When you look at the numbers, things are actually just fine.
As they say, numbers don't lie. Or as Joe Friday used to say...just the facts. Our daily headlines come at us 24 hours a day and we have to try to decipher what's true, exaggeration, or just plain manipulated.
Jim has taken some numbers and crunched them himself. What do you think?
Please head over to Jim's post and give him your thoughts.
I tend to be a numbers guy, I guess that is why I ended up in the Real Estate Investment business. I believe the numbers can't lie unless we lie about the numbers. Thus, if you have honest data to begin with you will get an honest answer which cant be distorted by media, politicians or my friends on Facebook.
I do notice then when I read Facebook, watch the news or read an article it seems like the world is facing the end. Wars are raging, people are being murdered left and right, crazy people are shooting all of us, the country has more debt that ever, American's are living worse than our parents.
I set out to prove a point on Facebook. I wanted to show someone how we spend so much more money post World War II (trying to be the world's keeper) that we did pre-WWII (when we were an isolationist nation). As Gomer Pyle would have said, Surprise, Surprise, Surprise. Our debt was about the same, in fact it seems it is always about the same, it fluctuates between 50-110% of our GDP, depending on if we face a national emergency or not. I was shocked and began looking into other things we are told.
So do people really have it worse off today than they did 50 years ago? Median family income in 1970 was $9,970.00. Today the median income is $61,937.00. Knowing that a $1 in 1970 is worth about $6.65 in 2020 it seems the median income has not really changed, actually we make a little more than we did in 1970. Also goods are far cheaper today, in 1970, a 25 inch color TV was $739.95 or about $4,439.70 today, A McDonalds Cheeseburger was $.018 which is about $1.08 today so actually that has gone down 8 cents. The chance of being murdered was .007% in 1970 and today it is .004%, that seems to be better.
So after about 40 minutes of research I found out that the world is better off today. Perhaps before we all get worked up over what we read from someone else, we should do 40 minutes of research. Then, we can stop being so angry all the time and enjoy what we have. Just one guy's opinion. (Sorry CNN, FOX, MSNBC and all my Facebook friends!)
James (Jim) Lord
jim@jimlordregroup.com
www.jimlordregroup.com
480-648-3378
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