Yesterday I watched the movie The Book of Eli (hat tip Paul). It is a post apocalyptic flick about a guy who really knows how to handle himself. Without giving the movie away, as you can imagine resources are quite scarce--I winced a little when I threw away the rice out of the rice cooker that we did not eat.As I was watching the movie this article popped up on one of my news feeds about employment benefits being extended to last a total of 99 weeks.
I have opinions but do not necessarily know what the best thing to do here is. Many things that the government spends money on sound important, like helping people who are out of work due to no fault of their own (man do I hate that phrase) but to the extent we have to do everything (not my belief) it reiterates the lack of political will to ever fix anything. One byproduct of kicking the can down the road is that it makes today's problems worse in the future.
Does anyone think that solving our problems does not mean some serious bullet biting at some point? If we do have to collectively bite the bullet then can delaying that reckoning do anything but make the ultimate bullet bigger?
To read some of the commentaries from a couple of years ago there were quite a few people expecting a Book of Eli outcome from the financial crisis. I've never been in the total tearing of the social fabric camp but I do believe things will be more difficult for more people. The follow up question to that vague statement of course is how difficult and for how many?
In a lot of posts I've quickly referenced my belief that social security and medicare as we know it will not exist. Often there will be a mix of comments agreeing or disagreeing but no entitlements would have dire consequences for a lot of people and while many might say not no entitlements just reduced entitlements-- either way this is a tough decision affecting incomes for a lot of people where the average 401k balance is below $100,000 (the number varies depending on the study you look at).
The implications are that people will be forced to work longer as opposed to deciding to work longer which potentially dominoes to fewer jobs available to people coming out of college which seems like could occur in what continues to be a "jobless recovery." This, IMO, would create serious headwinds but not The Book of Eli.
The personal solution, which will be crucial, has to include getting fixed expenses down and saving more money. I say this a lot but I think it is important to repeat certain things. My thought before about social security letting people down was along the lines of well that will be rough for a lot of people but as I think about it more the proper magnitude needs to be stronger as it will really hurt a lot of people, I mean really hurt them.
9 comments:
You bring to the fore issues that politicians are loathe to deal with. Our bad - we vote for the bastards.
Those with a knowledge of history understand that the greatest empires were not conquered - they rotted from within. We are following that same path. Less-advanced cultures now dominate our remarkably successful Judeo-Christian heritage, endless sports spectacles are a narcotic for increasingly uneducated and mis-focused masses,a crumbling military and infrastructure and the colossal failure of our ruling class to command and navigate the ship of state in an appropriate manner seal the deal.
The world is changing, and an unsustainable number of Americans sit on our overweight, government-subsidized asses confident that higher taxes,endless lawsuits, windmills and playing nice to adversaries is our final solution.
Rome, 2020? Or, do we wake up?
Well said, Anonymous.
Sorry, but "jobless recovery" is an oxymoron. Typical from the morons in DC: mostly lies and spin masquerading as helping the 'little people.'
"Rome 2020"
that is why i put it in quotes
Anonymous 8:34
Excellent synapsis
Where do find leaders that are not political; that use their intelligence for the betterment of society.
In order to turn around the ship of America, everyone will need to suffer. I don't see that happening.
Politics makes me sad. Can we talk about something less controversial like money or religion?
As long as Pandora's box has been opened...
We could fully fund the stimulus, Social Security, and unemployment insurance indefinitely if we stopped wasting money on (1) redundant "national security" waste, as outlined in the recent Washington Post expose, and (2) trying to rule the entire world by military force. This is where most of our hard-earned capital goes down the drain.
It would not hurt to capture the tax dodges of the super-rich, either. As long as we have the bloated military, we should just take over Grand Cayman and a few other black-box bank havens, and reclaim the loot. At least Switzerland was willing to negotiate about revealing tax evaders.
The relevant statistic here is that in the last 20 years, while middle class went from trillions (in 401ks etc) to negative, the super rich billionaires have doubled their income. The problem is not that we are earning less, but that it is so badly distributed.
Just read your post - excellent stuff here Roger. In reference to Eli - it is amazing to think about our life of abundance in comparison. I enjoyed Grantham's take on global warming in the same vein, check it out if you haven't.
Sorry I missed you during my trip to Arizona...next time I will give you more than a few days notice!
P.S. - So, was he blind?
i saw your FB comment about his being blind, or not so I was trying to figure whether he was or not. my take on this was that if he was blind then he went blind or somehow reverted back to being blind when he got shot. There was one shot of him rowing where to me he was blind at that point.
your take?
I think he had to be blind before the "event" in order to have read the bible. He certainly would not have learned to read Braille in the post-apocalyptic world with all of the other demands on mere existence. What happened during his 30 years in the desert is a whole other discussion!
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