John T. Reed’s news blog

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.There is a whole Wikipedia write-up just on those phrases. It says the phrases are a slogan popularized by Karl Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program.Unless you knew it was a Marxist slogan, you probably agreed with it. Why would whether Karl Marx said it or not matter? It should not. That is the point of this article.From each according to the progressive income tax table, to each according to the various safety net lawsIn 2010, Sean Hannity went on a jag of reading the slogan...

AbortionAbortion is one of the thorniest ethical questions ever to face human beings. Neither the right yelling “Never” nor the left yelling “Always” through their bullhorns has an intelligent position on the issue. The American people in general recognize the complexity and lack of clarity of the moral issues involved.I do not have the solution to the abortion issue anymore than the left or right does, but I have a suggestion reflecting one aspect of abortions that I think is dead wrong. I do not like the “Out of sight, out of mind” way abortions are handled.When my wife was...

My Baby Boomer generation has famously refused to get old. Those of us in the front rank (born in 1946) are now 69 years old. So we are getting old whether many of us are willing to admit it or not. The kooky belief seems to be if you work out and buy groceries at Whole Foods, you don’t get old. Thus bicycling, which is arguably exercise, being done by adults. When I was a kid in the 1950s and the early 1960s, adults did not ride bikes. We were much poorer then—no TV or car at my house—so, if anything,...

World changed since the last edition in 2008 Also, the previous second edition of Succeeding was written in 2008. As you know, the financial world turned upside down that year and has not gotten much better since. Consequently, I had to almost totally rewrite the chapters on: Investment Wealth Savings Risk Die Broke Rejecting "Little old me-ism" Don't be a "weed" A landscaping analogy for your career path All Youtube videos of John T. Reed Reviewed every word of prior edition When the second edition of Succeeding sold out in September 2011, I reread every word of the book and...

Reed’s rule #1 in my Reed’s Rules of Real Estate Finance Is “Simple is better than complex.” Those rules are in my book Fundamentals of Real Estate Finance. Many readers of my book How to Protect Your Life Savings from Hyperinflation & Depression, 2nd edition, have asked what I think about using ETFs to hedge against USD hyperinflation. I said I did not like them because they are unnecessarily complicated and because they have a higher degree of political risk—maybe huge political risk. I was also concerned that they are relatively new and have not been tested in multiple crises....