I am somebody close to retirement now. The two worst times for somebody to be entering the work force since the Great Depression were 1980-84 and 2008-10. I don't think any other period is even close.
I think this is a time of opportunity. Baby Boomers retirement is forcing employers to completely re-evaluate staffing. A lot of managers want to live in the past but they are not going to be able to.
The "good university" thing is BS for undergraduate degrees unless you are focused on networking with wealthy students. It does make a difference for graduate research work as the best schools provide better research professors and projects. I am in engineering and the school somebody went to is a small fraction of how we select new hires and is effectively irrelevant for anybody with more than 2 years experience. I have seen as many people terminated who went to "good schools" as went to "bad schools". In general, it is not a good predictor of how good somebody will be in the work place. It would be nice if high schools and parents focused more on what the kids will be studying than where they will be studying.
There are a lot of really bright young people out there and it has nothing to do with what school they went to. Good managers can identify them and mentor them to move upward and do great things. Bad managers can crush their spirits and grind them into the dust. If we see a bright young person being ground down by a bad manager, it is incumbent on us to help extract them from that situation since they often don't know what the real opportunities are. This is the big management challenge for American business over the next decade because this is where the replacements for the Baby Boomers are coming from.
Re: Crypto
I am opposed to crypto regulation. Good cryptocurrency is like gold - it is effectively self-regulating. You can't fake it, but it can be lost (gold can be sunk at sea or buried and forgotten; crypto can have a forgotten key or lost hard disk).
The big problem with crypto is that it is illiquid in the modern world like gold or art. You can't walk into the grocery store with a gold coin or Van Gogh and buy your month's groceries with it. Same with crypto in most places. So it needs exchanges to be liquid. That is where the trouble starts because it appears that most of the exchanges have been set up offshore by fraudsters.
So crypto should be treated like art, rare coins, etc. There are laws in place that ban outright fraud, so selling a fake painting through Sotheby's can get you sent to jail, same as setting up an FTX exchange. However, I don't see a need to do additional regulation because crypto is so decentralized it would be like the so-called regulation of the sub-prime mortgage securities where the appearance of regulation made everybody think it was safe. Given the international, decentralized nature of crypto-currency (wasn't that the point in the first place?) I don't see a simple way to regulate it that wouldn't be instantly gamed by Wall Street traders into Frankenstein's monster. Buyer beware is the best regulation for it I think. People losing a few billion on a voluntary risky activity may save a major system meltdown in the future - that is why they had canaries in the coal mine https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/canary_in_a_coal_mine#:~:text=canary%20in%20a%20coal%20mine%20(plural%20canaries%20in%20a%20coal,in%20its%20health%20or%20welfare..
You can check the content of gold and silver coins by weighing them. A standard size gives you the volume and the required mass. You can then compare them to a known calibrated weight. Evaluating gold content of complex shapes supposedly goes back to Archimedes, so is one of the oldest problems in financial regulation: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-archimede/
Blockchain effectively provides the provenance that is the equivalent of checking the gold content of your coin. Once you hand over that blockchain key and exchange it for a deposit on a website exchange, then you are the person wondering if it is gold or lead in your account. Effectively, the entire banking system regulatory structure that the cryptocurrency adherents deride is designed to provide the answer to this question related to currency and registered securities.
So the reason I am opposed to the cryptocurrency regulation is that I don't think we need another banking system with its own layers of regulators and rules for cryptocurrency. That is just one more target for fraudsters and another opportunity for the financial sector gaming of the rules which they have demonstrated great creativity of over the past few decades.
Sotheby's and Christies have art experts etc. on tap to provide opinions on whether that Monet is real or fake before offering it for sale. Nobody has asked the FDIC or SEC to provide that service. However, FBI and Interpol will investigate and prosecute if somebody puts a fake up for sale. But the real estate market and banking system are not predicated on the price of Monets so fake paintings don't filter into the overall economy. If left unregulated, cryptocurrency will similarly not be at the heart of real estate and the banking sector. That was the mistake embedded in the subprime mortgage securities when they got the imprimatur of authenticity from bond rating companies and were allowed to balloon at the heart of the financial system.
I assume Bahamas and US, among others, are investigating SBF and FTX for fraud. If he simply diverted client money into his own coffers despite telling people that the money was safe in the exchange, then people went from the relatively safety of blockchain to an unregulated con artist for the convenience of liquidity. Its an expensive lesson but has happened many times in history. SBF and his cronies will probably spend a decade in Federal prison with Elizabeth Holmes.
Full disclosure: I have never had a scrap of interest in owning crypto-currency as it appears to be the classic greater fool illiquid asset.
Most our bureaucracy was created to sustain the existing system, not disrupt it so don't expect any big swings. Of course, finding something small enough to accomplish, but big enough to matter may be more challenging.
Imagine how rich SS would be if they had allowed , say 25 percent of the fund, to be invested in the stock market over the last 80 years. Investing in t-bills has (and politicians 'borrowing' SS money) not been able to compensate for lower population to fund the system nor so many folks living much longer lives.
It would take too much imagination to invest 25% of Trust Fund in US total stock market in 2023. They will likely wait until there is almost no money left in the Trust Fund and the stock market is at an all-time high again.
Once we get to 2034, Social Security is "pay as you go" where this year's FICA payment by workers is given to retirees the following year. That is why they are projecting benefits will be around 75%-80% of promised, and it will be variable year-to-year. There won't be money to invest in stock market then.
You're correct about Social Security. It's a literal pyramid scheme. It will continue to pay out, but the purchasing power of the USD it pays in will be greatly diminished.
Also: BTC is not crypto. There is BTC and perhaps a handful of other tokens. Everything else is a shitcoin.
Everyone who places their faith in the status quo will get exactly what they deserve.
I am somebody close to retirement now. The two worst times for somebody to be entering the work force since the Great Depression were 1980-84 and 2008-10. I don't think any other period is even close.
I think this is a time of opportunity. Baby Boomers retirement is forcing employers to completely re-evaluate staffing. A lot of managers want to live in the past but they are not going to be able to.
The "good university" thing is BS for undergraduate degrees unless you are focused on networking with wealthy students. It does make a difference for graduate research work as the best schools provide better research professors and projects. I am in engineering and the school somebody went to is a small fraction of how we select new hires and is effectively irrelevant for anybody with more than 2 years experience. I have seen as many people terminated who went to "good schools" as went to "bad schools". In general, it is not a good predictor of how good somebody will be in the work place. It would be nice if high schools and parents focused more on what the kids will be studying than where they will be studying.
There are a lot of really bright young people out there and it has nothing to do with what school they went to. Good managers can identify them and mentor them to move upward and do great things. Bad managers can crush their spirits and grind them into the dust. If we see a bright young person being ground down by a bad manager, it is incumbent on us to help extract them from that situation since they often don't know what the real opportunities are. This is the big management challenge for American business over the next decade because this is where the replacements for the Baby Boomers are coming from.
Re: Crypto
I am opposed to crypto regulation. Good cryptocurrency is like gold - it is effectively self-regulating. You can't fake it, but it can be lost (gold can be sunk at sea or buried and forgotten; crypto can have a forgotten key or lost hard disk).
The big problem with crypto is that it is illiquid in the modern world like gold or art. You can't walk into the grocery store with a gold coin or Van Gogh and buy your month's groceries with it. Same with crypto in most places. So it needs exchanges to be liquid. That is where the trouble starts because it appears that most of the exchanges have been set up offshore by fraudsters.
So crypto should be treated like art, rare coins, etc. There are laws in place that ban outright fraud, so selling a fake painting through Sotheby's can get you sent to jail, same as setting up an FTX exchange. However, I don't see a need to do additional regulation because crypto is so decentralized it would be like the so-called regulation of the sub-prime mortgage securities where the appearance of regulation made everybody think it was safe. Given the international, decentralized nature of crypto-currency (wasn't that the point in the first place?) I don't see a simple way to regulate it that wouldn't be instantly gamed by Wall Street traders into Frankenstein's monster. Buyer beware is the best regulation for it I think. People losing a few billion on a voluntary risky activity may save a major system meltdown in the future - that is why they had canaries in the coal mine https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/canary_in_a_coal_mine#:~:text=canary%20in%20a%20coal%20mine%20(plural%20canaries%20in%20a%20coal,in%20its%20health%20or%20welfare..
FYI - currency debasing is a sub-plot in this recent book (undiscussed in the Wikipedia write-up but comes up in the late chapters): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evening_and_the_Morning
You can check the content of gold and silver coins by weighing them. A standard size gives you the volume and the required mass. You can then compare them to a known calibrated weight. Evaluating gold content of complex shapes supposedly goes back to Archimedes, so is one of the oldest problems in financial regulation: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-archimede/
Blockchain effectively provides the provenance that is the equivalent of checking the gold content of your coin. Once you hand over that blockchain key and exchange it for a deposit on a website exchange, then you are the person wondering if it is gold or lead in your account. Effectively, the entire banking system regulatory structure that the cryptocurrency adherents deride is designed to provide the answer to this question related to currency and registered securities.
So the reason I am opposed to the cryptocurrency regulation is that I don't think we need another banking system with its own layers of regulators and rules for cryptocurrency. That is just one more target for fraudsters and another opportunity for the financial sector gaming of the rules which they have demonstrated great creativity of over the past few decades.
Sotheby's and Christies have art experts etc. on tap to provide opinions on whether that Monet is real or fake before offering it for sale. Nobody has asked the FDIC or SEC to provide that service. However, FBI and Interpol will investigate and prosecute if somebody puts a fake up for sale. But the real estate market and banking system are not predicated on the price of Monets so fake paintings don't filter into the overall economy. If left unregulated, cryptocurrency will similarly not be at the heart of real estate and the banking sector. That was the mistake embedded in the subprime mortgage securities when they got the imprimatur of authenticity from bond rating companies and were allowed to balloon at the heart of the financial system.
I assume Bahamas and US, among others, are investigating SBF and FTX for fraud. If he simply diverted client money into his own coffers despite telling people that the money was safe in the exchange, then people went from the relatively safety of blockchain to an unregulated con artist for the convenience of liquidity. Its an expensive lesson but has happened many times in history. SBF and his cronies will probably spend a decade in Federal prison with Elizabeth Holmes.
Full disclosure: I have never had a scrap of interest in owning crypto-currency as it appears to be the classic greater fool illiquid asset.
Amen!!
Most our bureaucracy was created to sustain the existing system, not disrupt it so don't expect any big swings. Of course, finding something small enough to accomplish, but big enough to matter may be more challenging.
Imagine how rich SS would be if they had allowed , say 25 percent of the fund, to be invested in the stock market over the last 80 years. Investing in t-bills has (and politicians 'borrowing' SS money) not been able to compensate for lower population to fund the system nor so many folks living much longer lives.
It would take too much imagination to invest 25% of Trust Fund in US total stock market in 2023. They will likely wait until there is almost no money left in the Trust Fund and the stock market is at an all-time high again.
Once we get to 2034, Social Security is "pay as you go" where this year's FICA payment by workers is given to retirees the following year. That is why they are projecting benefits will be around 75%-80% of promised, and it will be variable year-to-year. There won't be money to invest in stock market then.
You're correct about Social Security. It's a literal pyramid scheme. It will continue to pay out, but the purchasing power of the USD it pays in will be greatly diminished.
Also: BTC is not crypto. There is BTC and perhaps a handful of other tokens. Everything else is a shitcoin.
Everyone who places their faith in the status quo will get exactly what they deserve.