I my opinion, the major reason we're in this fix right now is because people won't stick within their means. Where the hell did that sense of entitlement come from?
Clinton went to the banks and told them to lend money to people who couldn't afford to repay it. So everything looked really prosperous until the bottom fell out because those people started to default on loans. o.k., the banks should not have lent money to people who could not afford to pay it back, but the final result rests on our shoulders. If you regularly spend more than you make, you're going to end up in trouble. No rocket science there.
posted by JFKRJK
over 2 years ago
No. I think it was the fault of that homely old guy who held the job forever before Bernanke took over......
Just a thought. The one time in my life I was on unemployment I was looking for another job before I collected the first check.....
Is the procedure nowadays to collect unemployment til it runs out before you look for another job???
mabft...........
Unemployment is rampant in my county, one of the largest in the state, and probably one of the poorest. The animal rescue place I volunteer for put ads in a couple of the free 'shoppers' papers around here advertising 'Tom Cat Days'. I put up flyers in the town closest to me, and gave some to some of the the gals at bowling to take to their towns. The first 30 low income people to call can get their cat neutered for free. (Only one so far has asked if the program is only for animals....I think she meant only for cats....I think...) So far I have gotten about 80 calls. Many of the people who called are recently laid off and trying to get unemployment extensions. Nearly all who called are either on welfare or unemployment. Now a newer company that makes solar products has announced they will lay off another large group of employees. When Electrolux closed up shop, 4500 jobs were lost.
Brew - the last time i was laid off - i could find easily 8-12 jobs a DAY that i was qualified for and could apply to. This time around I'd find 1 job a WEEK if I was lucky and that was after hours of combing every possible online site. After awhile you're real tempted to stop working so hard to find work. Luckily I can start Social Security if I don't find something soon.
posted by whims
over 2 years ago
The US middle class may shrink, but I read an UNbelievable article in the UK's "The Economist" earlier this year, where they claim the middle class in the whole planet has risen by HUGE amounts, now it is almost 3 billion people!
IN China alone, they claim the middle class is now over 800 million (!!!!), up from a mere 150 million a decade or so ago.
They define middle class as people making 2-13 $ a day, but before you say this is too little, you need to know that $1 buys FIVE to TEN times the stuff in China that it buys here!!! And $1-2 a day was considered the poverty level in many countries around the world.
Many workers in the US, due to very greedy unions, were able to be middle class, even tho their work was really not very challenging, some of them were just Janitors at GM and Delphi making $64 an hour with all the benefits (total cost to the employer-not in their pocket!)
Obviously this is not sustainable and nobody should rationally expect it to be!
middle-lower-upper class, which ever, does the mortgage co, file a law suit to collect the money it loses on a reposed home or does the mortgage co write it off as a loss.
i think it is more of the younger generations fault for buying more than they could pay for.
they don't think about the future and think only about what they want not what they need.
my son is a prime example.
