Juggling Dynamite

Recent reports cite mental health professionals noting an increase in people seeking help for anxiety and depression since Donald Trump’s election:

The American Psychological Association has recorded a rise in anxiety in the Trump era, with a five per cent increase (52 to 57 per cent) in politically induced stress levels over a six-month period before, during and after the 2016 election. Overall, stress levels were the highest they’ve been in a decade, according to the APA.

In an online survey in February 2017, two-thirds of Americans — including most Democrats as well as most Republicans — said they were stressed about the future of the nation. Most of the more than 3,500 people polled blamed the extreme political polarization for their anxiety. There was a strong correlation between stress levels and electronic news consumption.

I agree that we are living in anxiety inducing times, and I have great empathy for young people who feel that our future is growing more precarious by the day.  It is right now.

But this is not about Trump.  The habits and policies that have created our current strife have been unfolding for decades and across political parties of all stripes.

No doubt, Trump represents the unvarnished ugly of what humans can be, and having him as the leader of the free world is unsettling, to say the least.  But to make meaningful improvements from here, we need to see unvarnished ugly so that we can admit, repent, reform and recover.

Those who thought the election of Barack Obama had somehow fixed our self-destructive status quo were painfully naive, perhaps hoping for an easy way out.  The change we need to make here is big, not painless, and it must be driven by our individual action, not passive observation.

Positive steps and progress are the antidote to anxiety and fear.   In this sense Trump offers a powerful inverse mentor and catalyst.  We can use it.

Although Chef Charity has well over 15 years of experience, her calling to become a plant based chef followed as a result of her family’s own transition. That transition paired with her affinity to cook and be creative was the driving force that propelled her into her calling to become a plant based, vegan and transitional chef. As a lover of food, and self proclaimed foodie, her goal is to assist people in making an easy transition from animal products to well balanced plant based meals. She does this by providing nutrient rich and savory easy to follow recipe’s along with educating about the benefits an organic, non-gmo, plant based lifestyle has on the body and overall well being.

Chef Charity is most certainly more than a chef as many professional athletes will attest. She currently provides vegan meal preparation to several NFL players and has recently been featured by ESPN highlighting her awesome home made meals that have encouraged athletes to educate themselves, improve their athletic performance as well as their overall health.

Here is a direct audio link.

Lower shelter costs, along with less consumption spending of all kinds, are necessary pillars to restoring financial viability for households in the post-debt-bubble world.  As credit levels recede through a much needed secular contraction, home prices will have to realign with more historically normal income and saving rates.

In the end this will be a boom to younger generations and the future economy, however nearer-term it will mean capital deficits for those banking on indefinitely inflated asset values to fund their future spending needs.   See Housing values may fall as baby boomers die off, or sell off, two studies say:

Will baby boomers turn into party poopers when they unload their homes in large numbers starting in the next decade? Could they create an indigestible oversupply in the market that lowers home prices and frustrates sales?

That’s a sobering scenario outlined by two new, provocative studies.

Both studies cite demographic and housing data to make their cases. Boomers — the giant generation of Americans born between 1946 and 1964 — own 32 million homes, 2 of every 5 in the country. The generations preceding them occupy another 14 million homes. Collectively, their properties are valued at about $13.5 trillion, according to the Fannie Mae study, co-authored by Patrick Simmons of the strategic research group and Dowell Myers, a professor at the University of Southern California.

All of these homeowners face key choices: Do we stay put, sell, downsize or move to a rental? At some point, the inevitable kicks in: Health issues and death will force them to dispose of their properties.

As for today’s many mega-sized abodes (artifacts of the now dying credit bubble)–adding in-house apartments or making them over into multi-family dwellings is the most likely course.  Ideas that increase resource efficiency are on the right track.