The Next Superpower Won't Come From Asia... or Europe
China. That's what most people think the next great superpower will be. Or maybe Russia, India, or a European country, right? Wrong. There's another country whose stock market has beaten the S&P by 3-to-1 over the past decade... and is poised to rake in trillions of dollars in the coming years. Get its name here. SPONSORED | |
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| Thursday, July 17, 2014 | Issue #2335 | |
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Why Investors Have It
Better Than Ever Alexander Green, Chief Investment Strategist, The Oxford Club
 At an investment conference last week, Scientific American columnist and Skeptic magazine founder Michael Shermer argued that we are living in the best of times.
Living standards have never been higher. The human life span has never been longer. Educational attainment has never been greater. And violent crime is in a long-term cycle of decline.
Yet some in the audience disagreed, arguing that things were better for consumers, businessmen and investors "back in the good old days."
This is almost always a misconception. The best thing about those days for most of us "of a certain age" is that we were younger, healthier and totally unencumbered. (Plus, popular music was way better.)
THIS TECH COMPANY IS "IN THE MIDDLE" OF A $6.2 TRILLION BOOM
Google... Bosch... Apple... Qualcomm... AT&T... Right now, all of these firms are getting involved in a new, far-reaching tech trend. A trend Gartner predicts will add $3.8 trillion to the economy in 2014. But that's only the start. Because according to the McKinsey Global Institute, this sector will soon generate as much as $6.2 trillion per year.
And one under-the-radar company stands to profit more than any of the companies listed above. Click here to learn more. | |
But for many Americans, things were a lot worse. I was reminded of this the other day when I read Bill Bryson's new book about 1927 called One Summer.
It was a simpler, easier time in some respects. But Bryson reminds us that:
- Blacks and women were systematically discriminated against - and not just in subtle ways. At its peak in the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan had more than 5 million members. Seventy-five members of Congress either belonged to or were openly associated with it. Several cities elected Klan mayors. Oklahoma and Oregon had Klan governors.
- Flying was a great deal more dangerous than it is today. Aside from the fact that there was essentially zero business or leisure air travel, at least 15,000 men were killed or critically injured in accidents in flight schools.
- It was a good time to be a criminal. Nationally, according to a survey by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, two-thirds of America's murders were unsolved. Nine-tenths of all serious crime went unpunished.
- Prohibition turned ordinary citizens into criminals and spawned a whole new industry for gangsters. And it didn't slow down drinking one bit. New York had more saloons in 1927 than it did before Prohibition. More people died of alcohol-related causes than at any time before Prohibition was introduced.
- State legislatures tried legislating probity. In Oshkosh, Wisconsin, a local law made it an offense for dance partners to gaze into each other's eyes. In Utah, the state legislature considered sending women to prison - not fining them, but jailing them - if their skirts showed more than three inches of leg above the ankle.
- The best-selling car in the country was Ford's Model T. But unlike today's flashy models - with front and side airbags, antilock brakes, GPS systems, high-powered audio and voice-activated SYNC - the cars were almost unbelievably rudimentary. For years, the car - available in any color you wanted as long as it was black - had no speedometer and no gas gauge.
- Henry Ford paid his employees $5 a day, double the average salary. He didn't do this out of magnanimity or a desire for his employees to be able to afford his cars, as some suggest. He did it because employee turnover - at 370% a year - was a terrific waste.
- And while Ford introduced both the eight-hour day and the 40-hour work week, he also established the company's notorious Sociological Department, employing more than 200 investigators to look into virtually every aspect of his employees' private lives, including their diet, hygiene, religion, personal finances, recreational habits and morals.
- Eugenics became popular as Americans feared the country was filling up with dangerously inferior people. The government deported many deemed unfit, suspended civil liberties for some and tens of thousands of innocent people were involuntarily sterilized.
Of course, 1927 had more than a few good things going for it. Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic (and became the most famous person on Earth), Babe Ruth shattered the record books with 60 home runs in a single season and Calvin Coolidge promoted American prosperity in a way our politicians today could hardly imagine: He left citizens alone.
Those who insist that life was better "back in the day" often have a tendency to compare the imperfect present with an idealized recollection of the past.
We can argue about what lies ahead. But despite widespread anxiety and cynicism, most Americans - and investors - have never had it better than they do today.
Good investing,
Alex | |
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