(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not constitute an endorsement of any product, service, or securities on the part of Newsmax.)
"Power flows from the barrel of a gun." So said the leader of the Communist Party of China, Mao Tse-Tung.
In the violent, chaotic atmosphere of China before it became the world’s largest and most murderous dictatorship, Mao had a great, although terrifying, truth in his pocket.
Times have changed.
There is no longer an immense and murderous civil war raging in China.
And anyway, as Ferris Bueller would say, we are not in Red China.
We don’t have any wish to live in Red China and never will.
We live in the United States of America.
For the most part, we live in peace.
For most of us, power flows from our wallets or our checkbooks or our titles to property, real or personal.
Power flows from money. And weakness flows from the lack of money.
The amount of money we have flows largely from the amount of education we have and the skills we can offer our employers, whether they are immense enterprises, such as the U.S. government, or tiny businesses, such as your next-door neighbor wanting you to help pack her belongings for a trip to a state where she might earn a few cents per hour for her work.
For most of humankind’s history, including in the U.S., men earned more than women.
There were exceptions when a huge chunk of males were in the armed forces and a huge chunk of women were teachers. In those days, women earned more.
But for the postwar period, men have consistently earned more per hour.
This gap has narrowed considerably as more women have higher education and work in jobs like finance and law, which pay well.
Still, at the end of women’s work lives, they tend to have substantially less in the way of net assets than men.
As rent payment time arrives, I observe that far more women than men are in dire need — or at least they say they are in dire need.
The same goes for car payment time.
Why is this?
The women in our lives are as smart as the men.
They work as hard.
And usually, they are more careful and sensible with their money than the men are.
So, why should the women wind up less rich than the men?
What do men do with their money that is different from what women do?
It’s basic: They invest it better, and from that, get better returns.
With those returns, they reinvest in the same sorts of instruments.
The glory of compounding goes to work after that.
First of all, if possible, own a home — real property or a condominium.
An investment that throws off income and yet grows in value over time.
An investment that is tax-advantaged in a big way, real estate has become unaffordable for a huge slice of America.
This is tragic, because the advantages to owning real property over renting are spectacular.
Second, don’t let the politicians fool you with all of their blather about the evil "corporations." Corporate ownership through stocks is as good a way to pave the route to riches as exists.
Corporate stock ownership allows the owners of the world’s most productive entities to derive the genius and strength of workers — men and women, all over the globe — and have that strength working for them for the balance of their lives.
In essence, you and I, for almost nothing, can have the genius of persons such as Warren Buffett and Elon Musk employed by us and for us, helping us have security now and into the future.
We make a mistake if we do not allow them to help us now and into the future.
We would not use our own DIY skills to wire the electricity in our new home.
The smart people use the super pros to wire up our savings so we are not up at 4 a.m. wondering about how we are going to pay for our retirement.
The point is not at all complex: We are looking for professional-grade investment returns. We should have professional-grade advisers and managers working for us.
This is especially true for Buffett, the greatest investor of all time.
If we buy even a tiny bit of BRK-B, the lower-priced of the two grades of Berkshire Hathaway, we get the super mega genius investor of all eternity, Warren E. Buffett, investing our few pennies for free.
Why not?
He gets a tiny salary from us stockholders of BRK to manage our money.
Why not take him up on his offer? Why should women exclude themselves from the game?
It’s good to be rich. Go for it.
Ben Stein is a writer, an actor, and a lawyer who served as a speechwriter in the Nixon administration as the Watergate scandal unfolded. He began his unlikely road to stardom when director John Hughes hired him as the numbingly dull economics teacher in the urban comedy, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." His latest book is, "The Peacemaker Nixon: The Man, President, and My Friend." Read more more reports from Ben Stein — Click Here Now.
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