Stocks, Mutual Funds, ETFs – Basic Definitions with Explanations

Company Stocks - a stock is a unit of "ownership" or "share" of a particular company that you have bought into. Once bought, you are now a partial "owner" of that company. How big a partial owner depends on how many shares of stock you have bought compared to the total number of shares that the company has issued. Normally, for the small investor, your ownership share of a company is very tiny. You get to vote (usually annually) on who should be on the board of directors, who should be the accounting firm responsible for verifying that the company's profit and loss statements are accurate, and sometimes other issues that may come up in running the business. The company will mail or email you your voting sheet with both instructions and the company's recommendation on each vote proposal as to whether the company is "For" and "Against" that particular proposal. Company stocks can be instantly bought and sold during the day when the stock market is open. Therefore, you instantly know the price you bought or sold it at.

Mutual Funds- a mutual fund is a "managed" portfolio of multiple company stocks that has a particular "business" focus (more on that later**). There is a team of "professionals" "researching" the companies within a mutual fund on a daily basis and then deciding when to both buy and sell stocks within that stated business focus (based on market factors/expectations and individual company past performance and future performance expectations). For their "service" there is an annual percentage fee (normally ranging between 1-2% of the total value of your share of that mutual fund) that is automatically taken out by them (whether or not your mutual fund gained or lost money that year). There is also a dollar fee when you buy or sell a mutual fund (normally $20 to $40).

Mutual funds come in two "types" - load and no load funds. Load mutual funds initially take out 5% of your investment to start, meaning that you need to gain 6% just to break even. Never buy a load mutual fund.

**The “business focus” of any individual mutual fund covers a lot of possibilities:

1. For example, a mutual fund could be focused on a particular business field. Examples include autos, health, technology, retail, real estate, transportation, pharmaceutical, etc..

2. Also, the business focus could be further directed in different ways. Focus could be on small or medium or large size companies or all size companies and could either focus on a particular business field or all business fields.

3. Another aspect of mutual funds is that their individual focus might be “aimed” at either "value" companies (normally defined as companies whose stock price is a low multiplier of their annual earnings) or “growth” companies (normally no profit companies or high stock price to earnings ratio companies that are viewed as having high future potential for sales and eventual profit growth) or both value and growth companies.

4. Mutual funds can have a geographical focus. For example, just US companies or companies from any other individual nation, or just European or Asian or Latin America companies or “emerging markets” (newer markets anywhere in the world that the mutual fund thinks has larger than normal growth potential).

5. Mutual funds can also focus on “index” funds – existing well known stock market funds such as the Dow Jones, S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, etc.

Finally, when you buy or sell a mutual fund, unlike stocks, there is no instant transaction created. Instead, each day after the stock market closes, the value of that mutual fund is determined. It is that end of the day price that will be used to settle your buys and sells placed when the stock market was open. You can also buy and sell mutual funds after the stock market is closed, but the price you will receive will be determined at the end of the next stock market business day.

ETFs – short for Exchange Traded Funds. Essentially, ETFs mirror Mutual Funds except that no team of professionals are researching them to determine when to buy and sell them on a daily basis. Therefore, there is no annual percentage fee and normally no cost to buy and sell them. ETFs are especially useful for buying and selling index funds cheaply (normally no cost or possibly $5 cost). When I want to buy an index fund, I like to buy it through an ETF rather than a mutual fund.

Evolution and Creation

Remember the old cliche - "Which came first - the chicken or the egg?" You can't have an egg without an adult male and female chicken at the same time having bred it. You can't have the first adult male and female chicken unless they were eggs first. So either way, the first adult chickens had to be "created" or if they started as eggs, the eggs had to be "created". Same principle applies everywhere, but most especially to humans. Look at a newborn human baby. Totally helpless and dependent on it parents, a newborn baby could not survive on its own. So the first human baby needed an adult male and female human to copulate to create the first baby. Logically, those two first human adults who created the first human baby - how did they come to be if they were never babies themselves. Only logical answer is that they have to be created. Once created, evolution can occur later through environmental and other factors. After all, we are one human species but have evolved into different skin colors through living in either hot or cold climates for many thousands of years.

People Are All the Same Race

Though it won't happen in my lifetime, we need to stop dividing the one and only race that all people belong to, the human race, into phony “race” subsets by “color” such as White, Black, Brown, Yellow, Red, whatever. Science has proven that we are all one and the same “species”. Our blood and organs are interchangeable. We therefore are all one “race”.

As an analogy, take horses. They come in almost the same colors that humans do - Black, White, Brown, Blond, and multi-colors. Do we divide horses into different subsets of horses by color? Of course not!! We call all of them horses. Same principle holds for people.

Federal Budgets – How to Pass One Every Year

The last Federal Budget to be approved occurred in 2009 when Democrats had a super majority in the House and Senate. It only takes 40 Senators from the opposition party to block passage of a budget. So what happens when a budget isn't passed by Congress? Either the government shuts down or Congress passes individual “spending resolutions” by department. What's the difference? Spending resolutions have automatic spending increases built in. There's no real capability to reduce spending where needed and spending increases tend to be generous. Democrats love these; Republicans do not. So why don't Republicans fight for spending decreases in these spending resolutions. Democrats won't agree to spending decreases, except for military spending despite the fact that both Russian and China have been building up their militaries. If Republicans stand firm against these spending resolutions, then there will be a partial government shutdown which everyone hates and for which the fake news media will falsely assign blame to Republicans.

So how do we fix this rigged system of never ending, unaffordable annual spending increases and resulting debt creation and growth? We need a law or better yet a Constitutional Amendment that mandates that in the absence of passage of a single unified Federal budget in any given year, until such passage occurs, the new year's budget will default to last year's budget minus 10%. By now rigging the system to decrease spending if no budget agreement is reached instead of the other way around, that should be sufficient motivation for both political parties to actually compromise each year to make the tough decisions of where to cut spending and where to increase it.

Illegal Immigration and Democratic Unconscionable Actions

Illegal Immigration and Democratic Unconscionable Actions

I'll tell you what is unconscionable:
Dems wanting open borders so that millions of illegals can easily come here and stay.
Dems blaming Trump for illegal detention cages that were built and used when Obama was President.
Dems using photos of overcrowding in detention centers that were taken in 2014 when Obama was President, and then railing against Trump.
Dems refusing to pass/reform illegal immigration laws and also protect the Southern border to effectively stop this huge invasion of illegals into our country.
Dems establishing sanctuary cities and states to hide illegals from Federal authorities.
Dems releasing illegal criminals from state prisons and deliberately not turning them over to Federal authorities for deportation.
Dems flip flopping from calling for strong measures against illegals in the past to defending them today - and here's the proof of that hypocrisy - Old videos of key Democratic leaders who used to be against illegal immigration - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvRZdNoHEf8 – Diane Feinstein
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdAyn89hFIo – Chuck Schumer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l35OCOQ5yQ4 – Harry Reid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DckY2dRFtxc – Hillary Clinton sounding like Donald Trump
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jky5Oj7ZErQ – Senator Obama

Oil Drilling Off Of Our Shallow Continental Shelves

The safest place for ocean drilling for oil and natural gas is in our shallow, Continental Shelves off our East and West Coasts because they are shallow (100 to 400 feet deep). There is much less water pressure at the well heads on the ocean floor of the Continental Shelves as there is in the Gulf of Mexico where wells can be in water a mile deep and thus under intense pressure. That makes leaks much less likely to happen off the Continental shelves, and much easier and faster to contain and fix if they do happen.

Black Reparations for Slavery

Simple question - does this help or hurt Blacks. Obvious answer - this hurts Blacks by giving them something that they never personally earned, thus reducing their motivation to succeed. There is no secret to success in America. You study hard in school and you work hard at your job. Those that do in this day and age are usually successful no matter what their color; those that don't are usually failures. Black performance in our public schools is dismal compared to other races despite the fact that many of those schools get as much as $20,000 a year per student or double the national average. So just throwing money at the problem hasn't worked. So let's address the real problem for people of any color - single parent households. Single parent households on average are much poorer than married parent households and are the engine of poverty and crime. This should not be a surprise. Married households have the potential for twice the number of working parents and baby sitters. What has happened since the introduction of the 1960s Great Society welfare programs? Back then 3 out of 4 Black babies were born to married households. Now, 3 out of Black babies (and 1 out of 4 White babies) are born to single parent households. What should we do about that and the cycle of failure it has been producing? First, without preaching morality “sermons”, add Economics courses to public schools which include income demographics facts about single and married households. Second, for by design single parent households, name the father before collecting welfare benefits and seek support from that father (require DNA proof to make sure the right person has been identified as the father). Third, only promote students to the next grade if they actually passed. No more "social promotions" for failed students so as not to embarrass them. Give them summer school and also after school programs to help them pass, but if that fails, let them repeat the grade. Finally, if a student fails a grade level for a second time in that or any other grade, bring the parents to Family Court to determine if the child is in a hostile of otherwise failed household and needs to be removed for their own good. Again, never ever an automatic child removal from the household, - let the judge review and decide what is really happening and what needs to be done.

Business Cycles – How They Work and Why

Why do we swing from good times to bad times to good times again? Why can't the economy just go straight up without ever falling? The economic swings up and down are largely caused by business cycles. Let's take an economy that is emerging from weak to strong slowly. When the economy was weak, many people were out of work thus dampening consumer spending – the main driver of the economy. With consumer demand down, the laws of supply and demand kick in. Less demand for products and services, in addition to causing layoffs and even bankruptcies, also leads to cheaper prices for goods and service as it is better for businesses to at least get something for their products and services. Often their own costs for products and labor have gone down, enabling them to mostly survive the bad times. Over time the cheaper prices for goods and services causes demand to rise for them as they have now become more affordable. The higher demand eventually causes business to increase production and hire more employees. This result has a multiplier effect, especially as the people who have been hired were either unemployed or making less money in the job they quit. So now they can afford more goods and service and there is pent up demand for these goods and services. The improving economy will cause some of these employees to start their own business, hiring more employees to meet the growing demand for goods and services both large (such as homes, cars) and small. So why doesn't this process go up forever?

At some point, the increased production of goods and services will have fulfilled the pent up demand from the previous economic low point. Purchases will decline. Layoffs and/or reduced working hours will increase, and some bankruptcies will occur. This too has a multiplier effect to the negative. Once enough damage has been done to the economy, prices for many goods and services will fall again, and the process of trending toward better times as described previously will begin again.

What about government – can't they help? Yes sometimes they can, but they may not do it right and multiply the problem. For example, after the 1929 stock market crash and the resultant Recession, with less people working, government revenues went down. So to balance the budget, government raised taxes during a Recession. Consumers, with less disposable income/take home pay due to the increased taxes, bought less goods and services, resulting in further layoffs, less taxes collected due to less people working, and the 10 year long Great Depression that took a World War to get out of.

The government has two major tools to speed up or slow down the economy. The most often utilized is the control of the money supply and interest rates through the Federal Reserve. This is called Monetary Policy. In a down economy, lowering interest rates makes borrowing cheaper. That enables more people to afford buying homes, cars, etc.. That drives up demand for goods and services and starts an economic uptrend. Raising interest rates in an over heated economy can likewise slow an economic boom down hopefully before severe inflation topples the economy. However, people don't rush out and buy new cars and homes in big quantites just because interest rates have been lowered. This is a slow process. Thus Monetary policy is the weakest tool that the government has, but can be very useful when the business cycle is not very volatile.

The more powerful tool in the government's economic arsenal is called Fiscal Policy. Fiscal policy is the lowering and/or raising of taxes. These type of changes are felt immediately by consumers as their take home pay increases or falls.When it increases, since most people typically spend all or nearly all of what they earn, demand for consumer goods and services rises much faster than under Monetary Policy. Thus the impact on the economy is much faster.

Also, raising taxes in an over heated economy has a much quicker impact on cooling off the economy than monetary policy. However, it is also easy for such dampening fiscal policy to be too dangerous because too many people, including much of the middle class, live paycheck to paycheck with little or no savings. Cutting their take home pay could easily make them unable to pay their rent, mortgage, car payment, or other important bills. Therefore, it is normally better to utilize more slowly acting monetary policy to dampen over heated economies.

There's nothing stopping government from utilizing both fiscal and monetary policies at the same time, though control rests “independently” with Congress and the federal Reserve. Sometimes they can help each other; but sometimes they actually fight each other.

It needs to be pointed out that even in strong economies, when businesses and jobs are growing nicely, there will be some businesses and jobs lost due to inefficiencies compared to competitors and/or obsolescence of such goods and services. For an easy to understand example – the making of horse drawn wagons was once the largest industry in the U.S.. However, this industry went out of business when the car was invented and caught on as the preferred transportation means. That's a good thing and something that Capitalism does best – rooting out “waste” (it would have been a waste of both human and material resources to continue to build horse drawn wagons in large quantities since no one would have been buying them). By more efficiently rooting out “waste” than any other economic system, Capitalism has become the most successful economic system ever, and the only economic system that has raised billions of people throughout the world out of poverty. The reason that Communism never worked and was the most failed economic system ever is that it has no mechanism to efficiently root out waste in a non-market driven economy. You met the production goal and you were a success despite the fact that much of it became surplus that no one bought, thus not raising the standard of living of anyone. Also, Communism gives no incentive for people to take risks and develop new products, services, and very importantly, new technology. My hope for the future is for American schools to offer and require more Economic classes so that future voters are wiser on Economics - normally the most important issues for voters in any government besides freedom.

Major Reasons for High US Health Care Costs

The US, compared to the major, wealthy nations in Europe and Canada, have, by far, the highest obesity rates, the highest drug overdose deaths, and the highest rates of teenage births. All of these “self inflicted” factors explode heath care costs for all Americans and have absolutely nothing to do with what kind of health care plans each nations offers. See links:

https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/the-world-is-fat/ - US is much higher than Europe and Canada which explains some of our higher health costs and worse health results

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190221083419.htm - American drug overdose death rates the highest among wealthy nations.

https://www.unicef.org/pon96/inbirth.htm – US has much higher rates of teenage births

Another reason for high health care costs is the fact that medical fraud on government health care programs range, depending on which newspaper article you read, between 10 to 25%. That equates to tens of billions to hundreds of billions of dollars wasted each year. Private insurance companies average less than 1% fraud. We can sve a ton of money by firing the federal workers who handle health care and hiring insurance companies as third party providers to design and administer our government health care programs. Health Care Fraud – Private versus public - https://www.quora.com/In-the-United-States-which-has-a-greater-percentage-of-fraud-committed-Medicare-Medicaid-or-private-insurance and also http://www.cato.org/publications/congressional-testimony/waste-fraud-abuse-government-health-care

The final component of high health costs is complex and has no simple solutions. About 25 to 30% of Medicare costs occur in people's last year of life. It is difficult to predict which terminal patients are receiving operations that only worsen their suffering and doesn't stop their soon to be deaths. Some of these patients may be better off with hospice care to relieve their end of life suffering and allow them to die peacefully at home instead of painfully in a hospital. Living medical wills, that cannot be over ridden by relatives, may be one humane way to reduce this problem. See link:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/06/how-we-spend-3400000000000/530355/

All Governments Have No Money

All Americans very much need to understand this critically important basic principle - all governments have NO MONEY. They get all of their money from taxpayers and by borrowing which eventually we taxpayers must pay back too. So governments cannot give us anything for "free". Anything governments "give us" is paid for by all of us through taxes so that nothing we get from government is free. Even if your income is so low that you are not actually paying taxes, you still are paying for those "free" government benefits through lower wages, less available jobs, less job promotional opportunities, higher borrowing and credit costs, etc. due to the lower disposable income of consumers who are now paying higher taxes.

Socialism – A Good Example of Why Socialism Always Fails

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan".. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. Could not be any simpler than that. (Please pass this on) These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

Identity Politics – The Truth versus the Democratic Lies

The only people practicing identity politics are Democrats and they have been doing that for decades. It is in the Democrats interest to have people FALSELY believe that in today's world, they are being discriminated by color, by gender, and by place of birth, and that only Democrats can fix that through open borders and by converting America from the most successful economic system in the world, Capitalism, to the most failed economic system in the world, Socialism. Let's take those issues one by one. Color discrimination first. In an age when a black person was elected president twice - you would think that this lie had been put to bed. Black people who try hard in academics and work are successful and that's what it takes for all people to be successful. Single parent families, no matter what skin color they happen to be, are understandably poorer, no matter what their skin color, than two parent families given that two instead of one person can be working and that a one parent family has a much harder time realistically working and taking care of young children. One if four white families are single parent families. For Black families, it is triple that - 3 out of 4 Black families are single parent families. Also, more Blacks, relative to their population are in prison. Is this discrimination as Democrats often claim? No, for the simple reason that Black crime is 8 times higher than the national average. Despite that, many more whites than blacks are killed by cops each year, but the fake news media only tells you about blacks being killed by cops. What about gender discrimination? Democrats love to pull out the totally irrelevant statistic that the average woman makes only 82% of the average man. If everybody worked the same job, that would be relevant, but there are thousands of different jobs with thousands of different qualifications and pay. Lumping HS dropouts with college graduates and everyone in between by gender, plus lumping part time and full time jobs together by gender, so that there is just one “national” job and one “national” pay for each gender is statistically, totally meaningless. In the only statistic that matters, men and women in the same job and with the same level of education and experience make the same money. That should be no surprise - it's been the law for 50 years. Finally - place of birth. Democrats falsely lump legal immigrants together with illegals. Illegals ARE NOT IMMIGRANTS - THEY ARE INVADERS. America admits one million people each year LEGALLY to come and live in America - all with a path to citizenship. That is more than all other nations on Earth Combined.

The myth of gender pay gaps:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/01/no-women-don-t-make-less-money-than-men.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gender-pay-gap-is-a-complete-myth/

Cops kill Whites at double the rate that they kill Blacks - http://libertynews.com/2014/12/facts-cops-kill-whites-at-almost-double-the-rate-that-cops-kill-blacks/

Crime Statistics by Race - https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/43tabledatadecoverviewpdf and by race against race - http://www.amren.com/news/2015/07/new-doj-statistics-on-race-and-violent-crime/

The Color of Crime - https://www.amren.com/archives/reports/the-color-of-crime-2016-revised-edition/

Medical Care is “Rationed” in Europe and Canada

Not even socialistic Europe nor Canada have Medicare for All. Patients pay something. Also, taxes are much, much higher in Europe and Canada (40 to 60% Federal income taxes plus 20 to 25% hidden national taxes - called a Value Added Tax or VAT) to pay for their social programs, including medical services that they do have. In essence, and this is always true - the government has no money and pays for nothing. Taxpayers (you and me) pay for every government program. In order to reduce medical costs, Europe has dictated how much doctors get paid and how much doctors and medical facilities can charge for procedures. Consequently, there is a shortage of doctors, medical facilities, and medical equipment (such as MRI machines). As a result, medical care is "rationed" in Europe and Canada. It takes weeks and often months to see a doctor. If surgery is needed and it isn't terminal, you can wait months in pain before the surgery is performed. If you are "too old", you may be denied treatment such as dialysis for terminal medical conditions so that there are enough machines to save younger people.

Eliminate All Federal Subsidies

As of 2017, there are over 2,100 Federal subsidies and we've been adding about 100 new ones each year recently. They cost hundreds of billions of dollars every year – the lowest estimate I've seen is 400 billion dollars a year; the highest estimate is one trillion dollars a year. Elimination of all Federal subsidies would balance the budget and perhaps provide surpluses to pay down our massive national debt. We need to do that now and make it permanent.

Subsidies are hidden in every government departmental budget so that there is no viable way to view all of them together. Essentially, all of these subsidies amount to political bribes to help politicians get elected. All of them need to be eliminated. The largest subsidies, but not all subsidies, go to three major areas - state and local governments to help with the hiring of police and teachers plus other “needs”, farmers, and hundreds of charities. Let's examine each:

State and local governments, by law, must balance their budgets. We should never have given up this needed practice, of forcing state and local politicians to actually make the tough spending and revenue decisions to accomplish a balanced budget that they were elected to do, by allowing them to “out source” some of their spending decisions to the Federal government which is allowed to work without a balanced budget. Most of these subsidies are spent on our largest cities who have managed to avoid the tough decisions on budget balancing. No more. Over a 5 year period, in order to give them sufficient time to adjust their finances, reduce these subsidies by 20% a year, so that they are zero at the end of 5 years.

The average wealth of farmers is two million dollars each. The Federal government should not be subsidizing multi-millionaires. However, the Agricultural subsidy program is so large, that it cannot be withdrawn in one year without creating burdensome chaos. Therefore, cut these subsidies 20% a year to reach zero in 5 years, allowing farmers ample time to adjust to market realities.

Fortunately, most of the hundreds of charities subsidized by the Federal government only cover 10% or less of their annual budgets by these subsidies. Charities should be and are supported by people and businesses, and never should be supported by government. When government supports charities, it is telling all of us individual tax payers that no matter how much you gave to charity, even if it was 10% or more, it was not enough. Therefore, the Federal government is taxing us higher than it otherwise would so that it can force us to give even more to charity. That is just unfair and wrong for government to do to taxpayers. Eliminate all Federal subsidies to charities and do it immediately.
Finally, eliminate every other Federal subsidies immediately.

Israel and Palestine – The Universal Consequences of War

The Arab nations initiated and lost 5 wars with Israel, all with the intent to destroy Israel and wipe it from the face of the Earth. So, given those goals, if they had won any of those wars and captured part or all of Israel, we all know that not one square inch of territory would have been returned to Israel. So why should Israel, the victim of 5 wars against it in its short history as an independent nation, which has already returned some of their captured land from those wars back to the Palestinians, return any more land to them? That would just incent them and other Arab nations into a future war with Israel, since such a policy would create a situation where there would be no risk of losing territory. Also, keep in mind that the Palestinians have it in their charter still to destroy Israel and wipe it off the face of the Earth - so they therefore deserve no sympathy nor territory returned. Logically, there should be no peace negotiations with the Palestinians until they change their charter and recognize Israel's right to exist, plus stop sending rockets into Israeli territory. In the course of human history, nearly every war waged has resulted in some national boudaries being re-drawn. The risk of losing some or all of a nation's territory by starting a war is the largest incentive not to start a war. Let's not lose that incentive.

Minority Advancement – Government Handouts Are the Problem

Whatever group that was maligned hundreds of years ago - Blacks, Indians, etc., we need to stop making them dependent on government and tell them no more handouts - work hard to get ahead and avoid destructive behavior such as having fatherless families, drinking, drugs, not trying to get a good education, not disciplining your children, etc. We do them no favors by "excusing" their self destructive behavior which only holds them back from the good life that is available to them. There are enough success stories from people in these groups who worked hard while avoiding destructive behaviors, to prove to everyone that self help and determination is the only rational way to advance themselves and that continued government assistance hurts more than it helps.

Annuities – Stay Away

As far as annuities - stay away!!!! Most people, by the time they die, haven't even received their initial principal back. So you are getting paid back with your own money. Most annuities have very complex rules. My uncle got suckered into a couple of annuities that I found out about from my aunt after she asked me for help after he died. Those annuities limited his stock market gains to no more than 2% in a single month. While it limited his losses to his principal investment as most annuities do, it did not limit his losses in respect to his gains. For example, say the stock market had a large 10% loss in a single month. If the stock market gained 15% the next month, you would expect that there would be a net 5% gain for the two months. Wrong!!! The annuity only allowed for a maximum monthly 2% gain, so it would still record itself as an 8% loss. You needed 5 monthly gains of 2% or more, without any further monthly losses,before the annuity would start adding stock market gains to the account again. The insurance company wins big, but the annuity owner is totally screwed.

If I Addressed the United Nations

My fellow delegates, the United Nations consists of 193 member nations representing all the recognized nations on Earth. This is an opportune time to recall the purposes of the United Nations:

1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
4. To be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

All UN member nations signed onto these goals when joining the UN. However, any honest evaluation of the state of the world today, almost 75 years after the UN was created, would conclude that these original UN goals have not yet been achieved on a world wide basis. We have ongoing wars, conflicts, and terrorism. Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion are still lacking in many nations today.

How can we make this world a much better place for all human beings and achieve our UN goals? First, let's start with the commonality of all the 7 billion people in the world. Too often, we see each other as different by skin color, by facial differences, by language, and by nationality. However, science has proven that all 7 billion people on Earth are one and the same human species. Also, all of us can be traced back to originating from Africa. Humans have several common blood types common across all nations and can help save other humans who are medically distressed, no matter their skin color or facial features, through human blood transfusions and organ transplants. If our skin colors or facial features designated different species of humans, this would not be possible. Bottom Line – we are all the same ONE human family. It greatly behooves us to recognize that fact and therefore consider every human being on Earth as our family member.

Next, let us examine the history of human wars. Why did they occur? Two different reasons stand out:

The first reason for wars is “control and power”. Often, kings and dictators not only wanted to totally control the people of their own nation, they also wanted to expand their “empire” to include other nations and territories. They were willing to go to war, killing thousands, and even millions of people, to achieve their often insatiable “power” cravings.

The second reason for wars has been religion. Religious leaders believed that their religion was the only true religion and all people who believed different must be forcibly converted to their religion or killed if they refused. In many ways, religious wars are just a subset of the first reason for wars – power and control.

Today, those same horrible traits still exist.

Nations still squabble over territory and are trying to expand their borders. As an example, China captured the free nation of Tibet in the 1950s, and today is illegally building man made islands in the China Sea on the internationally recognized territory of other nations. Why? Because so much of the international shipping traffic utilizes that sea way and China wants to control and profit from it.

A sizable percentage of Muslims want to forcibly convert the world to their religion or kill the non-believers. The result has been wars and terrorism. Even some peaceful Muslim nations are unwilling to give women the same freedoms of men, treating them as a lower form of human being compared to men. All this, despite the fact, that Muslims also believe in the old and new Testaments and therefore the 10 Commandments. One of those Commandments is “Thou Shalt Not Kill”. 4 very simple to understand words. “Thou shalt” - stands for you and me. “Not” - something that we must not do. “Kill” - one word, so that their can be no ambiguity about its meaning. Since Muslims, Christians, and Jews all believe firmly that God makes no mistakes – their can be no debate that wars and terrorist acts violate this most sacred of God's commandments.

Thousands of years of human history – and we are still struggling with the same problems causing wars, misery, and conflict. Think how much better this world would be for all of us if we could only learn from our past and achieve the goals in our UN Charter. Without wars and conflict, the world would be a richer place. A great and relatively recent historical example exists from which we can learn much.

World War 2 resulted in an astounding and totally unacceptable 70 million people killed. The destruction of cities and nations during that war was enormous. Why did it happen? Power and Control. Germany and Japan wanted more land and natural resources, regarded other people as inferior, and were willing to start a war to achieve their goals through military means. Fortunately, both Germany and Japan, lost World War 2. Their nations endured enormous military destruction.

However, the ultimate lesson here is to look at those two nations today. Living in peace for over 70 years and without the territories they had sought to capture and control during World War 2, Germany and Japan are among the wealthiest nations in the world. Their people enjoy both freedom and a very high standard of living.

In other words, war and conflict make nations, especially the aggressor nations poorer and much worse off. Peace and freedom does the opposite – making those nations and their people wealthy with a high standard of living for their people. It also makes the other nations on Earth, not having suffering the cruelty and destruction of war, wealthier too.

Therefore, achieving the worthy goals on the UN Charter, is the only logical and historically accurate means of achieving national wealth and well being for their people. That leaves us with one last question – Are we, the nations of the Earth, the bastions of so called intelligent life on earth, smart enough to learn that simple lesson so that we can improve the lives of all human beings?

Middle Class Wages Have Not Been Stagnant for Decades

Enough of these lies about middle class wages being stagnant for 30 years. It's the idiotic method of comparison that yields these false conclusions. If a middle class person climbs to upper middle class or wealthy, that's a great improvement for that person. However, in the calculations utilized, that former middle class person is counted as always upper middle class or always wealthy so that his/her gain is never recorded as a middle class gain. That's just plain stupid and wrong. In the last 35 years, the upper middle class has more than doubled rising from 12.9% of the population to 29%, while the wealthy have risen from .1% of the population to 1.8% or a gain of 18 times. Where did these people come from? They could only come from the poor and middle classes. See links -

http://money.cnn.com/.../upper-middle-class/index.html– Good comparison over time of the population growth of the upper middle class and rich populations.
http://www.davidkotter.com/.../great-news-the-middle.../The middle class declined over 50% as a percentage of the population, while the percentage of poor remained the same. Shows where they went (can only go up).

http://www.foxbusiness.com/investing/2012/08/23/emac/ The Shrinking Middle Class – Reasons
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/07/yes-the-middle-class-has-been-disappearing-but-they-havent-fallen-into-the-lower-class-theyve-risen-into-the-upper-class/

Investing – Don't Squander the Giant Advantages of Youth

The young have a one time opportunity to retire rich with just modest annual investments. They lose that opportunity if they wait until their 30s and 40s. So don't waste your opportunity.

Think about this – the long term average growth of the stock market over decades has been around 10 to 11%. That implies a doubling every seven years (some 7 year periods will be more; some less, but the average of several consecutive 7 year periods is a doubling every 7 years).

For illustration purposes, let's compare a 23 year old first time investor with a 44 year old first time investor. Each invests $1,000 a year in the stock market every year until age 65 and retires.

When the 44 year old retires at age 65, the 21 annual investments compound (double) three times over each 21 year period of time. Therefore, he/she collects $8,000 a year for 21 years in a row.

When the 23 year old retires at age 65, the 42 annual investments compound (double) six times over each 42 year period of time. Therefore, he/she collects $64,000 a year for 42 years in a row.

So the 23 year old first time investor collects 8 times more than the 44 year old first time investor and does so for an additional 21 years than the 44 year old investor.

Note that if you double the annual investments to $2,000 a year, the results jump to $16,000 a year for the 44 year old and $128,000 a year for the 23 year old. $5,000 annual investments result in $40,000 a year of the 44 year old and $320,000 a year for the 23 year old

This same principle of compounding can be applied to babies. Invest $1,000 in a newborn baby, and there will be nine 7 year periods of compounding by age 65. A one time investment of $1,000 for a newborn, doubles 9 times to $512,000 by age 65. A one time $2,000 investment grows to over one million dollars, and a $5,000 one time investment grows to over $2.5 million dollars.

But you know nothing of the stock market and don't know what to invest in and how to manage it. Index funds like the S&P 500 (a market basket of the 500 largest companies) performs better than 70% of all mutual funds (the ETF “SPY” is a cheap way to buy that index). For many people, that's all you need to buy. Nothing eliminates risk but hundreds of companies are much, much less to go bankrupt than an individual company. Still want more diversity – buy the ETFs – MDY (S&P 400 Midsize companies) and SLY (S&P 600 small size companies), and also QQQ (Nasdaq 100 – top 100 Nasdaq stocks; more of a technology play). For additional diversity and balance, there are also “growth” and “value” versions of the S&P 500 indices - just put a “G” for growth, or a “V” for value at the end of them (SPYG, SPYV, SLYG, SLYV, MDYG, and MDYV). Finally, once bought, hold onto these stock market assets for decades without selling.

When retirement day comes, how do you wisely withdraw these assets during your retirement lifetime for living expenses without running out of money? If you plan on making annual withdrawals, then withdraw no more that 4% of the value of the assets at the time of withdrawal. If you plan to make monthly withdrawals (recommended so that you are less impacted by stock market fluctuations in value day in and day out), then withdraw one third of 4% each month (.0033 times the total value of your assets). Such a process will give you the money you need plus likely give your "raises" in withdrawals as time goes by.

Nuclear Power and Waste and Environmentalists

We need to stop being blindly stupid about and against nuclear material and especially nuclear waste. We have uranium and also nuclear waste and likely always will. We need safe storage places for them. Right now they are kept at dozens of nuclear facilities, which isn't a safe way to store such material, are too limited in storage space, and makes them targets for terrorist attacks. The Federal government has already spent 15 billion dollars preparing the Yucca Mountain region in Nevada for nuclear storage because its terrain makes it a very safe, logical choice to store nuclear waste for hundreds of years, plus having most of our nuclear waste there makes it is easier to guard against terrorists. Also, advances in nuclear power plants have made it possible to utilize the expired fuel rods of old nuclear plants, thus reducing radioactive nuclear waste by over 90% from those nuclear rods. It is this same blind stupidity by environmentalists against anything nuclear that has kept new nuclear plants from being built for over 30 years. Nuclear energy is currently the only non-fossil fuel energy alternative robust enough to provide all of our power plant needs to supply all our home and business energy needs. We could have been there by now except for environmentalists. Nuclear power plants have proven themselves very safe in the United States with few problems and all of them safely contained and prevented from impacting the enviroment. Advances in technology and safety procedures make new nuclear power plants even safer than the current old ones in the U.S.. So now, the nuclear power plants that we do have are old and thus reaching the end of their lifespans. They will have to be replaced by fossil fuel energy plants that environmentalists hate and blame them for global warming. See the absurdity here?

Doctor Visits

More and more, if a person has more than one medical issue, doctors are requiring their patients to make a separate appointment for each problem. That delays medical care, extends suffering, while lining the pockets of doctors. This practice needs to be outlawed.