Thought of the Day

Who was the legendary Benedictine monk who invented champagne?

What is the biggest planet in our solar system?

What is a Bond?

answers

http://thoughtmeme.blogspot.pt/2017/01/answers-1.html

what is my take from this graph

Looks like Mobility is decreasing decade to decade. It is less and less likely that children start making more than their parents

I think this is normal because some decades ago no parents had high schooling and now parents do.

Thirdly these days in Europe kids study until they are 25 or 30 so they start making money much later in life.

I think for children to make more than their parents is a phenomenon liked to the Urbanization. Parents were still in the countryside and the kids study and settled in the big city.

I think if parents have a good career it takes time for their children to surpass them

Is there a scenario where children will do much better than their parents? yes if children are deeply in the New Thing and typically the new thing is the future and pays a lot.

To me the American Dream is alive and well but if children want to copycat their parents and do what their parents do they will have problems.If a kid want to be dentist as his father it will take time to surpass the father by the simple reason that his father has experience and probably works much faster and with more skills.

Turning to US economic challenges that Trump needs to tackle:

I always think about why a person from my country Portugal working in Portugal is a bad employee, low productivity, long hours, low salary, etc..., but once he moves to Switzerland or Germany he is one of the best! The same guy the same qualifications?

why?

i guess there are habits in some countries, simple habits, to be on time, to sleep well with silence that make people really productive & effective

solution:

move to a country that helps you grow

In the graph below we see that in the poor countries apparently people "work" long hours. Unfortunately they are not working

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."

Robert Frost

My view of the world for 2017 and on is the following

1.The improvement of everything that we have seen in the last 200 years from declining in crime, curruption, growing life expectancy etc... will continue. These are facts not impressions.
2.The good old days were not good at all
3.Productuvity growth is deflationary. I see more discoveries and new Technics to do more with less.
4.No inflation
5.Plenty of free time. Lot of people with not a lot to do.
6.Leisure, sports, meditation, tourism, Yoga, Shiatzu, culture will continue to grow
7.Very difficult environment to make money with money
8.Specialization will increase with online information it pays to be the best
9.The EU will stay together because the younger generation want it
10.Less and Less babies everywhere
11.If it pays big time to be the best in a Globalized world the big contries that strive to be the best will continue to do well
12.People will continue to be nicer to each other and to treat well animals etc... more & more
13.Communications are almost free in the Developed countries (Skype, What's up, etc...) more things will be free in the future (energy, trasportation etc...)
14.As long as open borders and "free" commerce are still intact it's doesn't matter which government we have. less and less people will vote and really it doesn't matter
15.The countries that are out of free commerce will continue to get poor & poor
16.One day governments will try to tax asset's and not income. It will be trendy to have very little
17.Brexit doesn't matter as long as they trade freely with Europe
18.oil could go down big time in 2017
19.Interest rates will tend to zero
20.Education will be free. It doesn't make sense to pay a lot for high education
21.Move to the cities will continue because it's more fun, more security, more opportunity to live in a big city
22.Number of Holiday days is going to grow
23.Technology & big data will win over tradition & guessing
24.The countries that vote for less open market policies will suffer and will be poor. It takes time but the result is always the same
25.I don't see a bull market in equities
26.I see bull market in some stock's and companies not markets
27.Since people are flowing to cities the planet says thanks. More forests, more free space etc...

Life has never been better but we have to get busy. There are reasons to get busy, culture, education and many many things are essentially free

enjoy them!

The secrets of life are hidden behind the word cliché

He had heard certain phrases like “ eat more vegetables” a million times, but ignored them for years, as it seemed too simplistic. Ultimately, it was the simple that worked

Shay Carl

This is not cliché but it’s also true

Work will work when nothing else is working

Shay Carl

You realize that you will never be the best looking person in the room, you’ll never be the smartest person in the room. You’ll never be the most educated, the most well versed. You can never compete on those levels. But what you can always compete on, the true egalitarian aspect of success, is hard work. You can always work harder than the next guy

Casey Neistat

Nothing works like work. i have seen it it's good to be smart but you can outwork almost everybody. I have noticed that what differentiates people is not what they do at work on normal job hours because everybody does the same, what you do at night makes a big difference.

people think that the smart people with the highest IQ win but that is not true work + action always ultimately win.

If you want an average, successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths 1)Become the best in one specific thing. 2)Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.

The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility…….

Scott Adams

PS in order to be very good in any field there is only one way. Concentrate and don’t start from zero every two years when you change passion and start again in a new direction.

Focus + time = Excellence

and don't forget you only improve when you do difficult things.

It’s always the hard part that creates value

Seth Godin

you can get 95%of the results you want by calmly putting one foot in front of the other

Tim Ferriss

I think this is very much true, do't rush but don't ever stop. just keep going. In my bike races if i stop to pee it's almost impossible to get back to the group! That it's why i never stop, just keep going for hours and hours.

here is a picture from saturday we rode until the end of Europe, Cabo da Roca the most western point in Europe.

Across the sea we have USA.