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How shameful that you are so willing to place the blame of what might be seen as a failure of the middle class, upon the middle class itself, callingthem, financially irresponsible!
Have you forgotten about the bankers the traders the federal regulators and all of those people.
You can blame the drug dealers.
But they don't hold you down and shoot the drug up your arm against your will.
They would be out of business if no one did drugs.
You can blame the drug dealers.
But they don't hold you down and shoot the drug up your arm against your will.
They would be out of business if no one did drugs.
There's a difference between, for instance, someone selling you heroin and someone selling you a complicated financial product that you can't actually afford, while simultaneously betting that you will not be able to afford it and not telling you.
Consumers need to be better educated and institutions need to be held accountable for deceptive practices and malfeasance. The end.
You can blame the drug dealers.
But they don't hold you down and shoot the drug up your arm against your will.
They would be out of business if no one did drugs.
Our fiat money system is a ponzi scheme. The FED artifically has held intrest rates low for well over a decade, allowing liquidity and easy credit, aided by Congressional actions starting under Clinton, to stimulate spending among those who could least afford it. Thus the lower & middle- middle class largely became slaves to their debt in the pursuit of pretty shiny things.
This is by design. For global governance to be achieved the historically self-sufficient class of Americans must be destroyed leaving only the uber-elite and the dependent.
Come on folks, wake up already. The severe influence of Government Sachs began with Robert Rubins in the Clinton White House. He is the one who helped design the end of Glass-Stegal and set the groundwork for the legalized theft of middle class wealth through derivatives trading. Every administration since has been heavily weighted with Government Sachs & JP Morgan people traveling through the rotating door, setting US foreign & domestic policy alike.
There's a difference between, for instance, someone selling you heroin and someone selling you a complicated financial product that you can't actually afford, while simultaneously betting that you will not be able to afford it and not telling you.
Consumers need to be better educated and institutions need to be held accountable for deceptive practices and malfeasance. The end.
Yes. And as an adult who demands the rights of an adult and the respect of an adult and the freedom of an adult, they should do their own due diligence like an adult. Or just go put a bottle back in your mouth and go rocky baby to mommy.
Or do most people go around believing what every Tom, Dick, and Harry on the street tells them? Only if they think they will get something fun out of it, apparently. How many people deny smoking is bad for them...they demand studies and evidence and irrefutable proof...but they suddenly become Larry McStupid when some guy comes by and tells them they can magically afford a $500k mansion on their $40k salary?
People's judgment is clouded by their own greed and inability to delay gratification. THAT is what the big banks prey on. But like I said, if we were disciplined, conscientious, conservative people, they would be tapping a dry well.
And it's not unrealistic. People used to be verrrrrry wary of debt.
......................People's judgment is clouded by their own greed and inability to delay gratification. THAT is what the big banks prey on. But like I said, if we were disciplined, conscientious, conservative people, they would be tapping a dry well.
And it's not unrealistic. People used to be verrrrrry wary of debt.
Highlighted in bold is key. Our economy is consumer driven and the fuel it runs upon is debt. When people stop spending, be it because credit markets tighten or because the consumer is literally bankrupt, the economy stumbles. Sudden inflows of cash (quantitative easing) to the markets give consumers false hope of economic recovery with temporary market rebounds.
When we had a substantial manufacturing base in this country it was the middle class who was in the drivers seat. Production attracts capital and the creation/growth of wealth.
Because we are a debt driven economy it is the banks who are now in the driver's seat. Yet, The FED does not create wealth by printing money, it only devalues that which you have and lowers purchasing power for the average American (99.5%).
Our consumer based service economy revolves upon the servicing of debt. We see today that this post-industrial economy is a flawed system whose end is first stagflation, then collapse. This is why it is so very important to bring widespread manufacturing back to our own shores ASAP!
Now it's gimme gimme gimme. Gotta have the newest and best thing out there. Ipad, I want it. Fancy smancy puter I want it. New extravagant home to impress my friends I want it. Who pays for it?? Who cares.............
"Frugality used to be a central middle-class theme. What happened to it? We now read the stories of middle-class families in free fall because they lost a job and had no savings. Back in the mists of time, there was a rule about setting aside six months of salary to cover a possible job loss. Not only did the middle class stop saving, but it famously borrowed to maintain extravagant living beyond what its stagnating salaries could support.
Middle-class Americans used to throw "mortgage burning parties," when, after 30 years, they finally paid off their home loans. They understood as long as they had a mortgage, they were not full homeowners.
But come the housing bubble of the last decade, middle-class people no longer viewed their rising home prices as mere whipped cream on a prudent savings plan. They saw a higher value as the main course to be quickly devoured by borrowing against it. Now Americans' equity in their homes (the home's value minus mortgage) is half what it was in 2006.
Many middle-class parents of the '50s and '60s well remembered the privations of the Great Depression. Thus, they raised their children to be survivors in an uncertain world, not as princes and princesses who can do no wrong. They understood the importance of education and manners. They regarded teachers as authorities to be respected. "
Yes, They voted for the idiots running this Country now... President, down to Congress.
13 trillion dollars in Wall St derivatives fraud. oh but the middle class is to blame.
cannot wait till the next corporate puppet is elected. (Obama and Romney are both bought and paid for by Deutschebank and Citi, JpMorgan) but you want blinders on that no new laws should be written.
More TARP and tbtf bs coming down the pipeline. Enjoy it OP while you blame average joes for what this Amerika as become.
Only in the same sense as voiced in cartoonist Walt Kelly's observation in Pogo that "We have met the enemy .... and he is us".
It's a simple fact that once people gain the basics of a comfortable and secure basic existence, they go lloking for more; and beyond tose basics, "propsperity" and "success" are usually depicted in relative, rather than absolute terms
And that the more exotic forms of comsumption invariably ivolve the input of more of someone else's time and attention
And that the people who spend disposable income are, be it as dependents, heirs or simply the recipent of transfer payments, not the people who directly produced the wealth being dissipated
And that Madison Avenue, much more than Wall Street, is the driving force behind many of our current troubles.
And finally, that when misquided "regulators" build new supposedly- "foolproof" restrictions and bureaucracies to save us from ourselves, it doesn't take long to hatch a ne and improved set of fools to test them.
Now it's gimme gimme gimme. Gotta have the newest and best thing out there. Ipad, I want it. Fancy smancy puter I want it. New extravagant home to impress my friends I want it. Who pays for it?? Who cares.............
"Frugality used to be a central middle-class theme. What happened to it? We now read the stories of middle-class families in free fall because they lost a job and had no savings. Back in the mists of time, there was a rule about setting aside six months of salary to cover a possible job loss. Not only did the middle class stop saving, but it famously borrowed to maintain extravagant living beyond what its stagnating salaries could support.
Middle-class Americans used to throw "mortgage burning parties," when, after 30 years, they finally paid off their home loans. They understood as long as they had a mortgage, they were not full homeowners.
But come the housing bubble of the last decade, middle-class people no longer viewed their rising home prices as mere whipped cream on a prudent savings plan. They saw a higher value as the main course to be quickly devoured by borrowing against it. Now Americans' equity in their homes (the home's value minus mortgage) is half what it was in 2006.
Many middle-class parents of the '50s and '60s well remembered the privations of the Great Depression. Thus, they raised their children to be survivors in an uncertain world, not as princes and princesses who can do no wrong. They understood the importance of education and manners. They regarded teachers as authorities to be respected. "
The only problem with this is that the author claims the Depression scarred parents of children raised in the 50s and 60s instilled values of thrift upon these children. That maybe but the lessons didn't stick.
These children are the indulged baby boomers who were determined to throw away centuries of the established social order and norms of the West. In doing so they are bringing about its demise and raising the bratty hypersexualized children the author sees at the mall.
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