stuff that others would consider a useless waste.
 
seayakin said:
Done, using future valid on 1000 investment over 20 years with annual return of 9.8% comes to 6487. That assumes no additional contributions.

9.8 is 90 year average for s&p 500

Of course it is also assumes people will invest in an indexed fund and not some risky derivatives they don't understand


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

It also assumes free transactions. If I have a cheap $10 per transaction fee, it will hack off 50% of a weekly purchase, or 13% of a monthly purchase. Spacing out much further loses the benefits of dollar cost averaging.

This is probably gets closer to Fast Eddie B's question. For most people, it's not easy to get up and running with a continuous investment habit that pays off in the real world. Their poor credit means a broker won't touch them, or the transaction fees are proportionally high compared to the investment capital, not to mention they probably self-insure or have high deductions, so all their stocks get liquidated to pay for medical crisis funding every few years.

I think I read that almost a third of Americans are 2 weeks away from a financial crisis. Paycheque to paycheque is not a credible investment environment.
 
Puppycow said:
:rolleyes:


I'm not on Team Trump by any means, but this kind of reporting just gives ammunition to the "liberal media bias" story.

Newsweek drives their reporters to maximize clicks and pageviews, not to do good, honest, fair reporting.

How Newsweek Collapsed

Stories like this one, where the headline misleadingly hints at some big scandal are a case in point. There appears to be a crime that really has nothing to do with Ivanka Trump, but they found a way to put her name in the headline even though her only involvement was very indirect and she would have had no way of knowing that the purchasers intended to use the diamonds for money laundering.

In the long run, this sort of reporting only makes readers cynical and destroys the publication's credibility.
Click to expand...
Nonsense, that crap sells news, that's the problem.

As for Newsweek collapsing,read your link! That needs another thread if anyone wants to start one. There's a whole friggin Moonie-
associated cult involved. I've just been too busy to start the thread.

WHY IS THE MANHATTAN DA LOOKING AT NEWSWEEK’S TIES TO A CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY?

'The Community': 5 Things We Know About Fringe Christian Sect - Who is Korean pastor David Jang, what is the Community and how are they connected to the latest round of layoffs at 'Newsweek'?
 
Last edited:
The Great Zaganza said:
It's a GQ-story, Newsweek is only reporting on it.

How badly is GQ doing in order to support your argument?

Ivanka got into business with Moshe Lax, who was a shady diamond dealer by anyone's standards. She obviously decided not to do due diligence.
Click to expand...
I'm going with Ivanka and Jared are in it up to their eyeballs default until evidence contradicting that turns up.
 
blutoski said:
It also assumes free transactions. If I have a cheap $10 per transaction fee, it will hack off 50% of a weekly purchase, or 13% of a monthly purchase. Spacing out much further loses the benefits of dollar cost averaging.



This is probably gets closer to Fast Eddie B's question. For most people, it's not easy to get up and running with a continuous investment habit that pays off in the real world. Their poor credit means a broker won't touch them, or the transaction fees are proportionally high compared to the investment capital, not to mention they probably self-insure or have high deductions, so all their stocks get liquidated to pay for medical crisis funding every few years.



I think I read that almost a third of Americans are 2 weeks away from a financial crisis. Paycheque to paycheque is not a credible investment environment.
Click to expand...


I agree.

I think it has limited value to say if Joe spent 5 dollars a week less on his vice of choice then he would have so much money. There a variety of reasons but this is a bit of a derail on the thread.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Bob001 said:
An inside look at how online ads work. Bottom line: Trump didn't need the Russians.
https://www.wired.com/story/how-trump-conquered-facebookwithout-russian-ads/
Click to expand...
It all contributed to swindling voters: the Russian ads, the hacking, targeting people with Cambridge Analytica data mining techniques, catering to the alt-right echo chamber, the mainstream news' Trump TV, decades of false attacks on the Clintons, and Comey's letter. Trump probably could have won without the ads given the mass social-media-blitz amplified by troll farms.
 
I would say that the ads are only a small part of the allegations of what the Russians did to interfere, and whether or not they were effective is a wholly different question as to whether Trump is inculpated in their existence.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
White House staff on temporary security clearances - including Jared Kushner - have had their clearances downgraded. No mention of Ivanka Trump, although it's hard to say whether that's because she's unaffected, or because reporting on problems with the White House tends to ignore her.
Click to expand...

Gee, I wonder what could have happened?

Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.

Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said.
Click to expand...

What a shock!
 
And speaking of criminal enterprises the Trumps are involved in, I went looking for Ivanka's connection to using Trump branded diamonds in money laundering schemes. It seems rather unlikely so many of Trump's brands and people on his campaign team are involved in different money laundering schemes.

Not sure if this was posted upthread. GQ: Ivanka Trump's Old Jewelry Business Is Now Caught Up in an Alleged Fraud Scheme
Throw a dart at a map of the world and there’s a solid chance it will land near a spot where a Trump family business has allegedly gotten caught up in a money laundering scheme.

There’s Panama, where the Trump Ocean Club is said to have washed dirty cash for Russian gangsters and South American drug cartels. There’s Azerbaijan and the Trump Baku, where the money allegedly being laundered was said to belong to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. And of course, there’s the Trump Soho in Manhattan, a magnet for money from Kazakhstan and Russia, and a property that one former executive on the project now calls “a monument to spectacularly corrupt money-laundering and tax evasion."...

The Trumps are not the only Western business owners whose ventures have been tied to alleged money laundering and fraud schemes, but they are the only ones who are also in charge of American foreign policy, making the entanglements—and possible points of leverage—that arise from such ventures matters of national security. ...
Click to expand...

And this is why it is legit that Ivanka's role in the matter is news worthy:
In recent months, Trump’s father, President Donald Trump, and her husband, fellow White House adviser Kushner, have waded aggressively into a civil war within the Arab world. In June, shortly after a trip to Saudi Arabia, Trump endorsed a move by the Saudis, the Emiratis, and others to blockade Qatar even as his own State and Defense departments struck a more conciliatory tone.

As it so happens, the Commercial Bank of Dubai—which was created by royal decree and remains partly owned by the Emirati government—made its subpoena request around the same time.
Click to expand...
 
blutoski said:
It also assumes free transactions. If I have a cheap $10 per transaction fee, it will hack off 50% of a weekly purchase, or 13% of a monthly purchase. Spacing out much further loses the benefits of dollar cost averaging.

This is probably gets closer to Fast Eddie B's question. For most people, it's not easy to get up and running with a continuous investment habit that pays off in the real world. Their poor credit means a broker won't touch them, or the transaction fees are proportionally high compared to the investment capital, not to mention they probably self-insure or have high deductions, so all their stocks get liquidated to pay for medical crisis funding every few years.

I think I read that almost a third of Americans are 2 weeks away from a financial crisis. Paycheque to paycheque is not a credible investment environment.
Click to expand...

Additionally...

Though this has changed relatively recently, it takes money to set up a brokerage account. 35 Years ago, when I started not living from hand to mouth, and could set aside a few dollars a month, I set out to find out how to buy stocks.

I discovered you can't buy stock from a company you want to invest in. You had to buy blocks of stock, minimally, but rarely, 100 shares. Of course, the per share price was more than I was looking at buying for a month. The ones that you could get 100 shares from had the highest per share prices. This is when I learned about Brokerage accounts.

To get one of those, it would take a minimum of $10,000 balance. So, that was right out. But, I learned in places like Money magazine that you didn't have to use bad, expensive Brokerages, it turns out your local bank likely also did Brokerage accounts, and you could do it with a much smaller balance! Yep, if you had a balance in any of your accounts of $100,000, you could set up a brokerage account with a mere $1,000 balance. $2,500 if you didn't put that money in your pillow into their bank.

But, if you don't have the kind of money above, you can still be a "player" in the stock market by buying mutual funds. You buy the mutual fund, they buy the stock. And, the price of entry was only $750.

Fine, I could save my money in a passbook savings account until I saved $2,500. But, I kept hearing I did not need to settle for a passbook savings account. "T-Bills are for you!" the banks told me... if I had $10,000. Don't have $10,000, CDs are for you! No, they weren't.

Hey, Lottery tickets are exciting! It's better than [literally] nothing!
 
Last edited:
It's tragic how we were on the cusp of peace in the mid-east, only to have a bureaucratic snafu muck things up. Soon we'll be saying, Where's Jared when we need him? Fortunately for us, the security clearance downgrade won't prevent Jared from modernizing the federal government and solving the opioid crisis.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom