“Come on, people now / Smile on your brother / Everybody get together / Try to love one another right now.” Lyrics from “Lets Get Together” by The Youngbloods
There is a sense in this country that we have never been more divided, and that may be true, but clearly division is not a new thing. Not in America.
This is a nation founded as a protest. We view protesting as one of our basic rights and founding principles. Not all countries have that. A Chinese man once told me that he can criticize the government in the privacy of his own home, but if he went out on the street and shouted that the Chinese Communist Party was no good, he would disappear and never be heard from again. In countries like that, conformity is everything. But in America, we hold dear our right to speak out our opinions, no matter if others view them as crazy or irreverent or unpatriotic.
Recently, I saw a short video in which Neil deGrasse Tyson observed that something has changed about that. When he was younger, he said, if you had an opinion that differed from someone else’s, you could discuss it over a beer, and at worst, agree to disagree. But now, especially on social media, people with different opinions get attacked. Thankfully these attacks are almost always verbal, but they are attacks.
It makes me wonder if we really want to live in a country in which we all think the same. I hope we don’t.
But let’s talk some more about why we seem to be at each other’s throats. History tells us that we have always been in conflict with our fellow citizens. Political differences between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams led to constant feuding—and that’s just at the dawn of the United States. Division started long before that. We have always cherished our right to protest, to be angry, to have an opinion. As Americans, unlike my Chinese friend, we have every right to go out on the street and shout to anyone that will listen that our government stinks.
Late-night talk show host Craig Ferguson was born in Scotland, moved to the United States, and, upon becoming a U.S. citizen, declared that, “America is the greatest country that anyone ever invented. You take all kinds of people and throw them together and let them duke it out.”
But while you cherish this, remember that the idiot who doesn’t agree with you (his idiocy entirely being because he doesn’t agree with you!) is your fellow American. His right to be an idiot is the same as your right to think he’s an idiot.
We need to not only embrace our right to speak our mind, but also the rights of those who don’t agree with us; and further, we need to embrace them as our fellow Americans.
Now all this is interesting, but what does it have to do with investments? Since the beginning of this nation and its stock market, our nation has been in nonstop conflict, either with other nations or with ourselves. To this day, the bloodiest war in American history is our own Civil War. Change and conflict have been constants throughout our history, and growth is very close behind. While not constant, expansion has occurred much more often than contraction, especially in the last 80 years since the end of World War II.
Trying to get out of the way of trouble has been mostly a fool’s errand, because over the last 80 years, trouble has been much shorter lived than growth.
If I told you I had a coin that was weighted so that it would come up heads 75 percent of the time that you toss it, and I proved it to you by tossing it repeatedly so you could see that it came up heads much more often than tails, would you bet on tails or heads coming up?
Of course you would bet on heads.
No one can guarantee anything about the future, but for over 200 years, it’s been a mistake to bet against the American economy.
No matter what your opinion is of our government, elected officials, and vast number of problems, history says that your best course is to assume that the U.S. economy will continue to grow as it has in the past, and that the stock market will follow it—nervously and with drama—but generally in the same direction.
I close with this observation about our conflicts, worries, and problems from Sir Winston Churchill: “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.”
Hal Masover is a Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor and a registered representative. His firm, Investment Insights, is at 508 N 2nd Street, Suite 203, Fairfield, IA 52556. Securities offered through, Cambridge Investment Research, Inc, a Broker/Dealer, Member FINRA/SIPC. Investment Advisor Representative, Cambridge Investment Research Advisors, Inc., a Registered Investment Advisor. Investment Insights, Inc & Cambridge are not affiliated. Comments and questions can be sent to hal@getyourinsight.com.. These are the opinions of Hal Masover and not necessarily those of Cambridge, are for informational purposes only, and should not be construed or acted upon as individualized investment advice. Investing involves risk. Depending on the types of investments, there may be varying degrees of risk. Investors should be prepared to bear loss, including total loss of principal. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.