Authored by Daniel Lang via SHTFplan.com,
Illinois is the perfect example of what happens when your state is run by fiscally irresponsible dunces for decades.
Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
Chinese billionaire and Alibaba founder Jack Ma predicted this week that in 30 years, people will be working less than they do now. According to NBC:
"I think in the next 30 years, people only work four hours a day and maybe four days a week," Ma said.
"My grandfather worked 16 hours a day in the farmland and [thought he was] very busy. We work eight hours, five days a week and think we are very busy."
Some very simplistic math from Moody's helps to shed some light on just how inevitable a public pension crisis is in the United States. Analyzing a basket of 56 public plans with net liabilities of $778 billion, Moody's found that just a modest downside return scenario over the next three years (2017: +7.2%, 2018: -5.0%, 2019: 0%) would result in a 59% surge in new unfunded liabilities. Moreover, given that total unfunded public pension liabilities are roughly $5 trillion in aggregate, this implies that a simple 5% drop in assets in 2018 could trigger a d
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
Employers have no choice: it's innovate/automate or die.
Automation--networked robotics, software and processes--has already had a major impact on jobs. As this chart from my colleague Gordon T. Long illustrates, the rise of Internet technologies is reflected in the steady, long-term decline of the labor force participation rate-- the percentage of the populace that is actively in the labor market.
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
GE has the largest pension shortfall in the S&P 500. It’s a $31 Billion Balance Sheet Hole That Keeps Growing.
At $31 billion, GE’s pension shortfall is the biggest among S&P 500 companies and 50 percent greater than any other corporation in the U.S. It’s a deficit that has swelled in recent years as Immelt spent more than $45 billion on share buybacks to win over Wall Street and pacify activists like Nelson Peltz.