Prioritizing Your Exit Plan 

An increasing number of Americans and Brits believe their home countries are in decline, says Jeff Thomas in this essay from Doug Casey’s International Man. And some of them are wondering if they should have an escape plan.

As a long-time publisher of gloomy economists and public intellectuals, I’ve done my fair share of such thinking. On the one hand, it’s not difficult to convince myself that I live in the safest, most stable, and most prosperous country in the world. On the other hand, when I read and write about some of what is happening today – economically, culturally, and politically – I sometimes feel it would be prudent to have an escape strategy for me and my family.

Well, I do have our home in Nicaragua – an economically impoverished country in Central America run by a self-identifying Communist. It is in a beautiful resort community (Rancho Santana) in a hamlet that is basically unpoliced and two hours from the country’s only first-class hospital. That’s something.

I could make it sound a bit scarier, but the fact is I feel safer there than I do in most places in the US. Even politically safer. (I know. That’s hard to believe. I’ll explain in a future missive.) The lifestyle is great and the cost of living great is less than half of what it is here in Florida. We don’t have to worry about fresh water, because the resort has nearly two dozen functioning wells. And it grows its own meat and vegetables on the property. All that is an advantage. As far as culture goes, Nicaragua’s is, in many ways, superior to what’s become of America’s. For what it lacks in wealth culture, it exceeds the US in family culture and happiness culture.

So, when I get engrossed in reading about the many ways America is falling apart – and even nearing catastrophe – I find myself thinking how perfectly wonderful it would be to have the entire Ford and Fitzgerald clans together down there one day.

Still, there is more to “escaping” America than having a second home overseas. And that’s why I was especially interested in how Thomas, who has been thinking about this subject for many years, prioritizes what he believes are the essential moves to make right now just in case Armageddon happens.

Read his essay… and let me know what you think.

Flukes, Fakes, and Statistical Uncertainties: What Happens When Physicists Fail 

I used to have, what I’d call, a conventional view of science, scientists, and scientific facts. I believed in all of them implicitly.

Then, about thirty years ago – and purely as a business decision – my partner and I decided to see if we could make a business out of publishing newsletters on natural and alternative approaches to health.

That led to three decades of shock and surprises. I changed from a naïve believer in mainstream medicine to a skeptic, critic, and sometime “denier.”

In this essay, Harry Cliff talks about “the slippery nature of probability in the pursuit of scientific discovery.”

You’ll find it to be extremely thought-provoking if you are interested in learning about particle physics. If not, I recommend you read it anyway.

Cliff explains how scientists, even the most accomplished scientists, and even with the best intentions, can make mistakes that lead to conclusions that are just plain wrong. Wrong and, sometimes, vastly damaging.

This potential for making mistakes that cause widespread damage is – it seems to me – much worse today than at any time in my life. Our culture has Balkanized into various tribes of ideological thinking, the majority of which don’t want to accept the fragility of science – especially when the advertised scientific facts correlate with their political or social belief systems.

Is College Education a Scam? 

Years ago, I argued with my Libertarian friends about the value of a college education. They saw it as a waste of time and a senseless expenditure of money. They thought this was especially true for anyone that majored in the Liberal Arts, which was my chosen field.

My argument came from my own experience. In studying literature for nearly seven years, I had developed skills that I believed were invaluable to becoming successful in life, regardless of one’s chosen occupation. Analytical thinking, for example, which is necessary for problem solving. And the ability to speak and write effectively, which is necessary for getting one’s ideas accepted in any competitive environment.

I still believe in the value of those skills, and of a Liberal Arts education in general. But back then, a degree from a public college cost less than $10,000 and a private college might have cost five or six times that much.

Today, it is much, much more expensive. And because it is so high compared to the financial benefits it provides, the cost is no longer justifiable.

So, I find myself sympathetic to the charge that a college education has become, for many, a scam.

The Jaw-Dropping Cost

According to US News & World Report, the average tuition for the 2023-2024 school year for a public college is $10,662 for in-state students, with out-of-state tuition averaging $23,630. For private colleges, the average is $42,162. That’s for one year!

The numbers are worse for elite private colleges, which have, on average, exceeded the $90,000 per year threshold. That means a family with three children could expect to shell out more than $1 million by the time their youngest child completes a four-year degree.

Millions of college students are taking out loans to finance all or part of their expenses. Many of those loans come with relatively high interest rates (6.5% to 7%), which makes it increasingly difficult for them to keep up with the payments. Some are simply giving up and declaring personal bankruptcy. Thus, in 2023, bankruptcy filings by young college graduates in the US hit an all-time high. This is happening at a very inconvenient time – just a few years post-graduation, when these young people are trying to begin their careers and their families.

You might argue that the investment in a college degree, however expensive, will eventually “pay off” because college graduates typically earn more than high school graduates. And that’s true. Male college graduates earn, on average, about $500 per week more than male high school graduates, which amounts to about $900,000 over their lifetimes. (The financial advantage of a college education for women is less, just $630,000 over a lifetime, which is largely explained by the fact that men put in, on average, about 30% more hours of work than women do.)

On the face of that, you might think that getting into $200,000 to $500,000 worth of debt is still “worth it” because of the lifetime financial advantage. But the debt figures reported are misleading. They do not include the cost of interest, which, depending on the interest rate and length of the loan, can add another 30% to the total indebtedness.

Furthermore, these are gross numbers. And like the numbers used to demonstrate a pay gap between men and women, the comparison is between the average compensation of all men and all women, without accounting for the fields that men choose to enter as compared to woman, or how many hours men work as compared to women.

When you measure the pay gap correctly – comparing like professions and like hours – you discover that there is no gap at all.

If, instead of comparing the gross numbers, we compare the average compensation of college graduates versus high school graduates with skills – such as the mechanical trades or the dangerous jobs that are predominantly done by men – it’s a different story. Here’s an example: plumbers vs. doctors.

On top of that, some of the world’s biggest companies – including Google, Apple, and Netflix – no longer require a college degree for most new employees. This, according to those businesses, is because so many young people today are able to self-educate the necessary entry skills, and then fill in the gaps after they have been hired.

The College Scam, written by Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, makes this argument and many others.

“What is that piece of paper really going to do for you?” Kirk said in an interview with Fox News. “Maybe go to a community college or a tech school, take a gap year, go find a business owner that is in the profession that you might have an interest in and ask for a job, go ask for an unpaid internship.”

“The worst thing you can do,” said Kirk, “is go borrow money ahead of time when you’re not really sure what sort of skill you want to have.”

If you want to learn more about this issue, I’ve listed five links below that make additional points about why a college education, with some exceptions, may very well be overly costly and inappropriate for a large percentage of the American working population.

Click here and here and here and here and here. 

Trump’s Truth Social’s multi-million-dollar valuation defies logic, some analysts say. 

“No shit,” says Garrett Baldwin in his March 26 issue of Postcards from the Florida Republic.

He goes on…

“Is Truth Social ‘expensive,’ ‘overvalued,’ and ‘divorced from fundamentals?’

“Damn right it is, but this isn’t a ‘Trump’ thing. It’s the truth for a huge number of public companies, particularly in Wall Street’s darling tech sector.

“What you say about Truth Social, you could also say about Nvidia (NVDA), Tesla (TSLA), or pretty much any of the so-called ‘Magnificent Seven.’

“There’s a huge problem with valuation issues in this market…”

I think Garrett is right. There is a frenzy of exuberance among stock investors about certain sectors of the stock market, including cryptocurrencies and anything related to AI. At the same time, there is a massively growing interest in trading – even day trading – that is making me and other conservative investors nervous.

You can read the rest of what he says here

Biden’s Dangerous Game at the UN 

In the United Nations last week, the Biden administration softened its support of Israel once again – this time by dropping its threat to veto a resolution calling for “an immediate ceasefire [in Gaza] for the month of Ramadan leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire” without requiring a release of hostages.

If you know anything about the UN, you know that it has a long history of hostility to Israel. It is hardly the venue where the US should get involved when it comes to its most important ally in the Mideast.

As stated in a recent WSJ editorial:

Mr. Biden’s public criticism and distancing from Israel signals to other nations that they can go even further and the US likely won’t oppose it. Will he condemn Canada’s grandstanding decision this week to stop selling arms to Israel? Crickets from the White House so far. The President’s fading support for Israel is a message to all American allies that the US can’t be trusted if their cause runs afoul of the Democratic Party’s left wing.

Read more here.

The Connection Between Music and Numbers 

The company I have worked with for nearly 30 years employs dozens of very good financial analysts. Some of them are technical. Some are fundamental. Some follow trends. Some follow momentum. And some follow large, macro-economic events.

One thing that has struck me is that many of them are keenly interested in music. It’s generally known that there is a relationship between music and numbers, and maybe that explains this. If it does, one would think that there is a common denominator in the music they like. But there is none. The range is wide and the preferences diverse.

When they talk about their preferences, I am always interested in the music they love that I don’t even know.

Here, Garrett Baldwin, one of my new favorite analysts, writes about some of his favorites.

Reminder: As I mentioned on Friday, I realize that my weekly posts have become quite long – maybe too long for some readers. So though I’ll continue to publish a full issue once a week, I’ll occasionally be sending you these “Just One Thing” pieces – short bits that, in my humble opinion, merit a few minutes of your time.

Today’s piece is about a threat that is very big, and very real, and very serious. A threat that politicians and the media on both sides are almost completely ignoring. 

Biden? Trump? It Doesn’t Matter: 
When the Next President Takes Office, He Will Be Facing an Economic Crisis Greater Than Any Before 

“It took Uncle Sam 232 years to accumulate its first $10 trillion in debt, nine years to accumulate its second, and five years to reach its third.” – Jason DeSena Trennert of Strategas, writing to his clients on March 8.

In this short but persuasive essay published in the WSJ on March 9, James Freeman argues that it looks like a mathematical certainty that the huge debt the US has taken on over the past 14 years will ruin the American economy sometime during the next presidential term. The only solution, he says, may be to follow a plan that Calvin Coolidge, who was even older than Biden or Trump, followed in the early 1920s to allow American enterprise to save the country.

Read Time: 6 minutes
Click here.

I know the weekly posts are quite long. I’ll shorten them up a bit by posting some of the briefs by themselves on other days. Today I’m sending you a short explanation of how the brain keeps itself healthy and 4 things you can do to help your brain keep your thinking clear and your mental energy at maximum capacity all day.

Brain Health 

Watch this (from TS): “An excellent, brief scientific explanation of the primary brain health factors and what we can do for them.”