Read other letters about this article

• Monday, December 1, 2008 10:51 AM

  Most of this advice

  is way too pat.

  The market will always go up over the long run, just diversify, don't even open the envelop for years.

  You know, some of these companies we each have a tiny piece of appear not just to be down but gone or very soon GONE. Those are real holes in our investments, not just market perturbations.

  Don't we need to connect ALL the columns of SALON and all the other info we have, not just look at our personal finances separately? I mean seriously, how in the world do you folks think the down slope on oil and other resource issues, what the hell do you think WATER, what do you think climate change, mean for our retirements if we are thinking of living to the 2020s, 30s, 40s, 50s or beyond? Jesus! This is SERIOUS stuff, not just debating society words we can enter or avoid at will.

  Are we in for global resource wars beginning in the 20-teens? Why WOULDN'T we be in for them? Obama seems to be determined to be a Republican-realist with a great grin. He's not getting us out of this resource economy, he is not criticizing the obscene consumerist assumptions that undergird our lifestyles-- mine included. I love Obama, but every clear eyed listener-reader knows his core demagoguery is that the middle class is innocent. A real leader would be telling us the Western middle class is the most fatal thing that has ever existed on this planet.

  I spent part of T-giving with the brothers-in-law with the business degrees. Not a clue. Disappointed to actual grief that their moron fraternity brother financial advisors have turned out to be idiots. The market will go up, social security won't be there-- these are the counsels of this pack of golf course jackals. Never thought for five minutes about how the pieces connect. It is both too hard of work, and too morally unbearable.

  I think the markets WILL go up and down in familiar ways for about a decade-- so, dear letter writer, I guess with your twenty-five year window, you can let it ride, or not, for a while. But the real security in your old age will be in new energy technology, new agricultural practices, newly attractive more modest lifestyles, new political structures, and new structures of trust.

  I'll stop. But I plead with all readers to see those retirement envelopes for what the feedback they are on the lives we are living.

  —Junior Wells Read Junior Wells's other letters
  Permalink
  Flag
  Click "Submit Flag" if you feel this post is inappropriate. Explain why below if you wish.

  Cancel