What Does It Mean "to Shrug"?
Posted by CircuitGuy 10 years, 10 months ago to Economics
I hear people say they're a few years away from shrugging or they're considering shrugging. What does that mean? I have thought of five levels of shrugging.
5. Try Something New: Sell or close one business and start doing paid work in some form and/or start a business in less regulated industry. Keep your wealth invested as before.
4. Partially Retire: Stop working for money but keep your wealth invested as before and possibly act as an angel investor and mentor for entrepreneurs just starting or take occasional consulting projects.
3. Fully Retire: Stop all paid work in all forms. Invest all wealth in large funds that don't require any management work on your part. Make no angel investments and no real estate investments except for REITs that require no work or management involvement on your part, apart from passively reading prospectuses. Accept no paid positions on boards and no indirect payments of any kind. You can still do unpaid work like helping your kids do repairs, but just for the joy of it, not in trade.
2. Fully Retire with No Investments – Put all your wealth in things that don't generate new income or value, such as precious metals and undeveloped land. You can sell the land and metals to get money to spend at for-profit businesses to provide for your needs, but you personally are not trying to make any profit or taxable income.
1. Atlas-Shrugged Shrug: Take all the wealth you can carry to a hidden “Gulch” settlement. Destroy the rest to the extent it's practical. Abandon or destroy all wealth that exists on the outside world.
Numbers 5 through 3 still involve a lot of participation in the economy and are things even people with no problems with the government do. With #2, you've mostly checked out but you're still feeding the economy by consuming goods and services.
I love the notion that there might be small secret Gulches of sorts were people could move. I hope people build a large one, maybe a non-secret Gulch, within my lifetime.
Assuming there's not a secret Gulch you know of, what does it mean to say, “I'm frustrated with the gov't, and I'm considering _shrugging_ at some point in the next five years.” What does that mean?
5. Try Something New: Sell or close one business and start doing paid work in some form and/or start a business in less regulated industry. Keep your wealth invested as before.
4. Partially Retire: Stop working for money but keep your wealth invested as before and possibly act as an angel investor and mentor for entrepreneurs just starting or take occasional consulting projects.
3. Fully Retire: Stop all paid work in all forms. Invest all wealth in large funds that don't require any management work on your part. Make no angel investments and no real estate investments except for REITs that require no work or management involvement on your part, apart from passively reading prospectuses. Accept no paid positions on boards and no indirect payments of any kind. You can still do unpaid work like helping your kids do repairs, but just for the joy of it, not in trade.
2. Fully Retire with No Investments – Put all your wealth in things that don't generate new income or value, such as precious metals and undeveloped land. You can sell the land and metals to get money to spend at for-profit businesses to provide for your needs, but you personally are not trying to make any profit or taxable income.
1. Atlas-Shrugged Shrug: Take all the wealth you can carry to a hidden “Gulch” settlement. Destroy the rest to the extent it's practical. Abandon or destroy all wealth that exists on the outside world.
Numbers 5 through 3 still involve a lot of participation in the economy and are things even people with no problems with the government do. With #2, you've mostly checked out but you're still feeding the economy by consuming goods and services.
I love the notion that there might be small secret Gulches of sorts were people could move. I hope people build a large one, maybe a non-secret Gulch, within my lifetime.
Assuming there's not a secret Gulch you know of, what does it mean to say, “I'm frustrated with the gov't, and I'm considering _shrugging_ at some point in the next five years.” What does that mean?
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We have to starve the monster without starving ourselves. Not an easy thing to do.
You are in a different phase of life than I am in. When I was your age, although we experienced some declines in freedom, and actually a retro-active tax increase-imagine that-a law passed that raised the income tax rate and covered past years. Would that anger you? but regardless, certain laws had not yet passed that attacked our livelihood and the livelihoods of technology entrepreneurs yet. Our risks were calculated and based on reasonable criteria-so were the businesses we represented. It began to change in the early 2000s. WE didn't know exactly what the money would chase if it couldn't see growth in areas such as technology, but real estate seemed to be the thing left that the govt not only left alone but encouraged and backed crazy loan making. It was time to formulate a plan to focus more time and energy on the war of ideas and less about chasing chimeras. Db and I do not think it is the best use of our talents or skills to be on the front line of a physical war, but fighting the intellectual war of ideas. in the meantime, we are leading as happy a life as we can while pursuing those goals, which in our case meant leaving the US.
This is its original definition coined by a freelance writer , James T. Adams, 1931
It is not as fully formed as Rand defines Capitalism, but let's start here.
The US is not the best place to attain the American Dream.
I like the one that says the American Dream means go do your own thing, which might be getting rich or might be subsisting on a low-income and hanging out by a lake-- it's whatever the individual wants.
So if people say they're going to "shrug" by walking away from the American Dream, what steps do they take? Is it just a vague expression of being frustrated or is it a set of actions people actually execute?