By David Schaeffer

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I’m just not sure anything will actually really happen
while the market continues to rage.  At the end of the day,
if we could put our differences aside and focus on
common goals, we can actually get things done!

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However you look at the current President of United States, he is still our President. We can all agree that he is not articulate with the press, and not consistent in his public statements. At the end of the day, we need to get important stuff done. We voted for him, now we need to support him, so we can actually get what our country needs. We are like the crowd at the hometown game. We are the 12^th man on the field. We can boo and hiss, or we can rally
for the common goal. I choose the latter.

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We need to FULLY employ our citizens and make up for over 12 years of zero wage growth. We need to fix the healthcare system for the 8% of Americans that need it. (Yup, the Affordable Care Act only affects 8% of the population. Seems like more, but no, just 8%.) We need to rebuild our country’s infrastructure from the ground up. We need to CREATE American jobs. Which really means re-educating our workforce for important future-proof jobs, not service work. Modern work, like computer programming, is now called “coding”. The simple repetitive jobs are going away very quickly. Cashiers are being replaced by self-service checkouts. Wait staff at restaurants are aided by tableside tablets for drink refills and bill payment, and they too will soon become obsolete. Farming thousands of acres of America’s heartland are now plowed and harvested by remote-controlled, and self-driving equipment. Autonomous drones now survey miles of fence lines instead of cowboys. As for auto and home insurance sales, 42% of this type of insurance is purchased online without the need for human salespeople. Chatbots (artificially intelligent robots) are the first responders for most major companies when a consumer initiates an online chat.  The Washington Post published a great many stories created autonomously by artificially intelligent software programs…not human journalists!

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If the last paragraph was completely foreign, I’m sorry. Today is different from any time in our past. Technology is progressing extremely fast. Today’s startup companies may follow a path unheard of to business leaders of the past. They may NEVER make a profit, on purpose!

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Our President is from the old school. Back in the days of Vanderbilt and Rockefeller, there was a term called “Robber Barron”.  This is from a period of time when our country was growing at a pace so quickly, the world took notice as the United States became the most productive country on our planet. In those days, there was a similar disparity between rich and poor. The rich got richer and the poor…well, stayed poor.

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While the stock market is raging, 103 months without a significant decline, we still have very little inflation. Wage growth shows signs of improvement, but there is little growth in our tax base or bond interest rates.

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To fund public projects, the government needs to write a check, or issue a bond to fund the project. Since most state and local governments are not sitting on any excess money, issuing a bond is the only alternative. Hmmm,

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bonds are currently paying 1% to 2% with short term maturities. To get a 5% tax-free municipal bond, it won’t mature until 2050.  So… we sit and wait.

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I’m just not sure anything will actually really happen while the market continues to rage.  At the end of the day, if we could put our differences aside and focus on common goals, we can actually get things done!