Markets give, but they also take. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:
When people stop participating in their own servitude, then things change.
A dedicated cadre of readers is devoted to reminding me that I’ve been wrong since 2009, as stocks, housing and GDP have all soared. We skeptics and doom-and-gloomers have all been wrong, and when stocks briefly dip, we’re identified as broken clocks–right on occasion but not for being “right.”
These readers are of course doing well. None are in the bottom 50% of Americans who have already experienced the crash. But since the top 10% dominate the media, both legacy and social media, and they’ve done splendidly in the Everything Bubble that’s been inflating for the past 16 years, then they don’t see the crash the 50% have experienced, for the top 10% live in a completely different world from the bottom 50%, whose experience tracks a third-world country far removed from jetting around the world and complaining about high taxes.
Life has crashed for the bottom 50% since 2009, but since those reporting the “news,” issuing glowing commentary about AI, nuclear power, missions to the Moon, etc., and making big bucks as influencers didn’t experience the crash, it has gone largely unnoticed except for occasional reporting in the legacy and social media: people making substantially more than minimum wage living in vans and cars because they can’t afford the local rents, and similar stories.
In a Snow Paradise, They Live in This Parking Lot People experiencing homelessness can sleep in their cars in this wealthy ski town in Colorado, but only if they have a job.
The Invisible Man We see right through the unshowered soul living in a car by the beach, or by the Walmart, or by the side of the road. But he’s there, and he used to be somebody. He still is. A firsthand account of homelessness in America.
