As some mention, some of the decline in savings is attributable to
overconsumption, but scholarly studies show that the largest factors were
1. Stagnant or declining incomes
2. Massively increasing health care, education,and housing costs.
(3. Food & energy have gone up quite a lot in the last few years too)
(4. And, I'd add, massively inventive forms of debt peonage.)
According to hard data, the oft cited snowmobiles and gadgets played a
very, very minor part in the expenses that overwhelmed people in the
last generation.
Of course, talking about the snowmobiles is big on the media, where the
goal remains to blame workers for the current debacle. By the same
token, a govt employee who takes home 100K in overtime is a big angry
news story; whereas the CEO who takes home 100 million remains an object
of awe and fawning.
The class war continues. It is interesting though that the republican
charge that Obama "wants to spread the wealth around" is starting to
sound a little thin these days.
In fact, we may live to see class trump race. Interesting "undecided"
wisdom is being uncovered. Folks are reported to be saying stuff like "I
wouldn't want my daughter/sister/ etc to marry one; but if your house is
burning down, you don't care that the firefighter coming to save it is
black."
Joanna
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