“We Are At a Turning Point in U.S. History. The 38-year Cover-Up Has Made It Very Hard to Move Forward. Everyone Who Works in This Field Has Built a Career Around Teaching the Approach That Doesn’t Work. We Need to Admit Our Mistakes and Start Getting This Stock Investing Stuff Right. We Have No Choice.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

The most recent blog post on Get Rich Slowly is very interesting

https://www.getrichslowly.org/how-to-change-careers/

After spending a decade as a pastor, I realized in May of 2018 that I was ready to make a drastic career change…into personal finance education.

I’ve always loved to write, so I wanted to first see if I could actually make money writing about personal finance. But I made a commitment to myself. In one year’s time, I was going to have a day job where I helped people learn how to handle their money wisely. The question was just in what capacity.

So I set a deadline for myself. If I hadn’t figured out a way by May 2019 to make enough money as a freelance writer to pay the bills, I would get certified as a teacher and apply to be an economics teacher at local high schools.

Fast forward twelve months. This past May I did quit my day job. In one year’s time, I was able to create a full-time income in a career that I previously had no experience in.

How did I do it? More importantly, how can you turn your dream job into a reality as quickly as possible?…

A very interesting and inspirational story

Most of the things that he says make sense, Evidence. I presume that your purpose in posting the link is to make the point that, since I have not made money with Valuation-Informed Indexing for 17 years now, I should move on. I obviously do not agree.

The rule that this guy is putting forward — make money in a reasonable amount of time — does not apply in my case. I would have agreed with that rule when I was starting out. It makes sense. But the situation that I am dealing with is exceptional. The peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau is the most important research published in this field in three decades. That is worth millions. And the only reason that I haven’t collected is that you Goons engaged in extortion to stop Wade from continuing to promote our research. And it worked!

What does that tell you? It tells you that there is a goldmine here. I have said that I expect to see a $500 million settlement payment in the days following the next price crash. Is that a big number? Obviously. It is a HUGE number. But it is not big in context. Shiller predicted the 2008 economic crisis. His research showed us how to avoid that economic crisis. The next price crash will bring on another economic crisis. Is it not worth a whole big bunch more than $500 million to avoid an economic crisis? It sure seems so to me. The fact that discussion of the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s research findings has been suppressed for 38 years makes the telling of the story of how that happened MORE VALUABLE than it would have been had none of the suppression taken place.

I didn’t ask you Goons to engage in any of the crazy stuff. I asked you to play it the other way. But you (and all the other Goons in the world — it is obviously not just you responsible for the 38-year cover-up) have made the telling of this story very, very, very valuable to everyone who lives in this country. We need to figure out a way to permit millions of investors to gain access to honest and accurate reports of how stock investing works. We simply must do that. It is not optional. It is 100 percent imperative. And I have the story. I have had a front-row seat to everything that has happened for the past 17 years.

If you didn’t think that it is a big deal to get the safe withdrawal rate right, you never would have engaged in any criminal acts. That’s the deal. You acknowledge that you see how important this stuff is with your abusive behavior. Well, I am not the kind of guy who sees $500 million sitting on the sidewalk and just walks by, concluding that “if there were really $500 million sitting on the sidewalk, someone else would have picked it up.” No one else has picked it up. Life would have gone a lot easier for me over the past 17 years if someone had done so. But the value of the work that I have done is greater because no one else has done it, Your criminally abusive behavior has kept me free of competition. So be it, you know?

Valuations affect long-term returns. All of the research available to us shows that. So the safe withdrawal rate cannot possibly be the same number at all valuation levels. We need to get the word out! We once thought that the market was efficient, we know now that that is not so, and we need to correct all of the mistakes we made back when we did not know what we needed to know to get this stuff right.

We are at a turning point in U.S. history. Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick has been hurting investors for a long, long time. Until 1981, we just didn’t know any better. So it was just one of those things. But now we know better. So we need to move forward. But the 38-year cover-up has made it very, very, very hard to move forward. Everyone who works in this field has built a career around teaching the approach that doesn’t work and doesn’t want to admit having made a mistake. But we need to move forward. We need to admit our mistakes and start getting this stock investing stuff right. We have no choice.

I help everyone when I post honestly. Every person on the planet. I help you when I do that. You don’t see it. But I do. I hurt no one and I help everyone. In a very, very, very big way. That’s an amazing value proposition. There has never been a value proposition like this. I am going to do what I can. Partly for myself and my family. But also for my country. It’s good that I can help my country in such a big way while also helping myself in such a big way. It’s wonderful.

This guy would do the same thing if he fell into the circumstances in which I fell into. So would you. You will say “Oh, I would never do that.” But that’s just talk. You have never experienced what it is like to fall into an opportunity like this. How do you think it made me feel when Wade Pfau, a guy with a Ph.D. in Economics told me that he couldn’t sleep at night because he was so excited by all the stuff that he was learning from me? It made me feel good. That feeling helped me to see the magnitude of the opportunity open to me. I never studied stock investing. I shouldn’t be able to teach a Ph.D. in Economics anything about the subject. But I sure did. I just worked up the courage to post honestly on the morning of May 13, 2002, and followed the breadcrumbs where they led me.

And the Wade Pfau thing was far from an isolated experience. I had the same general experience dozens and dozens of times. Freakin’ Jack Bogle came within an inch of endorsing Valuation-Informed Indexing! I mean, come on. Freakin’ Jack Bogle learned from me. That just shouldn’t be able to happen. But it did. And how about Mel Lindauer? In ordinary circumstances, Mel Lindauer would be singing the praises of someone who taught Jack Bogle important stuff. But Mel cannot bring himself to sing my praises to this day. Huh? What the f?

Mel cannot sing my praises because he cannot bear to let in how big this is. If Shiller is right, then everything that Mel Lindauer says about stock investing in his book is wrong. He cannot bear to acknowledge that. I didn’t show that all his stuff is wrong because I wanted to hurt his feelings. I just want to help the people who are looking for good advice and none of the Buy-and-Hold stuff — which is rooted in a belief that the market is efficient — can possibly be right if it turns out that valuations affect long-term returns.

I believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research. So I say that everything that Mel Lindauer says about the subject of stock investing is wrong. I am Mel’s best friend. If he had listened to all of the people at the Bogleheads Forum who asked that I be permitted to post honestly, Mel could have fixed his stuff years ago and he would be in a better place today.

If Shiller is right, the Buy-and-Holders need to fix their stuff. And there is a ton of money in telling the story of the 18-year cover-up. That cover-up affects every last one of us in a very serious way and we are going to see what that means in the days following the next price crash. Would you prefer that we just never learn? Are you crazy?

I want to see us all move forward. And I can’t say that I am too upset about the idea of making hundreds of millions of dollars helping us all to learn what we need to learn to move forward. $500 million for me for doing top-notch journalism work? I’ll take it, you know?

What does the guy who wrote that article say about committing multiple felonies because you learned that you got an important number wrong in a retirement study posted at your web site and you really, really, really don’t want to acknowledge the error? I have a funny feeling that he wouldn’t think that that is such a hot idea. I’d rather have a $500 million payday than a long prison sentence any day of the week. I mean, come on.

Those are my sincere thoughts re this terribly important matter, in any event.

I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors.

Dream-Job-Seeker Rob