What's Changed? What's Different This Time?

This raises another question: how will the deflation of the Everything Bubble play out?

Causes generate effects. As noted in my previous post, if causal conditions have changed, the "guarantee" offered by statistics is empty. This leads to a simple question: what's changed? Have the causal conditions changed enough to generate different results?

The status quo assumes the economy never really changes, and so the stimulus that worked last time will work again. This ignores the fundamental reality that change is constant and once causal conditions change, the effects will necessarily change as well.

So what's changed in the 42 years since 1982? Why 1982? 1982 marked the end of the stagflationary 1970s and the start of the 40+-year bull market in stocks, real estate, and until recently, bonds.

1. China was just emerging from the Cultural Revolution. After 40 years of astounding growth, it's struggling.

2. Debt levels across all sectors--public, corporate and household--were low compared to the present.

3. The global Baby Boom was entering peak earning, household formation, home buying, and starting enterprises. Now they're retiring and entering the phase of selling assets to downsize and fund retirement.

4. Computer technology entered the mainstream economy and boosted productivity. Now we have AI but its long-term effect on global productivity is unproven.

5. Diminishing returns are manifesting across the global economy, as what worked so well in the boost phase no longer generates the same results.

China has changed in many ways. Scale matters. When a company is small and it boosts revenues by $1 billion, the stock rockets to the moon. Once it's a trillion-dollar company, adding $1 billion no longer has the same effect. In fact, it's a red flag that growth has slowed. Once profit margins slip, the stock crashes, as the growth story has ended.

The same causal conditions are present in China, which has reached a vast scale at the top of the S-Curve. China boosted its economy for decades by inflating an unprecedented real estate bubble, which created an enormous wealth effect in its burgeoning middle class. But all bubbles pop, and the concentration of household wealth in real estate means the decline is obliterating the heady sense of confidence generated by soaring assets.

China has also reached limits in exports and domestic consumption, for a variety of reasons.



The "never fails" China credit impulse has failed. Every economy that depends on expanding credit for its growth eventually enters a liquidity trap, where lowering interest rates and lending standards no longer boost assets or consumption because 1) households are wary of adding more debt or 2) households cannot afford to add more debt, even at low rates of interest.

China is also mired in the middle income trap, where the elite holds the majority of wealth and the rural populace is still earning very low incomes.

China pulled the global economy out of the 2008-09 Global Financial Meltdown, that's not going to happen again. Once causal conditions change, so do the results.

The astounding expansion of credit/debt globally is an example of how a "solution" generates "problems" that only get worse the more "solution" is applied. Flooding the economy with low-cost credit works wonders when debt levels are low and there is pent-up demand for credit.

But once an economy is saturated with credit and staggering under the weight of servicing existing credit, adding more debt creates a problem more credit cannot solve: the greater the burdens of debt, the higher the risks of default.

Global debt has been rising on the shaky foundation of the Everything Bubble: as assets have bubbled higher, they expand the collateral available to borrow against. Once the bubble pops, then the collateral evaporates and the lender is under water: the assets is worth less than the loan amount. There is no escape for either borrower or lender.

Demographics have changed. The massive global Baby Boom is exiting the workforce and starting to liquidate assets to fund retirement. This transition from buying assets to selling assets raises the question: who will buy all these assets at today's nosebleed overvaluations? Younger generations lacks the capital and income to buy assets at these levels of overvaluation, and there is nothing on the horizon that could change that asymmetry.

Selling pushes down asset prices, which then reduces the collateral supporting global debt, which then lights the fuse of a credit crisis that can't be resolved by lowering credit and lending standards. Diminishing returns are not reversed by doing more of what's failed--they're accelerated into unstable crises by doing more of what's failed.

As for the hype that AI is going to save us: what we see as causal conditions are stupendous expenses, not gains in productivity. Economists puzzled over the "productivity gap" in the 1980s as new technologies entered the mainstream economy: companies and households were buying the new technologies but productivity wasn't responding as expected.

Rosy projections are not causal; real productivity gains take time, and don't always play out as projected. If AI eventually boosts productivity across the entire economy, is may take a decade to play out. The current credit-asset bubble that's popping will not be "saved by AI."

This raises another question: how will the deflation of the Everything Bubble play out? Richard Bonugli and I discuss this in our new podcast How Asset Deflation Could Play Out (35:37 min).

There are two basic scenarios, and which one plays out depends on the causal conditions emerging in the present.

One is a massive deflation in the real-world value of assets hidden behind a stagflationary rise in nominal asset values, per the 1970s. When the Dow Jones Industrial Average finally exceeded its old high around 1,000 in 1982, everyone who had held on through the 1970s cheered: "we're whole again! We got our money back!" Alas, the purchasing power of the Dow 1,000 stocks had crashed by 57% since the 1973 stock market top of Dow 1,051 and by a staggering 66% since the Dow top in 1966.



The other scenario is a no-frills crash. I prepared this chart of the Nasdaq stock index based on bubble symmetry. Crashes come in a variety of flavors, but the end result is the same.



What's changed? Many things. What will be different about the results? That is unknown, but we do know that statistics drawn from previous sets of causal conditions have no bearing on what happens in the current causal conditions. This time is different isn't always what we expect; it can also play out with extreme prejudice.

New podcast: How Asset Deflation Could Play Out (35:37 min)

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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So the Economy Now Depends on Stocks Which Depend on Front-Running the Fed--And This Is Fine?

Is an economy based on the wealth effect generated by front-running the front-runners really that stable?

So the entire economy depends on the stock market going up as punters front-run the Fed--and this is not only fine, it's optimal, the best arrangement the world has ever seen. On which ethereal plane is this considered sane, much less optimal?

That the real-world economy--a neofeudal confection featuring a parasitic, predatory Nobility vacuuming up virtually all the gains of the Everything Bubble while the bottom 80% stumble along in debt-serfdom, resigned to serving the top 10% who own 90% of the assets bubbling higher--is teetering on the precipice, clinging to the wealth effect of soaring assets, courtesy of the Federal Reserve, for its lifeline is, well, insane.

Speaking of gaslighting--how many people do you know who call this arrangement by its real name, neofeudalism? No one? How many people are trembling with excitement because every time the Fed cut rates at or near the all-time highs in the stock market, stocks were higher the next year--20 times out of 20? Hundreds? Thousands? A great multitude to be sure.

And this outstanding track record of the Fed stimulating the wealth effect is generating ecstatic euphoria in exactly which cohorts? The bottom 50% who own a single-noise 2.6% of the nation's financial assets? Households paying half their net income in rent? No, the euphoria is limited to the cohort which stands to boost its already gargantuan gains from Fed stimulus--the top 10%.

Does anyone actually buy a stock or index based on the fundamentals? We all answer "yes" because that's the acceptable cover story for the reality, which is Fed, Fed, Fed: the Fed is going to cut rates, so front-run the rate cut, and then front-run everyone front-running rate cuts, until the golden day the Fed finally does cut rates, then buy, buy, buy, as the statistics--20 out of 20!-- guarantee a huge gain regardless of price-earning ratios, revenues, profit margins, or any of that fundamental-analysis nonsense.

Sure, the big research houses spew out reams of the stuff, but nobody actually pays any attention to it, despite their lip-service to the contrary: the only real trigger for pushing the "buy" button is the Fed. Everything else is just the cover story that gives an impression of serious analysis and "investing."



The economy is dependent on the wealth effect fueling the incomes and spending of the top 10% who collect roughly half the income and account for almost half of all consumption--the high-end consumption that keeps the economy afloat. Should the Fed's next round of financial fentanyl fail to boost housing and stocks even higher, then the income and spending of those reaping the gains of the asset bubble might stop spending, and the economy will promptly crater.



Let's summarize: the US economy is completely dependent on one thing: the top 10% front-running everyone front-running Fed stimulus. So front-running the front-runners is the sole support of "growth."

As for all those gleaming statistics promising fat returns to front-runners, they're shiny but they're not causation, or even correlation: if the causal conditions have changed, then the results will be different, regardless of what happened in the past under different conditions.

Have causal conditions changed? Well, how about China, which has transitioned from the engine that pulled the global economy uphill with its famed credit impulse, to the current stagnation caused by its monumental real estate bubble popping, deflating not just consumption but the entire wealth effect that's fueled its economy for two decades.

If causal conditions have changed, the "guarantee" offered by statistics is empty.

Those holding index funds convinced that "stocks always go up 8% a year over time" will be bagholders because causal conditions have changed, and the smart money has been selling to retail punters enthralled by statistics--20 out of 20, we can't lose!--and those buying and holding index funds because that's worked so well since front-running the Fed became the entire market and economy, circa 2009.

Contrary to what stock market statisticians claim, the world is not a mechanical device that spits out rallies when the crank is turned. Though it has been largely forgotten, we inhabit a moral universe, where the absolute faith in greed as the wellspring of plenty, the prideful confidence that our winnings at the Fed's casino were "earned" by our genius and hard work, while those who didn't own the assets bubbling higher slip into the abyss--all this hubris generates feedback.

Hubris invites Nemesis. Nemesis offers a curative lesson to greed and prideful over-confidence. We just don't know in what form or when, but the crank will turn and the results won't be predictably euphoric.

Is an economy based on the wealth effect generated by front-running the front-runners really that stable? Is an economy based on enriching the already rich so their wealth increases by tens of trillions of dollars as assets bubble higher a sound economy? Or is it an exploitive, parasitic neofeudal economy of extremes awaiting Nemesis? Perhaps we'll find out sooner than the front-running multitude expects.





New podcast: Is the Everything Bubble About to Pop? (37 min, 40 charts)

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

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I Want the "Rich Guys Internet"

Here's a quick outline of a "rich guys Internet", one where it costs money to participate but the payoff is a 10-fold improvement in the user experience.

That the Internet is now a toxic garbage dump is self-evident. Consider that Cloudflare Reports that Almost 7% of All Internet Traffic Is Malicious. This is akin to inflation, where the official 2.5% inflation rate has stripped us of at least 25% of the value of our wages--the cumulative impact is an order of magnitude greater than the headline number.

That 7% of malicious traffic--the toxic flood of spam, phishing, etc.--has degraded the user experience by 70%. Every user must expend sustained (and unpaid) effort--shadow work--to deal with the constant tyranny of hacks, patches, spam, phishing, SMS spam, changing passwords, etc., as well as the putrid sewage of intentionally harmful content.

Like fish slowly expiring in a toxic sea, we no longer even see what we're swimming in. Humans excel at habituating to the present, and so we've lost sight of how radically the Internet experience has changed in the past 25 years. We have lost track of how much of our time is now being squandered on shadow work to keep from being conned, defrauded, hacked, blackmailed, disrupted or poisoned on a daily basis.

This is the Internet's Garbage Time of History, and I want the "rich guys Internet", one stripped of all malicious traffic and garbage content. Impossible, you say? Not at all. Here's a quick outline of a "rich guys Internet", one where it costs money to participate but the payoff is a 10-fold improvement in the user experience.

The "rich guys Internet" (RGI) isn't intended to be a complete replacement of the Garbage Internet (GI); it's a secure compound for when we tire of the Garbage Internet. It's a second home that could be used as the primary residence should you choose.

1. No anonymity. Every participant has to have a verified human identity, the same procedure required to open a cryptocurrency trading account now: photo of the individual holding their passport, verified bank account, etc. Yes, yes, I can hear your screams: without anonymity, the black drones of the Globalists / Deep State will be hovering over my office within hours. Fine. You can keep your anonymous accounts in the GI (Garbage Internet). It's your choice.

And let's face it--if the black drones really want to find out who you are, that's no problem. Anonymity is nothing more than a thin veil. Our "protection" boils down to not being worth their attention.

Without anonymous accounts, there is no garbage. Nothing is allowed into the RGI (rich guys Internet) except traffic linked to a verified user. No more spam, phishing, etc. Any account linked to malicious traffic is immediately closed and the miscreant banned for life.

2. No data collection, none. No data collection is allowed. No trackers, cookies, nothing. Participants and content providers must agree to no data collection or they're excluded. In other words, no surveillance capitalism.

3. Organic search only, no "sponsored" anything. Search is search, not marketing in the guise of search. Search results are based solely on relevance, no gamed / paid placement. No ads on search results, either.

4. No ads anywhere. All ads are stripped from content.

5. Fees are paid to content providers for "clean" content. Any content provider who wants access to the RGI has to strip all content down to basic HTML. This reduces the potential for malicious leakage.

6. Encryption, triple firewalls, the works. The RGI is slower because the pipe from the Garbage Internet is narrow and it takes time to make sure nothing malicious is allowed in.

7. An RGI social media platform: no ads, no trolling, no algorithms, no garbage. Less "entertaining" perhaps, but if you want to be deranged, there's always the GI.

8. Secure email for users only. No ads, no spam, only messaging within the secure confines of the RGI.

9. High fees. You get what you pay for. Let's say it costs $50 a month. That's three fast-food meals or movie tickets or two lunches at a cafe. Is that unaffordable? Compared to what? How much is your shadow work time and mental health worth?

10. It's your choice. Nobody's forcing anyone to pay up to enjoy the benefits of the rich guys Internet.

So hey there billionaires. Instead of squandering hundreds of millions on yachts, why not spend a few bucks and set up a rich guys Internet that's semi-affordable to the masses?





New podcast: Is the Everything Bubble About to Pop? (37 min, 40 charts)

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

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2024, A Year of No Significance

Looking back, 2024 may well be viewed as insignificant compared to what lies ahead.

That 2024 could be a year of no significance does not compute given that what's being touted as the most important election in American history is 2024's landmark event, but in the focus of the longer lens of history, it may not matter as much as we expect.

If the election wasn't enough, the all-time stock market highs are the cherries on top.

The issue here isn't the people or the politics or the policies; it's the system itself reaching its limits, having exhausted all potential for the scale of change needed to stave off collapse. To better understand this historical context, we turn to Ray Huang's meticulous study of Chinese history, 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline:

"The year 1587 may seem to be insignificant; nevertheless, it is evident by that time the limit for the Ming dynasty had already been reached. It no longer mattered whether the ruler was conscientious or irresponsible, whether his chief counselor was enterprising or conformist, whether the generals were resourceful or incompetent, whether the civil officials were honest or corrupt, or whether the leading thinkers were radicals or conservatives--in the end they all failed to reach fulfillment."

In other words, it no longer matters who's nominally in charge, or the policies being put in place: the system has lost the capacity to adapt radically enough to surmount the novel challenges it now faces. That the Ming Dynasty--and many other imperial regimes throughout history--faced the same limits is unsurprising when we recall that humanity is still running Wetware 1.0, the operating system that enabled our emergence as a unique species around 200,000 years ago. We are hard-wired to reach a point of hubristic, delusional faith in our own godlike powers which invites Nemesis. We're there, but we don't yet realize it.

There are several key dynamics at work in this systemic exhaustion of the capacity to adapt radically enough to matter. One is self-interest: everyone getting a slice of the pie--from those receiving SNAP food stamps to billionaires evading taxes--has a stake in maintaining the status quo, and so nobody wants to risk upsetting the apple cart for fear that the change might reduce or eliminate their slice of the pie.

The net result is everyone will resist any reform radical enough to actually address the overlapping crises which threaten the status quo, which is every radical reform.



Here is Huang's summary of this same dynamic in 1587: "The bureaucratic rule of the empire had reached such an advanced stage that all the hidden needs and wants of thousands of individuals, along with their personal aspirations, were irreversibly linked to the gigantic status quo; now even an urgently needed technical reform could not be overtly attempted to disturb the delicate balance."

This delicate balance is currently maintained by borrowing as many trillions of dollars as needed to satisfy every constituency, from SNAP recipients to billionaires. That this is unsustainable is taboo, of course, but beneath the surface, the impossibility of maintaining this delicate balance is the core driver of the extreme political polarization that makes radical reform impossible: given that the delicate balance is unsustainable, the challenge now is to settle who wins and who loses, a battle that evaporates any middle ground and amplifies polarization.

This is the heart of Huang's study of Ming decline: the systems in place are limited by their structure such that any reform that will be acceptable to the system's dependents will leave the system--that requires radical reform to avoid collapse--completely untouched. "Innovations" and "reforms" can only be superficial and for show.

Given the limits of the system's structures and its destabilizing, unsustainable excesses, the entire system has only one option: decline to the point that a seemingly modest crisis disrupts the last shreds of coherence and the resulting nonlinear dynamics collapse the system.

That the status quo has reached the greased slide down the backside of the S-Curve is also taboo.



This quote from Michael Grant's succinct book The Fall of the Roman Empire strikes me as the keystone insight into western Rome's collapse: the elite's complacent belief in Rome's eternal success and their inability to recognize the novel challenges they faced.

"There was no room at all, in these ways of thinking, for the novel, apocalyptic situation which had now arisen, a situation which needed solutions as radical as itself. His whole attitude is a complacent acceptance of things as they are, without a single new idea.

This acceptance was accompanied by greatly excessive optimism about the present and future. Even when the end was only sixty years away, and the Empire was already crumbling fast, Rutilius continued to address the spirit of Rome with the same supreme assurance.

This blind adherence to the ideas of the past ranks high among the principal causes of the downfall of Rome. If you were sufficiently lulled by these traditional fictions, there was no call to take any practical first-aid measures at all."

Everyone getting a slice of pie is confident that the current crises are no different than the spots of bother that were mere bumps in the road of the past 70 years. That "this time is different" does not compute because nobody is willing to face the reality that radical reforms are the only way forward, but such reforms will demand enormous sacrifices and impose innately high risks on every participant.

Rather than face that unsavory option, we await our seating at a fantasy banquet where AI fixes all problems and we get to continue gorging ourselves at the table of plenty. That the real-world banquet of consequences is about to served is taboo.

Looking back, 2024 may well be viewed as insignificant compared to what lies ahead.

New podcast: Is the Everything Bubble About to Pop? (37 min, 40 charts)

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Jeff H. ($7/month), for your wondrously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Stephen V. ($32.40), for your superbly generous patronage to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

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The Impossible Dream: 70 Million Boomers Retire in Style

The younger generations expecting to inherit the immense wealth piled up by Boomers in home equity and stocks may be in for a shock.

I've reached the point in life where I see a sharp line dividing the adult populace: there are those of us who are old enough to retire who are taking care of very elderly parents / family members at home, and then there's everyone else.

Instead of life getting easier as we age, it gets harder--much harder , as we no longer have the same energy we had in our 40s and 50s.

This article captures what life is like for those of us fulfilling parents' wishes to live out their final years at home: The Crushing Financial Burden of Aging at Home: Families face soaring costs and mounting pressures in taking care of their loved ones. 'I never feel truly free.' (WSJ.com)

In my case, we spent the last 8 years taking care of my mother-in-law, the last 6 years of her life here at our home. (She passed away at 92 last year.) So from ages 62 to 70, we had two jobs: caregiving and our self-employed paid work. In those years, we managed one vacation--not exactly the ideal retirement scenario.

Many others have it much worse: they're caring for an elderly, ill parent or spouse by themselves, with limited financial resources. Those who opt to pay for 24/7 home care for parents or spouses with dementia or Alzheimer's are paying $240,000 a year--a sum that will consume the entire wealth of most families in a few years:

Here are excerpts from the article:

"Americans want to grow old in their own homes. But pursuing that dream has gotten harder, and is putting huge financial and emotional strains on families.

In Nebraska, Christine Salhany spends about $240,000 a year for 24-hour in-home care for her husband who has Alzheimer's. In Illinois, Carolyn Brugioni's dad exhausted his savings and took out a home-equity line-of-credit to pay for home healthcare.

Traci Lamb closed her business to take care of her mom in Florida. And in California, Cheryl Orr delayed retirement to help pay for care and home modifications for her wife, who has dementia.

Soaring costs of in-home care, medical advances that extend lives but require ongoing help, and the growing ranks of older baby boomers are creating new pressures. Spouses, adult children and siblings are putting their lives on hold to care for relatives, wrestling with sleep deprivation and constant worry. Families are draining savings to hire help, pay for medical care, and modify homes.

More than 11,000 people in the U.S. are turning 65 every day and the vast majority--77% of Americans age 50 and older according to an AARP survey--want to live as long as possible in their current home.

Those needing round-the-clock in-home care can expect a median cost of about $290,000, which is more than double the annual median cost of a private room in a nursing home facility and four times the annual median cost of a private room in assisted living, according to Genworth."

The drain on caregivers isn't just financial--it's physical and emotional:

"I have to be very vigilant. I never feel truly free," says Christine. That is a feeling expressed by many. Four in 10 family caregivers rarely or never feel relaxed, according to a 2023 AARP survey. Dementia care is among the most taxing, physically, financially and emotionally."

For those families opting to place a parent or spouse in an institutional care facility, the cost is around $13,000 a month and up. Assisted living and private care homes generally cost between $6,000 and $9,000 a month.

How many families have the means to pay these rates for years?

My Mom is 95 and has lived in an assisted living/care facility that she bought into 18 years ago with the proceeds from selling her house. The monthly fees have consumed her own inheritance from her parents, who passed away in the late 1980s.

My siblings and I are relieved that there are still funds to pay for our Mom's care. That there is no inheritance doesn't matter; what matters is that we're not burdened with enormous monthly fees for her care in our own retirement.

We are not alone. Our neighbors are 80 years old and they recently moved her 102-year old mother from their home to a care home, as she and her husband could no longer lift her Mom out of bed.

In many cases, the caregivers don't get to actually retire until they're well into old age. Family conflicts arise as some adult children refuse to do their share, burdening one sibling with the workload and financial costs.

People living longer put an enormous strain on families and the government. The wealth that was intended to be an inheritance passed onto children and grandchildren is consumed by elderly care: at $150,000 a year, even $1 million is consumed in a few years.

The strategy pursued by many families is to transfer ownership of the parents' home to the adult children long before retirement, so the parent's remaining assets will be modest enough to qualify for Medicaid, where the federal government pays for the parents' care home expenses.

Federal programs for retirees, the disabled and the elderly already consume 44% of the budget, and this percentage will rise sharply in the decades ahead.



As we all know, the federal government is already borrowing trillions of dollars to cover its ballooning expenditures, and 80% of the expected growth of federal spending is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on the debt.



As the 70+ million baby Boomers (those born between 1946 and 1965) retire, how will families and the nation pay for the retirement of a generation of this scale? As this chart illustrates, in retirement, the Boomer generation will be more than twice the size of the preceding Silent Generation.



As a rough estimate, let's say there will be 30 million more elderly than there were in the previous generation--the equivalent of adding an entire nation of elderly retirees. Yes, many elderly people continue working into their 70s and 80s, and many are still living alone and do not need any assistance. One of our neighbors is a World War II vet who is 102, and he still drives and lives on his own. But he is an outlier. Few reach old age without needing assistance of some kind.

The decline of the population's health as poor diet and inactive lifestyles take their toll will heavily impact the Boomers' need for care. And the decline in the health of younger generations will also impact the ability of the nation to fund the costs of caring for 60 to 70 million elderly and supply the workforce to provide all the care.

Anecdotally, there is little evidence that new care facilities are being built at a rate anywhere close to meeting the future need for such facilities. Even if elderly Boomers wish to move out of their own homes into a care home, there may not be enough facilities to meet demand. There may be few options to spending one's last years at home, but with what level of care if that care costs $13,000 a month--$156,000 a year?

The younger generations expecting to inherit the immense wealth piled up by Boomers in home equity and stocks may be in for a shock as they learn that 24/7 home care for a grandparent with dementia costs $250,000 a year unless they provide the care themselves, and that even modest care facilities can cost $100,000 a year.

Combine the popping of the Everything Bubble with the rising costs of care, and it becomes apparent that dreams of inheriting fortunes are as unrealistic as the dreams of 60 to 70 million elderly Boomers of living comfortably at home with caregivers doing all the work.

The retirement hopes of those with elderly parents to care for will also go up in smoke, as I can attest from our own experience: the Golden Years of one's 60s and 70s can be consumed by caregiving, at the cost of one's own retirement funds and health.

It's estimated that around 30% of the debilities of aging are the result of genetics; the other 70% are the result of our lifestyle and life choices. Piling up money in the hopes it will be enough may not be enough. The higher-return investment may well be in radically changing our lifestyle to become as healthy as possible as we age so we won't need the kind of care that will bankrupt families and the nation.

New podcast: Is the Everything Bubble About to Pop? (37 min, 40 charts)

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