Harry S. Dent Jr.'s Blog, page 156
April 16, 2015
Do You Know the Role Education Plays in Wealth Inequality?
There’s any number of figures out there that paint a grotesque picture of wealth inequality: The top 5% owns some 62% of all the wealth (maybe you’ve seen it higher), the top 1% holds four-fifths of all stock market capitalization… the list goes on.
April 15, 2015
The IRS Reveals Our Failure as a Republic
Three years ago I received a notice from the IRS about a problem with my taxes. In part the letter read that the agency had tried to contact me several times, but received no response. In bold it read Final Notice. Only, I’d never received any notices.
I called the agency the next day and quickly found out that someone had fraudulently used my Social Security number to file a tax return. This is common, the agent told me. When I asked about the “tried to contact you” and “Final Notice,” language, the agent told me that this was simply a form letter.
I asked if it was standard policy to lie to constituents, at which point I was told some drivel about how the agent on the phone wasn’t responsible for the letter, blah, blah, blah.
As federal tax day rolls around, I can’t help but reflect on that incident, and the fact that I must rely on an accountant to ensure my taxes are done correctly.
The annual cost of compliance with the federal income tax — not paying taxes, just calculating them — is at least $67 billion and six billion hours.
When the federal income tax was initially passed in 1913, the code ran 400 pages. It now spans over 73,000 pages. It’s so complex that most people would be foolish to attempt filing their returns without professional assistance.
This situation — that Americans can’t comply with their own laws without paid assistance from specialists — goes against the notions of self-reliance that led to the birth of the nation in the first place.
This can’t be what we as citizens intended, and certainly not what we want. The problem is that our system of government’s structure has failed to keep up with
April 14, 2015
Is the Fed Really as Independent as It Thinks It Is?
The Fed likes to consider itself independent from political influence to decide on monetary policy. In fact, when the Fed’s independence is threatened, they get quite defensive!
Battle of the Reserve Currencies: Dollar vs…Yuan…?
I was sitting around the other day trying to decide what to do with all of my worthless dollars. I’m constantly bombarded with messages telling me how the buck will buckle, leaving my Franklins and Jacksons worthless. Guess I’ve got to do something with this worthless heap of cotton fiber.
Let’s see… should I build a bonfire, sending the notes up in smoke, or unceremoniously bag them up as trash? Better yet, I could relive my elementary school days in the 1970s and create one of those cool-at-the-moment-but-awful-in-retrospect decoupage art pieces. Now that’s an option!
Or how about this… instead of taking all the greenback haters at their word, I could take a peek at the real world, where the dollar has gained ground against the yen and the euro over the last couple of years. From
April 13, 2015
The Ultimate Middle East Dilemma: Time For Us To Stop Intervening?
The last time I was speaking in Dubai, my wife had lunch with three highly intelligent women from Shia, Sunni, and Christian backgrounds.
Ordinarily you wouldn’t expect three people with these backgrounds to agree on something, but they did on one thing….
That is, the West doesn’t understand why the Arab world hates them.
April 10, 2015
Biotech Innovations: The Future Is In Our Hands.
In 2012 I earned my Master Degree in Systems Engineering. I remember sitting in the audience at the Fox Theatre in downtown Atlanta, waiting to walk across the stage to pick up my diploma from the president of Georgia Tech.
At the time, I recalled my undergraduate graduation 7 years earlier. The keynote speaker had blabbed on for what felt like an eternity about energy policy. Fast forward, and there I was dreading another mind-numbing keynote address.
I was pleasantly surprised when they introduced a very well-spoken engineering professor who gave an urgent, important message to a room full of engineers with newly minted diplomas.
“No one has a crystal ball,” he told us. “So if you want to predict the future, the only true way is to invent it yourself.”
Make no mistake: Nerds like us are forging the way to a better future,
Every year since 2001, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — better known as MIT — releases their list of the top 10 technological innovations that will change the world.
This year, two of the top 10 fall under the umbrella of biotech: “Internet of DNA” and “liquid biopsy.”
As you have probably already guessed from my previous articles, Internet of DNA is the current breakthrough of sharing millions of DNA database records, closely aligned with the precision medicine initiative.
With this information, doctors will be able to compare your DNA and symptoms to another patient with the same condition. MIT believes we’ll see this roll out into standard medical treatment in the next one to two years.
Then there’s liquid biopsy. This is a technology that will allow us to identify small quantities of cancerous cells from trace amounts of DNA in the blood stream — all from a simple blood test! This will allow for earlier detection and treatment for cancer patients.
Let’s Talk About Real Estate: What Can We Expect?
465 miles.
That’s how far it is from my house in Tampa to the Alabama state line at the Western edge of the Florida Panhandle. We have family in Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas, so we’ve made the trip past that milestone often. And every time we reach it, we breathe a sigh of relief.
When we travel back home, we take a breath and prepare for what comes next: 200 miles of sheer boredom to Tallahassee. Then another 150 miles of more boredom from there to Gainesville, broken only by one right turn.
It’s a land of endless trees and little development, particularly from Tallahassee to Gainesville. This stretch goes around the armpit of Florida, which meets the Gulf of Mexico in a swampy mess that’s far removed from the fabulous beaches to the west and south.
So imagine my surprise when I found out that this 560,000 acres of hardwood trees and wood pulp forest is worth almost $1 billion.
The current owners have had the property for 20 years. They run limited timber operations but mostly just wait for the land value to appreciate. With Florida back in growth mode and limited availability elsewhere in the state, it seems their time has come…
After the invention of air conditioning, land in Florida has always been attractive, especially to retiring baby boomers.
While the oldest of the generation have already called it quits, the largest part of the population cohort, born from 1957 to 1961, have yet to retire. When they do, they’ll find winters in Ohio inhospitable, and like those who’ve retired before them, they’ll flock to warmer climes.
While Texas and other energy-rich states have gained a lot of media attention for creating jobs and attracting workers, Florida is still in the business of attracting retirees and those that serve them.
From July 2013 to July 2014, six of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the U.S. were in Florida. The state added almost 200,000 people during that time, and passed New York as the third most populous state, with just shy of 20 million people. The fastest growing metropolitan area in the country was The Villages, a retirement community in Sumter County, FL whose population jumped by 5.4% over the course of the year.
Naples, Fort Myers, and Sarasota were also among the other top-growth spots.
This ever-growing Florida population will eventually fuel a steady rise in real estate prices. We can already see this in the number of vacation homes sold. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), people bought 1.13 million vacation homes last year! That was 57.4% more than 2013, which had experienced a 30% increase from 2012.
The numbers might be inflated a bit — the association has an obvious interest in positive real estate data — but there’s no denying the trend. People are buying vacation homes… and that’s often a precursor to using the properties for retirement.
This trend is not new to us, though. It fits the consumer life cycle we’ve been explaining to readers and audiences
