Wealth

10/17/26 Fortune:

The Federal Reserve’s latest Survey of Consumer Finances revealed a striking split: Median net worth rose roughly 38% for households headed by someone 75 or older between 2022 and 2025, while falling 23% for those headed by someone under 35. Both figures account for inflation, according to an analysis by Nick Maggiulli, chief data officer at Ritholtz Wealth Management and author of The Wealth Ladder.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the age split in a short post on what it called “the gold standard for measuring household wealth,” which the central bank releases every three years. Americans 55 and over now hold roughly $140 trillion, about three-quarters of the nation’s net worth, Fortune reported this month, citing a Bank of America Institute analysis of the Fed data.

The oldest households finished the period with a median net worth of $504,600, up from $366,288 in 2022, measured in 2025 dollars. For the youngest households, it fell from $42,725 to $32,820. The oldest group now has roughly 15x the wealth of the youngest, compared with about 9x three years earlier.

Across all families, inflation-adjusted median net worth rose just 2% between 2022 and 2025, reaching $215,900. That modest national gain concealed sharply different experiences at opposite ends of the age spectrum.

The findings also echo an argument Yale law and history professor Samuel Moyn made in an interview with Fortune this summer about his book, Gerontocracy in America: The concentration of wealth among older Americans is not merely a matter of who has had longer to save. In his account, it also shapes whose interests the economy and political system serve.

Moyn describes an “oldigarchy,” in which older, disproportionately wealthy Americans hold outsize influence. His book argues that “aging Americans control the biggest bank accounts and stock portfolios,” and that “the old rich have pulled away from everyone else.”

Yes. We had the good sense to not take out enormous student loans for degrees that did not lead to jobs of any value. Some of this was not really good sense. Almost any degree except maybe art or sociology would likely get you an adequate job in 1970. Education was also so absurdly expensive that you needed the 1970s equivalent of a $100,000 student loan to start out adult life.

We had some other advantages. Lots of good jobs did not require a college degree back then. Creeping credentialism and the contempt for technical jobs had not closed other avenues from serious consideration.

The harsh reality, however, is that generally getting older makes you richer. We bought a Sears refrigerator in 1976. It was still working into the 2000s. Some of the dishes that we received as wedding presents in 1980 are still in use, although not many.

Still, time heals most financial mistakes if you stay invested and do not waste on trying to look like The Illustrated Man.

I suspect as us Boomers go bust and our assets enrich our kids, this will even out a bit. Unless the young whiners decide we need to go full Communist.

If You See Something, Say Something

10/15/26 Chicago Tribune:

A jammed gun and workers at an Arlington Heights Taco Bell restaurant prevented a potentially devastating mass shooting Sunday at a Hindu temple in Aurora.

Those were among the details to emerge Thursday as authorities released additional information about the arrest of a 19-year-old Palatine man accused of plotting a terrorist attack on the Sri Venkateswara Swami Balaji Temple.

Cook County prosecutors said Alexandros Paporakis told a Taco Bell co-worker he had gone to the temple Sunday and attempted to shoot someone from his car, but his rifle jammed.

He indicated he intended to return later Sunday to try again, but a co-worker called 911 and stopped the potential massacre, authorities said.

The story gets more interesting. A "Heritage American"? Apparently not. 10/16/26 Chicago Tribune:

Paporakis, an enrolled student at Harper College, was allegedly living with his mother at the time of the planned attack and had been for about a year, Palatine police Chief William Nord said Wednesday. But a guardianship petition filed in Cook County last month alleges that his mother was unable to provide a stable home and that his father had abused and abandoned him. Those circumstances, the petition states, left the teenager unable to return to his home country.

The Tribune could not independently verify which country the petition referred to as Paporakis’ home country. The teenager’s own writings, according to court documents, suggest a hatred rooted less in national origin than in race and religion.

“The shooter hated Indians, but his hate did not discriminate,” U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi said at a news conference Friday, as he appeared to hold back tears. “According to court documents, the manifesto that he wrote described Indians, Jews, Black people and other minorities as ‘subhuman’”.

That seems like a Greek name to me. Perhaps, the entire spectrum of antisocial media found a new host to infect. In the 1990s, I recall a mass murder at a college in Western Massachusetts carried out by a neo-Nazi Korean. 

A Conscious Decision to Make an Oregon School a Mass Murderer Safe Space

 As usual Dr. Lott is on top of this. His discussion of this tragedy links to a 5/31/2022 Oregon Public Radio article:

Oregon lawmakers last year gave every public school district in Oregon the option to ban guns from their premises.

So far, most districts have declined to take them up on the offer.

Since a change to Oregon law in September, just 13% of the state’s public school districts have opted to close an exemption that allows holders of a concealed handgun license, or CHL, to carry weapons onto public property where possessing a gun would otherwise be a felony.

According to an OPB analysis, that list includes some districts in the Portland metro area — though not yet Portland Public Schools — along with far more rural school systems. Among the 25 that have banned guns are districts in Klamath Falls, Myrtle Point, Tillamook, Pendleton, Tigard-Tualatin, Lake Oswego and Woodburn.

The vast majority of the state’s 197 public school districts have, to date, taken no such action...

Backers of policies banning guns in schools acknowledge it’s a small step. Board members in three districts OPB spoke with said they could not point to an incident where a CHL holder or their weapon had caused an issue on school grounds.

“It just allowed us to complete the commitment that we already had in place of having gun-free schools,” said Melissa Barnes Dholakia, chair of the Bend-La Pine school board. The board passed a ban in December, receiving just two comments on the policy, both of them supportive.

So why would districts disarm their teachers and staff?

For some students, the possibility that lawful guns could cause trouble on campus was a primary driver of their support for a ban.

When the Hillsboro school board enacted the policy in January, a high school student named Ceph Tronco was among those voicing support.

“What I’ve been thinking about as I’ve been hearing about this policy isn’t, ‘Is someone going to be in place to stop an attempted school shooting?’” Tronco said. “It is: ‘Is someone going to have brought a gun into a school grounds that accidentally discharges? Or is somebody going to have the potential to get into a charged argument that escalates because of the presence of a firearm?’”

The bottom line, Tronco said: “We do not want people to be bringing firearms onto our campuses.”

And that worked out so well in Bend. Adults should be making policy not kids, whose knowledge of the world is necessarily incomplete.

The Dumbest X Post Ever!

Black Canadian explains how she and her posse are coming to America to do door-to-door gun confiscation.

I Have Read Some Horrifying Incidents. Some Are So Horrible That They Cannot Be What They First Appear

 Arcadia, Fla. (1967)

Before 11/01/1967: Police charged the parents of seven children with poisoning them with parathion, an insecticide.  The father was 32. The sheriff was preparing to investigate the previous suspicious death of five other children of the father.  He had taken out life insurance policies on the children. The father was sentenced to death. Subsequently, evidence established that a babysitter admitted doing the poisoning and evidence clearing him was suppressed at trial.  He was released in 1989.

Category: family

Suicide: no

Cause: unknown

Weapon: poison[1]

---

[1] "Poison In Food, Parents Facing Death Charges," [Fremont, O.] News-Messenger, Nov. 01, 1967, 1; “Delayed justice for an innocent man,” Florida Times-Union, May 16, 2019, https://www.jacksonville.com/story/opinion/2019/05/15/tuesday-editorial-delayed-justice-for-innocent-man/5145739007.

.

The Next Time Some Gun Banner Says We Scrapped Public Safety for the Second Amendment...

 U.S. v. Bost (3rd Cir. 2026):

The right to keep and bear arms has limits, and this is one: Those who pose a risk of physical violence from misusing guns can be disarmed before that risk becomes a reality. Not every convict poses such a risk—but James Bost does. He pleaded guilty to terroristic threats and other crimes. Years later, police caught him with a pistol not once, but twice. So he was charged with having a gun despite his convictions, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), which makes it illegal for felons to have guns. He moved to dismiss the charge, arguing that this law is unconstitutional both facially and as applied to him.  But Bost’s violent conviction is prima facie enough to disarm him. We hold that some predicate crimes (like Bost’s conviction for terroristic threats) demonstrate a prima facie risk of physical violence from misusing guns and that those convicted of such crimes may presumptively be disarmed based on those convictions alone. Because the Second Amendment does not protect Bost’s access to guns, we will AFFIRM. ...

Years after carjacking, Bost is caught with a gun In 2002, Bost carjacked someone, threatening to kill the driver unless she gave him money. To get that money, he drove to her mother’s home, where she escaped from the car, screaming for help. Bost was then arrested and pleaded guilty to terroristic threats and criminal conspiracy (as well as false imprisonment and simple assault). Those first two Pennsylvania crimes are first-degree misdemeanors punishable by up to five years in prison. 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. §§ 2706, 905(a), 1104(1). One element of the terroristic-threats crime required “a threat to commit any crime of violence with intent to terrorize another.” Id. § 2706(a)(1) (cleaned up). Bost was sentenced to four years’ probation.  Later, while on bail for another arrest, Bost failed to appear in court. U.S. Marshals tracked him down. They found him in his girlfriend’s home, next to a couch with a stolen .38 caliber pistol on it. Bost was indicted federally for possessing a stolen gun and possessing a gun despite his convictions (based on the terroristic-threats and conspiracy convictions). 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) (the so-called felon-in-possession law), (j) (possession of a stolen gun). He moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that § 922(g)(1) is unconstitutional as applied to him and that it is facially unconstitutional....

Individualized judgment was the norm. For centuries, disarmament was tied to a judge’s finding that someone posed a risk of physical violence from misusing guns. Sometimes, that meant punishing risky behavior. Going-armed laws punished and disarmed those who used their weapons to menace others. See Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 693, 697–98 (citing Sir John Knight’s Case, 87 Eng. Rep. 75, 76 (K.B. 1686) & 4 William Blackstone, Commentaries *149). Rooted in the old bans on affrays, they targeted conduct that spread fear and threatened the peace: going armed “to the Terror of the People.” Id. at 697 (internal quotation marks omitted). These laws were often enacted with bans on fighting, together targeting conduct likely to lead to violence. Id.  

In 1791, this guy would likely have been unable to exercise his right to bear arms because his right to breathe would already have been ended. 

Shop is Sufficiently Together to Make Stuff

Somehow, one of the four steel doughnuts that were bolted to the rolling platform on which Big Bertha rides got lost in the move. I am not sure why I made these of steel unless I had that available. No need for that tough or stiff.

I had a piece of 2.5" diameter acetal so I cut off a slice, trimmed it to .501" thick, then bored a 1.5" hole through the center with a Forstner bit on the lathe. (That oversimplified it. Cutting that much acetal in one pass is clumsy and ugly so I drilled through the center with a 1/4" drill bit first, then a 1/2" Forstner bit, then the 1 1/2" bit.) Then to get 3 1/4" holes at 120 degrees each, I put the ring on the rotating table and entered commands to drop the bit to 0" then down to -.65", back to 1", rotate 120 degrees and repeat. (If I had been making more than one, a program would have been neat to watch running.)

Now with the Crossbow Equatorial Platform on top.

Now I just to work up the energy to get Big Bertha out of his box, clean the mirror, which is a big task with such a big mirror and then reassembly.