From the Wall Street Journal. Select quotes, rearranged for maximum irony:
The average 401(k) balance was $131,700 at the end of 2024.
“What’s more important to me than having a few extra dollars in my retirement is that this country is set up for success,” Paris said.
The couple have lost $70,000 in retirement savings since January.
“He’s doing some hard work, some things that are very difficult for people to understand and difficult for people to accept,” Williams said, “but it’ll be to our long-term benefit.”
Meanwhile, the share of Americans who haven’t retired and are confident in their retirement prospects fell to 67% from 74% the prior year.
She said she takes solace in the fact that Trump is surrounded by a cabinet full of handpicked experts whose advice she thinks could help avoid further losses.
Yup. Just going by the indexes, the stock market is down all the way to last summer. It’s been a precipitous and steady drop, but if you’re a true believer, it would be easy to say it’s just giving up a little bit of Trump bubble, hope it’s almost over, and relax. After all, they’ve still got their job or most of the stock market gains collected over the last 20 years, so their immediate personal conditions look great.
Apparently, one of the things that becomes really difficult as IQ drops even a little bit below 100 is hypothetical-conditionals. Like, “How would you feel if you hadn’t eaten breakfast?” becomes, “But I did eat breakfast, and I feel fine.” So, looking at the economic disruption Trump’s causing, imagining that it could continue or get worse, and what that might mean for their personal situation can be a real, does-not-compute struggle.
If the disrupt does continue, it will be bad. I feel like this is just a rerun of 2017 so far, though. He made some “deals” that returned everything to the exact place it was before he started and claimed victory, then the stock market kept on as it was.