My wife was shopping at Publix across the street from the shooting when it went down. Out of all of the LEO agencies..including the FBI that immediately descended on the scene, you would have thought that one of those "heroes" could have strolled across the street to warn the shoppers that there was a crazed gunman on the loose. Fuck those idiots. I'm not sure what your point is with the 63% is though, or if it is even correct.
For sure. My family ( I was born and raised in Mobile, Al) was close with Eugene Sledge author of With The Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. His pal, Sidney Phillips lived across the street from me growing up. Dr. Phillips would speak a bit about his experience on Guadalcanal. Sledge kept it all in until he wrote one of the definitive books about the war in the Pacific. Anyway /csb.
And don't forget the Japs. A cruel and worthy adversary. I would take the European theater over the PTO any day. If I had been captured by the enemy(which was likely considering my slow ass) I would rather take my chances with the Hun, Malmedy notwithstanding.
I feel your pain. I started college in '72 during the start of the Arab Oil embargo. Graduated and the best job I could find to pay for grad school was working on an offshore oil rig. Finally got a decent job, and then stagflation came along. The first mortgage I had was @ 12% (yeah, houses were cheaper..but still). Then came Black Monday in 1987 which wiped out my meager holdings. Then the rest of what you also experienced. Had I not stayed in the market in '08 ( against my better judgement) I would be in a world of shit right now. tl;dr Recessions are a normal part of the economic cycle, and they suck donkey dicks.