First World Problem

[Lowlow]

Over the years I have heard the complaint that a precious metals investor should choose gold over silver because silver is too "bulky", and that to store any value of silver would require too much space, be too hard to transport, etc.

I have a thought about this.

For perspective, back in the day, a dime of silver was a day's wages for a man, that is approximately 1/10th oz of silver, so a man might work a year for 25 ounces of silver.

Today, if you survey the income of peoples around the Earth, if you make 34k$us/year (24k£uk) you are in the top 1% of world income.  Half of the world's population lives on less than 2.50$us/day (1.8£uk), meaning that half of the people on Earth make less than 37 ounces of silver per year.

It's worth thinking about that when someone seems to be struggling with how they would store "all that silver", about what that means in a broader context, about how rich people who live in the 1st world really are.  Someone who lives at the poverty line in the United States makes 12140$us/year (8580£uk), or approximately 700 ounces of silver per year, about 20 times as much as half of the world's population makes per year.  Someone who makes 50k$us/year (35k£uk) makes approximately 2900 ounces of silver, a fortune for most of the world's people, and literally enough money to pay the median wage earner in the world for a lifetime of work.

The reason silver "takes up so much space" isn't because silver is so "cheap" or "bulky", but rather because people in 1st world countries have so much wealth compared to peoples of the past, and people in other parts of the world, that most can't even comprehend how rich they are.

The "bulkiness" of silver is a 1st world problem.

When a precious metal investor imagines "having" to store "all that silver", they are contemplating a treasure that most of the world's population only hear about in children's stories, the stuff that dreams are made of.

[ilovesilverireallydo]

8 minutes ago, Lowlow said:

The reason silver "takes up so much space" isn't because silver is so "cheap" or "bulky", but rather because people in 1st world countries have so much wealth compared to peoples of the past, and people in other parts of the world, that most can't even comprehend how rich they are.

Or Silver is so undervalued compared to history that it’s cheap as chips ?

[mr-dead]

Earnings are also proportionate to living expenses.  Living in the UK isnt exactly cheap with property costs, fuel costs, food prices etc.

[Lowlow]

32 minutes ago, mr-dead said:

Earnings are also proportionate to living expenses.  Living in the UK isnt exactly cheap with property costs, fuel costs, food prices etc.

Only true of land and the structures built on it.

Food isn't more expensive, you can get the same bag of wheat in the U.S. for the same price as you can in Honduras.  You can get the same bag of rice, the same dried beans, the same everything for approximately the same price.  The difference is that the people of Honduras aren't drinking 5$us/cup mocha lattes and eating steak twice a week.

Same for transportation.  The people in Honduras aren't driving new Volvo's.  They are sharing 1990 Nissan pickup trucks, traveling 10 at a time on the back of them.  The difference is that people in the 1st world are unwilling to do that.

Same for fuel.  In fact, fuel in many third world countries is more expensive than in the U.S.  The difference is that they aren't burning fuel driving one to a vehicle, using fossil fuels to cook, etc.  They cook with a wood fire, typically.  And anyone in the 1st world could do that too, if they wanted to, for the same price.

Same for clothes.  Your typical American no longer wears hand-me-downs, doesn't mend clothing, doesn't darn socks, replace zippers and buttons, sew patches, or re-dye clothing that has faded.  They just go out and get new clothes, but that's a choice they make.  Clothes are not any more or less expensive for the same thing in Honduras, it's just that your typical 1st world person wouldn't be caught dead wearing what most people in the world wear.

In short, it's not a difference in living expenses, it's a difference in lifestyle, a difference in choices.  People in the 1st world simply won't live like half of the world's population - they won't live without air conditioning in the summer, two or more cars in the drive, plasma or lcd television with surround sound, and lunch at their favorite sushi joint.  1st world people make more expensive choices, because they can.

To quote "The Richest Man in Babylon" ... " What each of us calls our 'necessary expenses' will always grow to equal our incomes unless we protest to the contrary," Arkad explains. "Confuse not the necessary expenses with thy desires."

[Kman]

What you're saying is true, but It's human to take the ordinary for granted, be it wealth, health, relationships or anything else 

 

 

[Kman]

3 hours ago, Lowlow said:

When a precious metal investor imagines "having" to store "all that silver", they are contemplating a treasure that most of the world's population only hear about in children's stories, the stuff that dreams are made of.

[LittleJohnSilver]

People today have never had it so good. And I often find myself having to highlight to others that contrary to their victimhood mentality of "I struggle on min wage/£7.50ph yada yada yada", the fact that they smoke/drink/monthly contract iPhone/wearing designer clothes/superfast fibre optic broadband etc that they most definitely are NOT poor.

"It's not fair, I can't afford that coz I only gets minimum wage boohoo".

My answer is always 100% blunt to the point - get off your entitled backside and up your skill range to make yourself more valuable to an employer, and then you can earn more and have nicer things, instead of expecting me to pay more in tax just so you and your mare can churn out more kids and claim even more free (tax payer funded) stuff.

And yet food is dirt cheap in this country so there is zero reason for low paid people not to be able to eat well and have nice things. Case in point: every few months I will buy about 15kg (in bags of 1kg from Tesco/Aldi/Lidl for £0.45 each) and similar in pasta from other shops. That alone will last me about 130 days having a pasta lunch and a rice/chicken based meal in the evenings. All that is a measly £12 - £15 spread over a very long period. Add in other things such as milk, tea bags, sugar, bread, eggs, cheap 90% sausages, butter, jams, spuds etc. All told a monthly cost of about £35 - £40.

And then there's other things people can do to make living standards even more affordable such as making your own washing detergent, placing a clothes drying rack against a window to allow reflective heat dry clothes. There are numerous ways people can increase their finances just by thinking outside the box.

People complain about fuel prices. Simple solution, get an old diesel and run it on waste veg oil for £0.40 a litre. I do.

Our society has never had it so good.

[LittleJohnSilver]

5 hours ago, mr-dead said:

Earnings are also proportionate to living expenses.  Living in the UK isnt exactly cheap with property costs, fuel costs, food prices etc.

Concerning food prices, food in the UK is incredibly cheap. The only reason people have high food bills is because of the branded bad they buy or because it's sold in fancy looking packaging, when the exact same stuff can be had if bought in bulk.

[mr-dead]

47 minutes ago, LittleJohnSilver said:

People complain about fuel prices. Simple solution, get an old diesel and run it on waste veg oil for £0.40 a litre. I do.

Our society has never had it so good.

I cant run my lambo on waste veg oil though, currently enjoying about 16 miles to the gallon

[LittleJohnSilver]

Lambo? As in Lamborgini?

[mr-dead]

Yep, treated myself of a Gallardo LP560-4 Spyder before Xmas.

My daughter having a pose and doing a "Dab":

 

 

[kimchi]

@mr-dead a Lambo club passed us on the M25 today, blimey the noise they make going through a tunnel!

I'm not big into cars but I know when I see something I like and there was an absolutely stunning red hard-top number (with all the 'grills' - ?) down the top rear - 'wouldn't mind' one of those!

[mr-dead]

Could be the huracan with slatted rear :

[kimchi]

@mr-dead that's her! Glorious in red, what a sight! Growing up in the 80s (and playing Outrun ) a Testarossa was the dream. When I lived in Japan it was a fully pimped Skyline GTR (as only the Tokyo rich can pimp them). This was one of the most amazing cars I've ever seen on the road here for sure.

[mr-dead]

Still love the R34 GTRs, supra twin turbos + RX7s.

 

[Roy]

Is the road marking Welsh for 'Reserved for Mr. Dead'? 

[vand]

If silver is re-evaluated to what we think it should be let me assure you that this will be a very nice "problem" to have.

[CoinFinders]

Speaking from a purist point of view:  Stacking both silver and gold are very good, IMO.  Gold stores more "wealth per ounce" than silver, but then again, one can accumulate silver to handle any future "small" payments, and gold is reserved for the "big" payments.  If things really go to terrible, then having once ounce (and smaller) silver coins will be a great asset to have.  If you are desperate and only have (say) quarter-ounce gold coins, then "who has change for a quarter OZ" may be tough to find.  In the US a popular way to buy silver is a bag of pre-1965 silver dimes, quarters and halves -- many folks believe these low denomination coins will spend very well should things go south.  Thanks from Scotty at CoinFinders  www.coinfinders.com

[Mildred]

14 hours ago, Lowlow said:

The reason silver "takes up so much space" is because 

the silver price is downwards manipulated and the world wealth is unjustly distributed

[Silverclown]

7 hours ago, mr-dead said:

Yep, treated myself of a Gallardo LP560-4 Spyder before Xmas.

My daughter having a pose and doing a "Dab":

 

 

The big question is how much is the insurance(if I can ask)?

[Oldun]

We also pay huge amounts of tax to be as evenly distributed not only to those less fortunate than ourselves - NHS, the unemployed, the disabled, hospices, single parents, charities etc but also to pay for teachers, nurses, doctors, to have clean water, the military, dustmen and women, and so many many others as well as other local council workers and staff, and also send huge amounts of money abroad to other countries to help them.

 

It really grinds my wheels when someone compares apples to oranges without considering the fuller picture. We have the least worst system where elected representatives make policies to improve the lot of its citizens and allowing them to enjoy and mostly hang onto the fruits of their labour. Others have massively corrupt governments who trouser the money meant for its citizens and don't give a toss about improving the lot of the ordinary poor man and woman.

[Oldun]

As for milk floats (i.e cars) Pa, I blow my nose at you - skip to 4:37 mark.....

 

 

[mr-dead]

7 hours ago, Silverclown said:

The big question is how much is the insurance(if I can ask)?

I did an Admiral multi-car policy for the gallardo and a porsche 911.  £1100 for both fully comp.

A lot cheaper than I was expecting.

[Silverclown]

On 25/03/2018 at 09:46, Lowlow said:

Over the years I have heard the complaint that a precious metals investor should choose gold over silver because silver is too "bulky", and that to store any value of silver would require too much space, be too hard to transport, etc.

I have a thought about this.

For perspective, back in the day, a dime of silver was a day's wages for a man, that is approximately 1/10th oz of silver, so a man might work a year for 25 ounces of silver.

Today, if you survey the income of peoples around the Earth, if you make 34k$us/year (24k£uk) you are in the top 1% of world income.  Half of the world's population lives on less than 2.50$us/day (1.8£uk), meaning that half of the people on Earth make less than 37 ounces of silver per year.

It's worth thinking about that when someone seems to be struggling with how they would store "all that silver", about what that means in a broader context, about how rich people who live in the 1st world really are.  Someone who lives at the poverty line in the United States makes 12140$us/year (8580£uk), or approximately 700 ounces of silver per year, about 20 times as much as half of the world's population makes per year.  Someone who makes 50k$us/year (35k£uk) makes approximately 2900 ounces of silver, a fortune for most of the world's people, and literally enough money to pay the median wage earner in the world for a lifetime of work.

The reason silver "takes up so much space" isn't because silver is so "cheap" or "bulky", but rather because people in 1st world countries have so much wealth compared to peoples of the past, and people in other parts of the world, that most can't even comprehend how rich they are.

The "bulkiness" of silver is a 1st world problem.

When a precious metal investor imagines "having" to store "all that silver", they are contemplating a treasure that most of the world's population only hear about in children's stories, the stuff that dreams are made of.

Is it really first world problems or a market driven economy?

the description you give for a first world problems is the basically  the western world, the second world is soviet power and any country who is aligned with them and the third world is the country that isn’t aligned with the two.

People complain about capitalism but don’t understand that the system at this point of the time is the best.

i hate the new generation that believe in all these great new/olde ideas but these ideas have already been tested and failed.

banks have always been apart of the systerm but people blame capitalism, business will evolve into their environment...

 

had some beers, loving life but understanding the mechanics of life...

 

[Lowlow]

39 minutes ago, Silverclown said:

People complain about capitalism but don’t understand that the system at this point of the time is the best.

i hate the new generation that believe in all these great new/olde ideas but these ideas have already been tested and failed.

banks have always been apart of the systerm but people blame capitalism, business will evolve into their environment...

Who blamed capitalism for anything ?  Not me.  I wasn't complaining that half the world's population lives on less than 2.5$us/day, I was simply expressing an opinion about how 1st world precious metals investors might want to try to keep the "bulkiness" of silver in some kind of historical perspective, that the reason silver seems so "bulky" isn't because it has fallen in value, but rather because 1st world investors have so much more wealth.  Example: I was watching a video the other day that said Rome was unable to pay invading barbarians a ton of silver to avoid seeing Rome sacked, that they either didn't have it, or refused to turn it over.  That's literally an amount of silver that any run-of-the-mill multi-millionaire in the U.S. or Europe can afford to buy .. that's how wealthy we are now.  And, hell, great for us, I'm no leftist, I'm a free market capitalist.  Capitalism in the past decade has beaten every expectation for improving the lives of billions of people around the world, especially in Asia.  Capitalism is why we now say half the world's population lives on less than 2.5$us/day ... we used to say that half the world's population lived on less than 2$us/day.

Edit, btw, 1t = 32150 troy ounces, which is approx 1/2 million $us in silver.