Gratitude - Thanksgiving Edition
Only one week late.
Image by Oberholster Venita from Pixabay
Okay, by the time you read this, Thanksgiving will be over.
As I write, it's the day before Thanksgiving, and so I'm now feeling in the mood for gratitude.
Let's go deeper than the ordinary thank-you's.
In keeping with the subject of this newsletter - money - I'm sticking with economic-related subjects, although maybe some of these are a stretch, I’ll admit.
I'll spare you the specific things in my personal life I'm grateful for.
1. We’re living in an incredible universe that's hospitable to us.
Did you know? - the many formulas of the laws of physics and chemistry are extremely "fine-tuned" to support not only life, but the stars and planets.
In many of these laws and variables, just a tiny tweak on the far right side of a decimal point would result in a universe incapable of supporting galaxies, let alone life.
I don't remember the exact numbers, but if the force of gravity were just a teensy weensy little bit stronger, all the mass in the universe would by now be collapsed into a single black hole.
If the force of gravity were just a teensy weensy little bit weaker, all the mass in the universe would just be individual atoms separate from every other atom, so we'd just be this loose cosmic dust floating in outer space.
2. We’re alive.
Many people aren't.
Many more potential people have never even existed.
Just think: every healthy sperm cell and every healthy egg cell are capable of producing a human being.
Fertile-age women produce such an egg cell every month. Men send out thousands of sperm cells with every ejaculation.
The vast majority of sexual acts do not result in pregnancy.
The potential genetic combinations of human beings is extremely large.
The odds against our existence are tremendously large - yet, here we are, 8 billion of us.
3. We live in a rich, freedom-loving country.
We were the first to recognize intrinsic human rights.
We're far from perfect, but we're working on it.
We have widespread respect for the rule of law, which makes Trump's attacks on the system so horrifying.
Yes, our democracy is threatened as never before by the orange wannabe dictator. Yes, millions of Americans have deliberately blinded themselves to the reality of what a terrible person he is and what a terrible president he'd make if re-elected.
But we have American heroes, including:
Fanni Willis, District Attorney of Fulton County, Georgia
Alvin Bragg, District Attorney of Manhattan
Letitia James, District Attorney of New York
Jack Smith, Special Prosecutor for the US Department of Justice
These folks are working overtime to hold Trump's feet to the fires of legal accountability.
If we're lucky, the trials they set in motion will help some Trump supporters puke up the Trump Kool-Aid they drank, so they don't vote for him next November.
4. Far greater wealth and abundance lie ahead.
Powerful, revolutionary technologies are advancing more quickly than most people realize.
For all the problems we face, scientists are moving forward.
AI, cryptos, the blockchain, space flight, gene editing . . . they're all laying the ground work for a better world.
5. Science knows so much more about health, fitness and the good practice of medicine.
When I began paying attention to nutrition and living a healthy lifestyle, Linus Pauling was still pushing the value of high dosage Vitamin C for curing almost everything, including cancer. (TLDR: It doesn't.)
Adele Davis's four books on nutrition were bestsellers. Back then, before the Internet, ordinary readers couldn’t look up her numerous citations to published research articles, so we didn’t know she often lied about what the articles found.
At one time, supplement sellers pushed the concept of antioxidant supplements as the Fountain of Youth. (They're not, and actually hurt when consumed as supplements and not within real food.)
Then came the craze for fish oil.
And, on and on, we're learning much more.
When you do need standard medical care, it's now far more advanced, and constantly improving, thanks to advances in technology.
6. The United States government.
It has its limits. It makes many mistakes. It could do more, but many governments do less.
It has grown in power, but does so in reaction to demonstrated inability of the private sector to support the population. It's no coincidence the modern era of "Big Government" began under President Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
As others have noted, the power coalitions of that era are now breaking up. That's why our current politics are so unstable.
Despite all the activism of "conservatives" who bitch and moan about high taxes and overregulation of business, our government promotes and supports American business to an extraordinary degree..
If nothing else, having a government to provide physical, legal and social infrastructure makes it possible for businesses to operate.
Every business needs that infrastructure, even small ones.
The summer I was 15, I earned money by mowing lawns.
I was absolutely a small business, yet I still depended on the ability to walk my mower down to the nearby Shell Station and refill the tank with gas.
That gas may have come from Saudi Arabia or Mexico or the United States. But it didn't come out of my back yard. It had to be refined, so it may have gone through the Shell refinery at nearby Woodriver, where my father used to work.
But I didn't refine it.
It had to be transported by pipeline and truck from the ground to the refinery to the gas station.
Besides, my mother was able to buy the lawn mower only because there was a system connecting suppliers of steel and other raw materials with plants that manufactured the parts of the mower, including the internal combustion engine - and another plant assembled the mower.
Even if she could have made the mower, she couldn't have designed it. That took specialized engineers.
My mother paid for it in US dollars, not gold.
When I mowed the lawns, my customers paid me in US dollars, not gold.
I was able to buy record albums of Jefferson Airplane, The Beatles and others - using US dollars, not gold.
When libertarians say government isn't necessary because it's inefficient, so only the private sector can really meet our human needs . . .
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Are they insane?
Don't they realize how completely they depend on global communications, transportation and trade - all supervised by national governments and agencies?
Without government to keep order and enforce laws, human civilization would devolve back to hunting and gathering.
Agricultural societies require some overarching organization and stability.
Industrial societies require even more such infrastructure.
Sure, if we got rid of all government right now, some people would get by for a while on their guns and ammo.
But the manufacture of modern weapons requires organization, a large global network of supply chains, capital, large financial institutions and much more.
Halt that manufacturing, and the current owners of guns (especially those with a large stock of ammo) will do fine for a few months or years.
But what would happen after the ammo runs out?
You look around for bows and arrows?
As I see it, a well-run government, country and society needs a balance of government looking out for the benefit of all citizens on an equal basis AND a private sector of entrepreneurs looking to get rich by solving particular problems.
We need a Goldilocks balance.
Too much government, and you get the Soviet Union, Maoist China and North Korea - dictatorship.
Too little government, and the only power comes from the local warlords - Sudan, Somalia and 1920's China.
To a large degree, the United States gets it right.
Healthcare is probably the most obvious POSSIBLE exception.
7. Stocks that pay dividends.
Okay, I had to go back to this one - the bedrock of my personal finance/investing advice.
Load up on stocks that pay dividends.
Reinvest the dividends by buying more stock.
Rinse and repeat until your portfolio supports you.
Conclusion
Remember to appreciate even benefits that seem so obvious we take them for granted - such as the very existence of the universe and your existence as a person.
My widowed mother's investments enabled her to live a comfortable lifestyle for over 50 years, beating the pants off the Wall Street gurus even though she couldn't have read a balance sheet to save her life.
Find out how.
Check out my Income Investing Secrets book right now
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