And Now For Something Completely Different

Assuming that my dire predictions about nation-wide financial morass and its attendant problems turn out to be only so much speculation, I predict that  by 2025, self-driving cars will likely be half the cars on the road.  I predict that by 2030, only cars manufactured before a certain year will be allowed to be non-self-driving.  Maybe earlier.  We will live long enough to tell "the young people" about the time when you had to actually drive the car yourself.  One day, those of us old enough to do so may find ourselves saying something along these lines to 'a younger person': 

'There was a thing called a steering wheel, and you had a brake pedal and a gas pedal on the car floor.  The brake stopped the car while the gas pedal made it go faster.  The wheel, you used to steer the car.  Now some cars were called "manual transmission cars".  These, you had a plastic or metal stick in.  It rose up right next to you in the left side front seat, called "the driver's seat," which is where 'that old expression' comes from.  The stick was called the "gear-shift".  Now with those cars, you not only had to steer the wheel and mind the brake and gas pedals, and keep track of where you were going and the other cars around you, but also had to use the stick to  'change gears' to keep your speed and the engine's effort in sync.  If you didn't, you ran the risk of damaging  the engine or 'stalling out', which is where that expression comes from.  Also, in manual transmission cars, there was a third pedal on the floor called a "clutch".  You had to press it in with your foot to release the transmission system so you could shift the gear stick up or down a gear.  Worse than that, when releasing the clutch, you had to time it just right for your car (and it varied from car to car sometimes) so that it wasn't too fast a change for the car's transmission.  Failing to get that right might have caused the car to stall out, especially in low-gear, as it was called; these were usually gears 1 to 3.  Most cars had 4 or 5 gears, and a reverse gear, too.  Each gear was accessible by the location you shifted the stick into.  And there was no way to know for sure what gear you were in except by looking at the stick and checking your speed, and comparing it to another dial called a "tachometer" that measured the rotations-per-minute of the car's drive axle.  You had to do all that, just to go places.  Needles to say, more than a few accidents occurred from drivers making errors around what gear they were in, what pedal on the floor they pushed in, and having to keep track of several things at once. 

And road trips?  Most of us didn't have GPS devices, at least not until the late 1990s and into the 2000-2010 decade.  You had to plan out where you were going using paper maps if you didn't already know how to get there.  There was this organization called AAA, the American Automobile Association.  If you were a member, they'd create for you flip-page versions of maps called "trip-tiks" that you could use to guide you to where you were going.  They were great as long as you didn't veer off course too much and lose track of where you ought to be outside the trip-tiks boundaries.  You had to call them to get them to do this, and they sent them to you in the mail.  So you had to plan ahead.  You see, very few people had e-mail (you remember that too, right?).  And of course there was no Internet, at least not as it would become in late last century, so you couldn't use what used to be called "smart phones" -- you've seen those too, right; they were quite an innovation back in the day -- to look at maps or get directions to places.  Life was a lot more complex whenever you wanted to go anyplace or do anything, but in other ways, it was simpler, too.'

"Wow, what a time that must have been!" will be the reply.  "How did you ever do anything without a big fuss?" 

There will come a time when even those of us born and raised with non-self-driving cars will giggle at the whole idea of actually having to drive them.  "What a waste of time that was," we'll all say.  And the accidents!  All those accidents people had, all those deaths and injuries!  Now by and large, a thing of the past.  Car insurance rates will plummet (if I were in the auto insurance biz, I'd be worried...).  But mostly we'll be grateful for all the naps we can now take going to and from our various destinations.  And as for DUIs?  The genie will be out of the bottle.  Law enforcement should be thinking about this issue.  Now that people will feel fine with getting totally tossed and getting auto-driven home instead of driving home, there won't be nearly as much incentive to keep one's intake down, if indeed fear of a DUI has been enough to curb the typical night-outer from imbibing too much for the road.  This means a lot more drunk people in public on both week-end and week-day nights (and days). 

I remember a few years ago explaining to my nephew about libraries and microfiches.  He said he can't believe how anyone got anything done.  I said yes, to write a paper for school you had to go to a library and to get current or even past event info in publications like newspapers (which you could only read by subscribing and getting them delivered, or buying them at 'news-stands', as they were called), you had to use microfiches.  I had to explain to him what those were.  Of course libraries are still around, as are microfiches in some places, but libraries are hardly recognizable as the places they used to be.  In a couple decades, they will exist only on college campuses, or if outside of there, they will be like giant Internet cafes.  I think by then you'll need a special pass to go into the book-stacks and will probably need to be accompanied since by then, actual books will be collector's items, since they are being destroyed these days at a huge rate just to free up the space.  Paper-based books when you can store the information indefinitely and at minimal-to-no cost, move it around and copy it at will?  Actual, physical books just don't stand a chance.

2012-Presidential-Debate-II-Day and the National Debt

In line with my previous pennings re the U.S. debt, the author of this article says it even better:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/708081-are-u-s-treasuries-really-risk-free

Need more and not from some column-writing pundit or an IT guy blathering tinfoil-hattedly from somewhere in upstate NY?  You need an "authoritative voice," eh?  OK, here ya go:  Bill Gross, co-founder of PIMCO Funds, on our debt situation:

http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=41553

Short version: We're not so much $16 trillion in debt so much as we are $60 trillion in debt.

Gross has been running the single largest mutual fund company specializing in bond investing in the world.  And even he, one who quite arguably has a lot of interest in people staying happy with gov't bonds, agrees that the national debt threatens, in his words, to have the U.S. looking like Greece by 2020.

Of course the national debt is also a political football.  Well it is in every other country in the First World these days, with the odd exception of our own.  Perhaps we're just too comfy with our position of having the world's reserve currency and figure we can defy all odds.  After all, if the USD is all the world has really to fall back on, well, can't we just keep printing up $s and let the rest of them all "eat cake"?  No, it's not that easy.  No one can escape The Dreaded "I" Word (Inflation).  It is an economic force, and all goods, yet even the USD, are subject to it.  QE3 is all about inflation and creating false demand for US Treasuries.  If things keep on the way they are, it'll be entirely possible in the next 10 yrs. or so that half the demand for US Treasuries will be from The Fed buying them (though how they can keep it up that long without laughing themselves to death is beyond me-- but stranger things have happened).  This is not unlike holding a yard sale where you buy half your own stuff in an effort to make your neighbors think it's worth more than it actually is, only in our case, our neighbors know what we're up to.

Now here on the day of "Romney v. Obama II: The Re-Match", this election season seems to me to be largely about two things: Personalities (who do you like better, just like prom king/queen elections in high school), and ideological differences around various social issues, including non-trivial matters indeed, such as "Obamacare", as it's termed, et al.  But the single biggest issue that is GUARANTEED to affect all of us, and do so very significantly, is being ignored by the candidates and the media-- and most voters, seemingly nearly all of them.  The reason the media ignores it is clear: It's not sexy and is too wonky. It makes for boring sound-bite TV.  The candidates are avoiding it because neither of them has a workable solution.  Only Paul Ryan has tried to discuss it but to little avail and even so, he is not running for president-- nothing that causes budget cuts will get enacted without the president's signature and Romney has all but said that Ryan's budget ideas are Ryan's, not his.  In any case, Ryan's ideas, even if enacted, will not be enough to stop the Debt Train, and if history is any lesson, chances are very good any of the new laws enacted around this issue will be changed when the administration that follows a potential Romney White House takes over, Democrat or not.

If based on previous posts you think I am sort of "fixated" on this issue, believe me, I'm not.  I am 2 things around it. One: I am aware of it.  If you were aware of a train ahead bearing down on you as you sat on the tracks, you'd think it was important to let your fellow track-sitters know about it, right?  That's what I'm doing.  Second, my concern is commensurate with the likely impact of the situation.  The gov't is ignoring it for political reasons.  They can't see past their own ambitions for winning a next election.  And the vast majority of our gov't officials in high offices (Congressoids, the Prez, high judicial officers like those in the SC, and a few others) have made their own preparations, trust me.  They have amassed assets that are not inherently tied to our inflating USD: Land, precious metals, businesses likely to withstand even serious inflation, etc.  They have their golden parachutes, you can believe that.  So it's no skin off their noses.  Each ordinary person is stuck now in terms of deciding how they want to prepare for the next 10-20 or more years.  The gov't is not the solution, nor is non-gov't the solution.  You are your own solution, or your own problem, since by now, you can't plead ignorance.  If you don't decide on preparing for the upcoming serious inflation that we're going to have regardless of whose favorite pol is in the WH, it's on you.

Specific advice?  Really, you want specifics on what to do?  Sure, I could give out suggestions, but would they fit your particular situation, even if I know you personally?  Probably not.  All I can do is point out the obvious trends and let you come to your own conclusions.  I will say this though: Any plans you have to rely on any gov't-financed program in your later years, assuming you are under 50, or even under 55, forget it.  Pretend they don't exist.  Go on that assumption.  I say this because I predict that by 2020 or 2025, these programs will be need-based.  You'll need to be able to show how you're utterly broke to even see some benefits come to you, and the $ won't be worth that much anyway.  Plan accordingly.  And private pensions?  Again, be careful.  So-called "guaranteed pension plans" from employers can quickly get un-guaranteed by the stroke of a judge's pen.  Those of you who used to work for Kodak know what I'm talking about.