ve been blown out of proportion? Is this another case of the media getting ahead of itself, taking one story and conflating it into something larger? (i.e. the debate about vaccines and autism—although frankly I still have my doubts about that one, if vaccines aren't the culprit, then something is; or more recently the poor teenage girl who committed suicide and MSNBC blamed it on sexting?—completely ignoring that the girl had a friend commit suicide and teenagers are especially susceptible to something called suicide contagion.)The article give the hard data as this—$2.6 trillion in consumer debt in 2007, about $8,500 per American (this does not include mortgages, but pretty much all other debt). The number in 2003 was only $2 trillion. So yes our debt has increased. But apparently during the same time mortgage debt doubled. The author says that while the horror stories get the attention, those are small potatoes compared to the millions of Americans who are paying down their debt and saving more.
I guess I will believe this more once we have information for last year and even the first half of this year. It isn't that I don't believe that the credit card side of America's money problems haven't been blown out of proportion, but I am not completely convinced just yet. I mean how does the lack of cost of living increases for people's salaries play into this, as well as lost incomes due to job loss, etc. I am most certainly not a banker or economist (thank the lord!) but it seems to me that there is more to this picture than simply the "hard data."
But then I am a touchy, feely liberal . . .
5 comments:
i'm not sure what i believe, whether things are blown out of proportion or not. i do think watching all the doom and gloom on the news is like a self-fulfilling prophesy though. i know things are bad but i also believe in survival of the fittest. those (whether those are big corporations or consumers) who don't adapt and make changes aren't going to hang around. we're saving and watching expenses but thankfully we haven't been hit quite as hard as lots of people. i don't look at the 401k stuff (the hubs does) because i'm betting on the fact that it will rebound by the time i need it.
i think you are probably very much on target, a lot of it does become a self-fulfilling prophecy, but that doesn't mean that things aren't a little scary. and yeah, i have looked at the 401k and it is pretty disturbing, but then I think I have at least another 3o years to play the game, so odds are it will improve.
The vaccine/autism link scares the bejeezus out of me, partly because I will have to make decisions about it fairly soon after the as-yet-unconceived kiddos are born (unlike the HPV vaccine or something like that, which I can wait a good decade to worry about).
I have no wisdom about the economy; I just keep my head down and try to ignore what's the Prudential/Fidelity/Vanguard envelopes.
My verification word, btw: tipsyr. Meaning "more tipsy"? How did they know? :)
I'm alway skeptical these days, especially since the media, more than ever it seems, like to wring all they can out of story, regardless of how "important" it really is. With all the doom and gloom in the news, it's almost as if a natural disaster of some sort would be a welcome reprieve!
The vaccine/autism thing is hoakum, I think. Having done a fair amount of research into materials as a part of my vocation, I can tell you that there are many many clinical studies that indicate that pthalates and other synthetic compounds that regularly off-gas into our (more and more) insulated environments are having detrimental effects on us and our children. Not just on a health level, but also on a genetic level.
Comparatively, vaccines have little to do with it. One of the things I am learning over and over is that it is the questions that we do not know to ask that are the most important.
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