"DSK" wrote in message
...
Easy... ever expanding credit.


Maxprop wrote:
Not in my case. I have no credit debt beyond my home.


Means nothing. People take cash-out refi's all the time, to pay for
accumulated debt or to splurge on a home entertainment system. I saw a
poster the other day advertising a bank offer of 125% on your home's
appraised value.

Not here. We have a 15 year fixed rate mortgage loan that's 2/3 paid up.
No re-fi.


Another explanation is that you aren't including investment returns in
your "current income" (which indeed they shouldn't be under many
circumstances).


Just because I'm not including my investment proceeds in my income does
not imply that my income is not substantial.

?

What did I say, exactly? Anything that implied what your investment income
is (or is not)?

I have no investment income. It is reinvested.

... And I guess I should have stated that we could draw our current
combined family income without touching the principle. The reason we can
do that is quite simple: the principle is also substantial. Don't
always attempt to find the red herring in every situation. Nothing fishy
here--just sound investments. Not bad for a "neocon," eh?


Congratulations.

Thank you.

Did you choose to be a neo-conservative so that you could be the sole
voice of fiscal reason in the group?

I didn't know I was one until you labeled me so.

... Obviously the larger the nest egg the better, but to fallaciously
inflate life expectancies in order to sell something is bogus.


Agreed, but obviously it's not working. The U.S. has a negative savings
rate and there's little or no sign it's going up from here.


I heard that the day after I posted that.

It's been in the fiscal news for years that the U.S. savings rate is
dropping from low to nothing. Few if any of the pundits thought it would
actually go negative, or stay that way for this long.

I suspected it would go negative, and continue to slide further in that
direction. My brother and I had this discussion about five years ago.

... Not good news for the government, who undoubtedly will be supporting
a substantial percentage of the population on down the road.


Why should they? Just because the gov't has taken up the task of driving
the middle class into poverty, and extinguishing the U.S.'s economic base,
doesn't mean that they're going to take any responsibility for the
consequences.

They've already assumed the pensions for at least one major company, and I
have no doubt they will do so for GM as well in the future. And when the
day comes that SS is defunct, and it will come, it's doubtful the
politicians will allow people to die in the streets from starvation. Let's
hear it for welfare. As for driving the middle class into poverty and
tanking the US economy, you give the gummint far too much credit. Many
factors outside the influence of the government affect such things. And
frankly I'm not interested in living in a nanny-state with the government
wiping my ass and brushing my teeth for me. The US government is hardly
omnipotent--hell it screws up nearly everything it does now. How do you
expect it to fix the ills of an economy that can't compete on a global level
any longer? And the rich will always get richer--that's axiomatic.


Actually, it's somewhat unfair to say "the gov't" is doing this, since
it's really the fault of the politicians currently in charge; who are not
only executing short-sighted & selfish policies but also replacing
functioning departments with patronage dependent partisan lackeys.

While I don't agree that such politicians have achieved that solely by
themselves, I do agree that they are doing little to correct the problems,
not that they are capable of doing so.


OTOH why not retire on credit cards? You can always shuffle your balance
from one card to the next. This modern world of finance is a freeloader's
dream scenario.


I've no doubt someone (other than yourself) has thought of that as a
retirement plan.


It seems to be the basic plan for national fiscal policy.

Every house of (credit) cards gets knocked down eventually.

Max