The other day I came across a couple of articles that caught my eye. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist George Will recently spoke in Salt Lake City. He spoke to a private audience on a number of topics, but the one that caught my attention was the current economic situation in this country, with an emphasis on debt.
He recounted that in 1916 John D. Rockefellar could have paid the entire national debt simply by writing a personal check. But, if Bill Gates liquidated everything, he would only pay two months of interest on the nation’s debt.
You will believe that the nation is approaching a sudden phase of bankruptcy. The nation has a whole has a spending problem. The national debt is just evidence that governments are fixated on deficit spending. Projections indicate that our national debt will continue to rise dramatically as Congress deals with how to fund Obamacare, not to mention Social Security.
However, Congress is not the only one with a spending and debt problem. People like you and me also have trouble spending and saving. Some would have you believe that the recession has crippled so many businesses and homes, but evidence and research indicate that is not the case. According to the Public Religion Research Institute and the Pew Research Center, Americans are considered less economically stable than they were years ago. A large percentage of Americans are putting off paying bills and doctor visits because they feel like they just can’t afford it. The percentage of Americans who feel this way only increases when it comes to the African-American community and Hispanics.
In my business, all the signs I see are that the economy is headed down. They are indicators that real estate may crash again and that people’s incomes are simply rising enough to meet the demands of inflation. When George Will spoke before that private audience in Salt Lake a couple of weeks ago, he used a quote from a Hemingway novel “The Sun Also Rises,” which seems to be quite prescient to some degree. A character in the book, describing how he broke, said: “I broke in two ways: gradually and then suddenly.”
My personal experience and experience as a bankruptcy attorney indicate the same thing. Job loss or significant drops in income, health care costs and necessities of life, and other personal setbacks put us in a hole we can’t get out of, then comes that point where we’re totally broke and burned out. due to stress. of everything.
To read more about PRRI and the Pew Studies, please read: http://national.deseretnews.com/article/2404/americans-arent-confident-about-their-financial-situations.html
To read more of George Will’s talk in Salt Lake, read: http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=31616872#Gr60w6oEfm4rVb1a.03