I have been pretty quiet about this election. Now I want to comment. I see many parallels between today and the situation in Singapore in February of 1942. To make a long story short, while an army of 140,000 Japanese troops advanced down the Malay Peninsula to take Singapore, the British expatriates and wealthy Chinese "ate,drank,and were merry" as if nothing was going to happen to them. If you want to read the whole story, the history is below:
Today in the US, we have a booming stock market. The housing market is at an all-time high. In most parts of the country, help wanted signs can be seen all over the place. Auto sales are at an all-time high. It looks like the boom times of the Bill Clinton years or 1968.
It is for a fortunate few. You do not have to be just the top 1%. Many professionals and careful people with good luck are enjoying a financial boom.
Under this small 5%-10% enjoying "the good life" there is the other 90% that is not enjoying such a good life. It is not like the great depression of the 1930's where we saw tent cities full of the unemployed and long soup lines of the starving trying to get some food.
The people I am talking about are those who have lost their jobs when their companies moved to other countries, students coming out of college or graduate school with huge student loan debts. When they do get a job the pay is low. After servicing the student load debt, they have no hope of finding a home and starting a family. Then there is a massive number of people stuck with higher insurance premiums and deductibles with Obamacare. (This program started with the noblest goals and got a lot more people insured but at an awful price.) Many families (An average of 33,000 per month) are still losing their homes to foreclosure.
This massive majority is mad as hell and they want real change. They are fed up with the status quo in politics. They will get out and vote this time.
Conventional wisdom says that Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic nomination and easily defeat a less-competent Donald Trump. Do not "buy into this." With this election anything can and will happen.
A Chines proverb applies here as follows:
"May you live in interesting times."
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