""Markets,"" Silver, and Redrawing the U.S. Household Poverty Line at $140,000?

Finance U Public Finance U
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LOL, I had a little struggle session just now coming to terms with me saying “I am in Los Angeles.” - and that is considered some kind of bragging! Ha ha ha ha!

This place is a Shithole Country ™. The type of place Donald Trump doesn’t want people coming from to ruin the United States.

One of the sellers I went to today sold me Eagles, took my money, then had to give it back because he didn’t have any in stock(!). I had to walk around and ask and found the Syrian guys - and they are apparently “the coin guys” in this particular plaza.

On top of Syrian coin guys, we had a legless guy in a wheelchair screaming the N-bomb at everyone lighter than Northern Italian right outside the Grand Central Market. We also have a homeless “tiny home” community chock full of drug addicts with a satellite party tent taking up the entire sidewalk right outside their government sponsored meth village. The lights are out because scrappers stole the wire (again). I am paying, mind you, 30%+ right off the top of my wages for the pleasure.

Also, apologies about being a jerk. I have a couple of ex-girlfriends who first diagnosed me and it is a terminal case.

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I’m personally struggling with this one. The advisor I pay has warned I’m over the amount he’s comfortable with, and with some recent changes, that ratio is much worse. But, he also adds, I’m doing better than most of his clients :slight_smile: My history of investing failures is screaming in my pea brain right now.

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Phil, I’m having a similar problem about “eggs” - except the problem has occurred all by itself, due to the increase in value of two specific eggs. As a percentage of the pie…they’ve grown substantially. And I actually reduced my paper holdings.

How will it play out? Will prices drop if we get that AI bubble pop? I suspect so. Will we get an AI bubble pop? About that…I’ve been saying yes for way too long, and it hasn’t happened.

“Predictions are hard, especially about the future.”

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follow what I do and do exactly the opposite :slight_smile:

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I’m feeling the same.
Sadly, it took me many decades to realize most of the expert’s formally reccomended baskets had rotten bottoms and preexisting holes torn in the bottom by the financial raccoons. At least with more less risky secure baskets, I can sleep at night.

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I once heard it said, “Diversification is for those who don’t know what is going to happen.” I “know” what is going to happen in the broadest strokes. I just don’t know when. So, “a few baskets” is ok with me.

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The story about people carrying risk on their car insurance - that they lose the car in a crash - reminded me of the Thomas Hardy novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

Tess had an accident which killed the family’s carthorse. This started a chain of decline where she keeps bumping down the steps of life until she really is at the bottom.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We have had an unusual “Golden Age” over the past (say) 80 years. Bit by bit, we are returning to what has been the norm over centuries and centuries - most people being poor.

Reversion to the mean. It’s not just for the stock market!

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Re the issue of cliff edges re work vs benefits

I’ve longed observed this in the UK. Once you get yourself onto a combination of benefits, there is no incentive to get off, as you actually get poorer from going to work.

Over time, that threshold has gone up - of the wage you’d need to make it worth coming off benefits. Not because of benefits going up massively. But because of the free/paid-for stuff that you get is more valuable every year - eg dentistry and no council tax (property tax). So even the big rises in minimum wage that the UK has had over the past few years (probably to try to solve this) hasn’t worked.

Even people on fairly modest benefits refuse to work more than the “benefits minimum” of 16 hours per week now - because the extra money (to the extent it isn’t cash in hand/a Deliveroo app in their cousin’s name!) costs them benefits money and stuff. So now we need 2-3 min wage workers per job now - all of them being a net cost to the country.

Then we come onto other issues the fast rises in minimum wage are causing - apart from price rises and layoffs. People who once earned ok money for (say) semi-skilled work have found that 1) The money they earned isn’t what it was and most people’s wages have been pretty much stagnant for a while now and 2) Min wage has pretty much caught up to what they earn - but employers say that by the time they have paid out increased min wage, there is no budget left for anyone else = People doing skilled jobs might as well do an easier min wage job for the difference in take home pay it will get them. Next step is, some might figure out they are better doing 16 hours of that and topping it up with benefits! Crazy!

Then, part of my worry re Paul and Chris saying that we need a national conversation re the situation of the youth etc. I agree and it will happen one way or the other. But you can guess how that will go - more tax and more benefits. So making what I describe above EVEN worse.

We’re doomed. But we are anyway. Wealth, production, everything is rotating to the east. It’s going to be the story of the next generation.

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I think that’s generally true. I’ll use myself as an example. I was pretty sure we’d have a correction by now. That didn’t happen; I was wrong. Diversification ensured that me-being-wrong didn’t end up with me taking big losses. I’m told that “things don’t go to heck in a straight line”, and since I like to take advantage of sales, having cash is useful.

Cash has served me well in the past. Let’s say silver gets hit for a $20 loss in the next smash. I’ll get to buy it in the 30s vs the price it is at today. Of course, Ed Dowd could be wrong, Warren Buffet could be wrong, I could be wrong, the AI bubble never pops, no correction occurs, and I’ll miss out on “cheap silver at $59.”

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Agree.

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just to comment from my experience as a market farmer for 10 years now transitioning to homestead production while also switching my diet to carnivore for the health benefits:

It takes more labor per calorie to grow quality veggies at a homestead scale than it does to raise quality protein. I would say off the cuff 10X more labor to grow veggie calories vs protein and fat calories.
The main difference is the time and cost distribution in the upfront investment of infrastructure and processing equipment of animals along with the babies (calf, piglet, chick etc). this makes protein raising feel more expensive because of the upfront cost whereas it is difficult to fully appreciate the cumulative cost of growing veggies successfully.

Of course it’s my opinion that having a meat based diet is vastly more healthy than a carb veggie based diet but that is for each individual to decide.

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I consider myself fortunate. I am comfortable that my goldandsilver stash will be enough to get me through The Bottleneck, and probably my two kids and their families. But my wife’s part time consulting gigs we never planned for in retirement are providing us with extra cash that tends to pile up more than I’m comfortable with. So I skim some off the top periodically to be converted into silver. Like you I’ll be ready for that temporary drop in silver, if it comes. If it doesn’t I’ll have to find something else to do with that skim, something tangible.

I think we’re different only in that you’re a highly skilled investor and I’m just a survivor and an ordinary man. I look forward to seeing you on the other side with some “interesting” stories to tell.

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Having done the conversion of nutrition/energy, I’ve realized I could eat beef, lamb and to a degree pork off of the acres we have; we could provide protein for 50 some odd people . That isn’t counting the ponds and fish.
We garden for variety and nutrients.

May the gov. Leave us alone.

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The collapse is becoming common knowledge. They say “Don’t hasten the whirlwind.” Wish somebody would tell the US government and “The FED.”

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If that’s the headline from an article in Fortune shown on Yahoo finance either we’re about to go off the cliff, or gold will start growing on trees.

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So you go to ur precious metals spreadsheet pop in current spot price
Oh my!
Irresponsiblly long (hat tip to @cmartenson ) has taken on a new meaning!
RE used to be biggest asset
This situation fights with everything i have ever heard or read except here at PP. Hard to argue with success.
What to do with any FRNs that can be skimmed off top of the in-flow??
Just one more ounce that is all oh you have $53.50 face of dimes…ok geeeze, i will take them all. …Let me know next time you get some in. :rofl:

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Another idea…you might get lucky

Something to consider ask around find a jeweler who has a reliable coin person they refer customers to( e.g., rare coin guy that off loads 90% when he gets it )
Connect with that person then just make friends and buy it everytime they text u.
Cash no CC /wires
Of course Costco ( the discounts and rebates can be irresistable) is sometimes too hard to resist seeing the brown truck of happiness

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I am so frustrated with myself for not really coming to grips with the inflation / debasement for so many decades.
Reading about the published yearly inflations / interest rates was easy, but I just felt confused about it.

The reduction of purchasing power just did not feel really important in that time period of my life. Gains in income from improved skill sets & knowledge allowed increasing wages that more than offset purchasing power losses.

Then, like a frog in a pot of heating water, it was easy to forget that the debased currency effect was accumulating year by year. Life got busy, so it became harder to recognize the trap.

Retroactive analysis is that was a foolish thing to do.

An example of $ per hour earnings purchasing power. Around early 1968 (early high school time), I worked part time for pizza shop washing dishes and making pizzas for minimum wage. Net says minimum wage then was $1.60 per hour.

That is an hourly rate of 16 dimes.

Pre 1965 real silver dimes, quarters, halves were still readily available in normal currency circulation.

That means 16 dimes per hour in pre 1965 junk silver coinage was available for washing dishes in 1968. A gallon of premium real gasoline was readily available for a quarter, and it was not watered down with alcohol back then. It was quite popular for high school hot rods.

So, how would my dishwashing compare then vs now?

Dec 7, 2025. Coinflation.com shows:
silver at $ 58.36 per ounce.
Pre 65 junk silver currently purchase power worth
$ 4.21 per junk Silver dime, or
$ 42.21 per face dollar worth of junk silver.

 $   4.21 per junk Silver dime

x 16 (times 16 dimes per hour washing dishes)
= $ 67.36 PER HOUR of current equivalent value.

Wiskey Tango Foxtrot !
$ 67.36 PER HOUR x 40 hrs/wk x 52 wks/yr

that’s the equivalent of earning $140,108 yearly today for my washing dishes without any impacts from today’s increased expenses from taxes and inflation of goods, medical, insurance, etc or the raccoon’s monopoly theft effects of keeping silver values depressed.
:face_with_bags_under_eyes:
do your own due diligence tribe folk.

fool me once, shame on you.
fool me twice, shame on me.

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