ALPERN AT LARGE-Wow! I feel like an idiot--to date, when the issue of our tough economic times comes up, I've been advising my patients to do what it takes to get their healthcare needs taken care of, to get multiple jobs (if necessary) to pay their rent/mortgages and child-related bills (I work 6-7 days a week, as an example, with multiple jobs) , and to expand their skill sets and hireability.
What I SHOULD have suggested was...buy more stocks!
After all, we all KNOW that long-term investing is critical to our retirement, so now that our economy is ALL recovered, and things are back to the way they were before Washington fixed the "Great Recession of 2008" and going swimmingly well, what's to keep us all from spending that extra cash burning a hole in our pocket on the stocks?
Stocks are going gangbusters, right? Certainly, they did just great last year--and if the stock market is good enough for the 1%, then it's good enough for the rest of us, right?
And those disgusting white, male Republicans warning us that the stock market rally is phony, and is predicated on the Fed printing money and masking our debt/deficit by buying up bonds and artificially propping up Wall Street? To hell with them--they just want this party for themselves...so join in and invest now!
Certainly, I max out on my retirement savings portfolios--which is a critical reason for why I have multiple jobs. But I would think that my patients--who predominantly range from the middle-class and slightly above or below the poverty level--would have the smarts to do the same thing.
Because wages and full-time jobs (with kick-butt benefits) are just out there for the taking, and because housing and energy/utility prices are at all-time lows...so why on earth shouldn't they all go for stocks and investing?
After all, if the stocks go up, then our municipal and state pension crisis goes away--and that's a good thing, right? And my patients really need to stop whining about how food and gas are unaffordable, because all of our economic indicators say that inflation is pretty much a non-issue! Get some cheap solar panel installation for the roof, and it's mo' money, mo' money, mo' money!
Anyone who called the President a "socialist" now really owes the President an apology for that awful moniker, because he clearly is a Wall Street-savvy kind of guy--and yet he thinks of the little guy all the time, what with the wage inequalilty he rightfully decries.
Because the little guy just ISN'T hurting, and needs to do what us professionals and still-employed folks need to do...get all that extra cash you have and start INVESTING!
Damn...why didn't I think of that? So, to my patients who are middle- and lower-income folks, stop just fixating on that food, rent and medicine fetish and wake up. It's Wall Street that's where the big bucks are, so get a piece of that action before it's too late!
(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected] This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us . The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 9
Pub: Jan 31, 2014