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Sadly, most Americans read the list beginning with COVID payments and think it's a list of government policies that make life MORE affordable. They can't make the connection to why these policies have caused things to cost more. And the article doesn't explain it; the article assumes people understand.

I appreciate that the author covered what respondents consider financial success. I wish the author or the study had covered why Black Americans think they need $100K more than what other Americans think they need. What is it in the Black culture that causes them to need so much more? Or is it a lack of understanding of how a person could live with money and so they just choose a high number? Or do they have so much more debt than others?

Interestingly, the author sees warning signs in the changed definition of financial success. Yes, it's scary that people think they need $186K to stay out of debt and be able to afford future costs. (Other than our mortgage, we've done that with much less and four kids, but it is getting harder.) However, I'm glad that people are defining financial success in terms of something they can control. "Make a million dollars" is not nearly as controllable as "live debt free." I didn't say the latter was easy .... It's just more controllable via decisions and sacrifices vs being in a job position to earn a million dollars.

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It’s called monetary devaluation. It’s not inflation unless you bend over backward and insert one’s head to use the nonsensical Keynesian argument that printing infinite money does not devalue a fiat currency.

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Didn't I make clear what I mean by "inflation" here? Or did you stop reading at that word?

>>Inflation is an increase in the money supply. “Inflation”, a rise is the general price level, results when the money supply is increased by more than real wealth increases - Doug Casey.

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If I look around with an eye to take care of number one. I am spreading my assets into more than one continent.

The idea that you are going to stay in the USA and suffer does not appeal to me at all.

I am returning to Argentina in late August and by them my SRL will have its CUIT released from the government. I am unable to function as a business without the CUIT.

The rest will be hard work.

If you wait for the USD to fall you might now be able to get out in one piece.

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when the USA falls, the world will fall with it. we've got more seeds, machinery fertilizer diesel fuel, tools, etc than anyone. weve got a mild climate and if you bicycle 1000 miles in a couple of weeks, you can change your temps by 40F degrees. There's plasces just 100 miles apart in the rocks where you can do that. If you use plastic green houses, hot rocks and hot water heating, you can grow some crops in those green houses year round We can be armed, here, If you go almost anywhere else, you'll be at the mercy of any 2 punks with a machete.

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I live in NW Florida and everyone is 100% prepped up here for weather events. If you have ever traveled through southern Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi you already know we are surrounded by food and military bases. I have bear off of my front yard and alligator in the water off of my backyard.

I live in the shadow of what is know as the school house for F-22 and F-35 pilot training at Eglin AFB. Ranger school is a couple hours away and the Army helicopter training school is closer.

Having said this I can see the need for a further step outside the USA. I am staying in the same neighborhood that Doug Casey has an apartment in Buenos Aires called Recoleta.

In Argentina you have full rights of firearm ownership. With strong private property rights.

Argentina is the eighth largest country with every resource you have in the USA.

There is no perfect country.

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A great overview and snapshot of the present reality… here in New Zealand our housing situation is no different, the national average now a tad over NZD$1million or circa USD$607,758.44 at the prevailing Forex Cross rate.. and that’s the average, won’t buy you a lot… especially with NZ’s older housing stock.. to buy a modern architectural build will be well into the upper 1 early 2m’s… pretty sick really.

Predicate the survey result of the much vaunted US dream, it seems that it can be unequivocally stated that the multinationals and their coterie of globalist Keynesian economics acolytes have all but succeeded in their quest to enslave and ensure fiscal penury is de rigour the new way of living, at least for those who will be fortunate enough to be working, for those not so fortunate to be holding a job, full time employment a real career vocation, the future is bleak, a life of dependency, of being reliant on government largesse is the future…

Such though sadly as we know is welcomed by many, preferring to be sloths vs head down bum up, grafting and toiling for a living, the reality of sustaining said slothful lifestyle and existence is fraught with risk, more so in the indebted Western economies that we know have binged and gorged themselves on debt, spending for decades more than they earn… simply put and as your article with attendant statistics equivocates, printing and running their nations is patently unaffordable and doomed to fail, just as those who responded the questions put to them replied, tellingly, their existence benchmarked the actual realities of meeting the true costs of living are woefully inadequate, interestingly and perhaps most poignantly in order to get the message home and through our political class, just as individuals and households confirmed they are struggling even at the present with credit, maxed out, akin to governments printing more and more debt each year, there comes a point where it’s simply not possible to keep doing so, the point when spending needs reined in, when for your very survival budgets need balance or better yet, to derive a surplus, irrespective scale in order to put away, to not spend to the last cent or beyond..

Hence just as we know our political elites are bereft of common sense with regard foreign policy, so to they most definitely economic policy…

These Western nations are at least positioned mid table namely, NZ 47% as at March 2024, Australia 63% as at end of Fiscal Year 2023 with FDR Germany at 64% (With provision Govt Debt to be increased up to a max 70% from the previous statutory set limit of 60%) as for the rest, the Debt to GDP figure ranges from 105% U.K up to 272% for Japan that sits atop an eye watering debt level, followed Venezuela 241%, Sudan 186%, Greece 173%, Singapore 168%, Italy 142%, United States 131% whilst those nations with the lowest Govt Debt to GDP ratios are Brunei 2.1%, Kuwait 2.9%,

Cayman Islands 4.5%, Afghanistan 7.4%, Turkmenistan 8%, Azerbaijan 11.7%, Burundi 14.5%,

DR Congo 14.6%, Russia 16.3%, Palestine 18.5%.

Whilst the biggest mover in Globally successful economies has been Russia who both the IMF and World Bank recently confirmed had rocketed past both Germany 2021 and then Japan 2024 to now be the 4th largest economy in the World and that they opined with at least 38% of its economy being a black economy, untaxed, which or rather when taxed and becoming part of the mainstream economy, will nearly catapult Russia into 3rd highest ranked Global economy at a tad of total GDP just under USD$15Trillion from the present $11Trillion.. such will be the impact of the Russian government gaining tax revenues from the present 38% considered unregulated or black. This would put Russia just behind India, however the biggest takeaway is that of the top 4 largest global economies 3 or BRICS+ members.. the U.S with its $28Trillion economy being in a clear 2nd position.

Even scarier is that in Russia and the former Soviet Republics home ownership levels average 87% of the population with nearly 68% of that number owning their homes outright, debt/mortgage free, begs the question, fiscally who is better off, the indebted Western populace or the predominantly debt free Russians, Belarusians and former Soviet populace living in the Baltics, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania? I think I know where I’d rather be from a fiscal perspective.

Time therefore to get your personal financial house in order, these Western debt levels are unsustainable, will result in a major correction, a correction many more learned than I opine will be much, much worse than anything ever experienced previously by way of a market decline, many saying even the events of 1929’s Great Depression will seem sedentary comparatively speaking given the fallout from the coming event..

The entire Western fiat system is on the edge of the abyss, a debt trap has been created because of fiscal ineptitude made worse with the politicising and weaponising the Reserve Currency, read Sanctions, market (Stocks, Bonds, Metals LIBOR and Comex) manipulations together the publicised confiscation of sovereign wealth including the truly dystopian now practice of debanking anyone considered antithetical to established dogma.

Consequently de-dollarisation is accelerating with many nations openly doing that which both Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gadaffi had confirmed they were to do, break away from using the USD in trade transactions for their exports and imports, the result of which we now know, Iraq invaded under the pretext of WMD’s and Gadaffi’s Libya bombed back to the Stone Age, the country now being a dysfunctional non state headed by warlords, slavery and human trafficking among its biggest revenue streams, both leaders assassinated, only difference this time, albeit the rhetoric is the same against Putin, the architect of the takedown of the Western monetary system, Russia is not Iraq or Libya, is heavily armed and better able to defend itself, to back its policies and policy positions, ditto China, India.. thus the U.S has totally overreached, we are witnessing end of empire as the U.S like the wounded beast it and its elites, the multinationals and corporates led the bankers are only just realising, Putin who it must be remembered is both a law graduate and holds an P.hD in International Finance with a sub major in the Economics of Resource Management has been joined and greatly aided by his great bankers, the brilliant Sergei Glazeyev, economist, member of the National Financial Council of the Bank of Russia, and, since 2008, a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences together the outstanding and fiscal genius Elvira Nabiullina years long head of the Russian Central Bank, she who has been principally responsible for defeating Western sanctions have steered Russia into this position.

Little wonder Russian Embassies throughout the World report they have received unprecedented demand from Western countries of families wanting to migrate and take up residency into this nation strong on God, Faith, Church, family, education, nationalistic values … not for Russia the liberal woke Homo, Trans, Queer, DEI, Climate, Green, nor Sexualising of Children taking precedent and dominating the aforementioned traditional conservative values revered by and what for Russians is the core of their existence as people and as a nation, another reason the West despises Russia and its leader, Putin.

Seems to say it all me thinks, how can you argue against it…. simply put, it’s not much of a contest… Multipolarity a new paradigm, eagerly awaited, to be embraced, a new equitable world, a world where respect for International law, conventions, institutions and norms is paramount, where individual sovereignty reigns, where the primary ethos is non interference into the affairs of any other nation, wow, who’d have thought, wonder if that’s why more than 81 Nations are signed up to join BRICS+… funny that, who’d have ever thought it could be that simple, no bombs, death, destruction, assassination, regime change, coups, placing puppet dictators into power, bankrolling groups like Al Qaeda, ISIS, Nazis in Ukraine… funny that, amazing how building, respect, equanimity can have such a profound difference in the way the world views such countries, we’ll all it seems than the Western colonial elites, those who need to dominate, plunder, pillage, rule and oppress, whoever would have thought..

Kia Kaha from New Zealand

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60k gross means you clear 40k If both of you clear that much, you can have a decent life in Ok, saving a bit for retirement, IF you have no kids. 180, clears 120k and will not let you properly raise even one kid, without also ruining your retirement fund

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It really depends on where you live in the U.S., right? But what's wild to me is that only 6% of adults here make that kind of money. $186k, I mean... huge gap indeed.

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a kid aint PROPERLY raised until he can properly raise a couple of kids of his own. Today that takes a clear 50k per kid and it aint over with until he's 25 years old, either. If you invested that 100k in anything worth a hoot in hell, it would be worth 4 million $ in 25 years and it would be paying you a clear 200k per year, minimum. 25 years from now, inflation will mean that properly raising each of his kids will cost 200k per year, for 25years . WHaT will you teach a kid that lets him clear THAT kind of money , eh? We don't need 50 million neurosurgeons

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