EP 572 The Guru of Better Living In Our Later Passage With New Information and Motivation
Ken Dychtwald, the founder of Age Wave, is a force of nature who through his writings and talks has changed America’s way of looking at aging. In this podcast, he employs his remarkable communication skills to frame the issues of aging in a new light and delivers results from a new study regarding changing retirement patterns. This study explores retirement in a new light, one that looks at it from the perspective of a 20 to 30 year life stage. It uncovers the birth of a new retirement journey, explores how it unfolds, and reveals four unique stages each with new dreams, worries, choices, and planning needs. Are you a purposeful pathfinder: Perhaps a relaxed traditionalist? Maybe you’re part of the group he deems ‘challenged yet hopefuls’ or a ‘regretful struggler’. He urges those approaching retirement to be purposeful and take early action in order to successfully navigate the retirement journey. He is riveting and the material fresh and important.
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In the United States we are used to single-member districts for our House of Representatives. These are winner take all style elections. This approach seems so natural to us. You lose by one vote and you’re gone. A proportional representative approach, which is practiced in most democracies, involves larger multi-member districts and a division of seats by the percentage of the votes. If there are 100 votes cast and one party gets 60 of them, they get three fifths of the seats. This method may unlock the two party doom loop which has made American democracy so divided and ossified. Nothing gets done. With more parties and more shades of representation it is less us versus them and requires that parties come more to the middle to do the people’s business. Will it ever happen in America? Yes if fixourhouse.org is successful in its efforts. You probably haven’t heard much yet about this movement, but it is an interesting alternative to business as usual. Eli Zupnick, the group’s founder, joins us to explain.
The field of public relations has been most simply described as ‘doing good and communicating it’. Even in days when newspapers, television and radio were the prime sources of information, a skilled public relations practitioner would have to work hard for placement, by having a great understanding as to what the media outlet was looking for and being creative in pitching the content. Today with the emergence of social media the tools of the trade are vastly expanded and complicated as clients want their content to ‘go viral’, whatever that means. The noise and the fractionalization of the market means meeting expectations regarding impacts that are wholly unrealistic. And, at its most practical, the value assigned to publicity is ephemeral. To discuss this nuanced subject is Freda Drake, author of ‘Publicity on Steroids’. You will gain a great understanding of what it takes to get a message out in this new age of mass, and niche, communication.
In these complicated economic times it’s easy to miss the forest amidst the trees. Just as basic telephony gave way to smart telephony, which now resides in all of our pockets and has revolutionized the way we communicate and do e-commerce, our guest, Mark Mills, author of ‘The Cloud Revolution’ directs our thinking to the fact that the next positive revolution we will experience is invisible, but more impactful than anything we’ve seen to date. And it’s all in the cloud, ready to fundamentally change how we share and process information. The infrastructure is being built all around the globe in huge warehouse like data centers which will change business relationships and spawn incredible economic growth for the planet. His hopefulness is grounded in historical precedent and will lead to a condition economically that will lift all boats. Any still floating aimlessly offshore will find greater help from coffers filled with public monies to address any issues owing to disruption. It is an incredible book and gives us hope that the roaring 20’s we soon will refer to are the 2020’s. I say anytime now.
Our guest, Howard Husock, author of ‘The Poor Side of Town and Why We Need It’, has a warm spot for what he considers ‘naturally occurring affordable housing’, the kind that used to be available to those who were finding their way in this country as they went from an apartment to a starter home and beyond. For a host of reasons that we discuss and that he covers in his book, he describes housing policy throughout the years and what remains today in a market that is hostile to millions looking for the first or second rung on the ladder, in communities that provide for a range of services and options. Tenements, projects, subsidized housing and new up zoning efforts are all discussed. Clearly, we have an affordable housing problem in this country, as evidenced by any number of measures. The question is how do we best get more of it onto the market. That’s our topic today.
It’s likely that when you see double digit increases in the price of food, energy and other essentials, you are in a state of inflation. As anyone who uses our currency, in whatever fashion knows, that’s the place we find ourselves today. It’s having a major impact on household budgets and causing reactions in markets and in federal monetary policy. Harder to determine is what are the factors that brought it on and what you do about it to bring those inflation numbers down. Our guest, Nathan Lewis has co-authored a book with Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames, called ‘Inflation: What It Is, Why It’s Bad, and How To Fix It’. They attribute our present circumstance to the massive amount of money created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve in the wake of the housing crash in 2009 and in response to the COVID-19 emergency in recent years. In their view that has significantly weakened the value of the dollar. Others say that supply chain issues and the quicker than anticipated rate of recovery have overheated the economy. In any event, as impactful as inflation is the dollar is still king among all currencies and borrowers still buy U.S. debt. Our discussion got to the hottest topic in financial circles: Modern Monetary Theory. You need to be aware of what it is, agree or disagree with it.
It is very hard to typify what America’s relationship is with China. We are economically co-dependent and yet we’re competitors. Some say we’re frenemies in the world; yet others say be realistic and recognize that they are adversaries, growing into potential enemies, based upon their growing defense posture and designs on Taiwan. And when we do business with Chinese companies are we actually dealing with an increasingly aggressive and controlling Chinese Communist Party? As consumers we must admit that while we like the low prices, there may be a high price to pay in propping up this regime and limiting jobs opportunities in the United States. I told you this was complicated. Our guest, Isaac Stone Fish, author of ‘America 2nd’ has lived in China over the years and understands the subtleties of the relationship in its many forms. He clearly draws a distinction between the actions of The Party and the culture of the people and one of the world’s oldest civilizations. He also provokes us to think about what each country wants from the other and the unwitting help that many influential Americans have given China as they accept the money and prestige that their dealings with the country may provide.
The International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism(ICSVE) has spent a lot of time monitoring and reporting on the actions and motivation of threats from extremists abroad. Circumstances on the ground in America have forced the Center to focus new attention on the activities of home grown extremists in our midst. What might have been considered a scattered and disorganized grouping of fringe players congealed to attack our U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, a first for our nation. It also served as a wake-up call that groups like QAnon, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers must be taken seriously, as the FBI has been alerting us. Dr. Anne Speckard Director of the ISCVE joins us to discuss a report generated by her and other researchers in her group after spending a summer inside QAnon and white supremacist online forums. They designed a study to observe online forums populated and run by such groups with the aim of gaining a clearer understanding of not only what draws people to join them but also to determine how QAnon plays a part in the radicalization process. Dr. Speckhard’s team included Wilson W. Warren, Kate Strezishar and Molly Ellenberg. We discuss their chilling finds today.