Savings’ Graces

If there is one lesson that comes out of 2020, it is simply this, as expressed by Calvin Coolidge after World War One: “Work and save.” The year 2020 was a year of turning things upside down … a president who seemed absolutely certain to be reelected in the midst of wild prosperity and good feeling may have been dumped because of a virus he had no part in creating, nor any clear blame for his handling of it. Top-drawer chic streets like Rodeo Drive and Michigan Avenue look like slums now as the highest-end stores imaginable are boarded up with obscene racial slogans spray-painted on them.

A national peak for employment and almost zero unemployment have been replaced by a severe recession and the collapse of the “bricks and mortar” economy with an attendant loss of millions of jobs.

Guns, the anathema of the Left, are now loved by the Left, who “need” them to fight off the imaginary Trump secret armies.

Legally recognized racism has vanished, only to be replaced by a fictitious “systemic racism” that only exists to get persons of color on corporate boards and has no basis in fact. But you and I can lose our jobs and our houses for asking that there not be any discrimination either against or for any particular racial group.

It’s an upside-down world, but it works well if you have money in the bank. As Mr. Buffett has said for decades, don’t save what you have left after spending. Instead, spend what you have left after saving.

You really can sleep at night if you have cash on hand, as this insomniac can assure you.

Please follow Ben Stein on Twitter @BenStein1944 or on Parler.