Mr. Trashcan himself hasn’t been around all that long.  BUT.  We steel appliances are subject to a form of reincarnation, via the scrap yard, and our sheet metal retains a kind of genetic memory of earlier times.   Thus I am able to take you back to the 1950s, well before the cost of Health Care got out of control in the US.   Blue Cross was just starting to be offered.  Middle class people could afford to pay for health care out of pocket, but the people at Blue Cross saw a market: they would protect you from a sudden, health-related financial hardship by converting it to a steady monthly drain spread over your whole life.  These steady drains, from millions of patients, would form a steady river of money, flowing through them, from which they could dip.
Continue reading →

Sell everything.  Hopefully you already did.   Buy those Canadian Maple Leaf coins; everybody recognizes them and knows that they’re pure gold.  Gold is about the only commodity that has held it’s value over the ages:  a man’s suit of clothes, custom made, costs the same in gold today as it did in 1812, for example.
Continue reading →