Katrina Meets New Orleans, Part Two

How do "average" Americans stay afloat financially in 2008?

Well, the "average American" could do some history research and see how average Americans of the last century remained financially stable during the great depression, or during WWII, or during the advent of the industrial revolution of the early 1900's, or even during the revolutionary war.

Now, before our young-ish, know-it-all computer savvy, pencil-necked, spend-it-all current generation declares that the past is the past, and we must look forward, they may want to unplug, slow down, and take a look at the huge mess that they have created.

Just about the time WWII was winding down, the boomer generation was cranking up. The "boomer" generation was raised in a very different way and in a very different America than their builder parents were. Prosperity reigned. Farmers became industrialists. Businesses expanded, suburbs grew. Air travel suplanted rails and boats, and communication became global with improved phone and satellite technology. Kids no longer had chores to do. They began getting allowances just for showing up. College became something average people aspired to, and was paid for via the "loving parents" who wanted their children to have what they didn't have. One can only speculate that the builder generation felt that hard work, personal responsibility, and delayed pleasure were undesirable traits to have, so they made sure that their boomer babies were given free money, absence of guilt, and whatever their toady little hearts wanted right then, and right there. No delays, no penalities, no refusals.

Welcome to 2008.

America has the greatest, strongest, most reliable, most resilient economy in the world. The US of A sets the standard for all economic markets. Even today, when liberals are touting that our economy is at an all time low, and people are suffering and scraping by, we as a nation of people are solidly in the top 3% of the wealthiest people in the entire world (an annual income of $31,000 puts on in that top 3%). The DOW, an economic indicator, hovered below the 10,000 bench mark for decades, and now routinely remains in the 11,800 - 13,000 field, with minor blips here and there. This happened during the Bush administration, by the way. Go Republicans! Anyway, our economy is strong, vibrant, and able to handle far more than the doomsdayers want to politicize. So, what is this hub-bub about people starving, losing jobs, and hanging on by a thread? Go back to "no delays, no penalities, no refusals."

What has happend in the past 2 years has been coming for a long time. Call it "payday" for the idiotic financial practices of the boomer generation. Payday? Oh yes, dear reader, it is payday for the paycheck to paycheck generation who cannot fathom the notion of waiting, paying cash, and eschewing credit. Perish the thought!

Families headed by yuppy-ish, I-get-what-I-want parents have been long on stretching themselves to the furtherest extent, and short on practicing financial responsibility for a long time. What these spend today, pay (maybe) tomorrow people have done is created a situation for themselves where any sudden increase in any staple item would fell their financial house.
Translation? When one is stretched to the financial limit, and beyond, all it takes is a $1 increase in the price of gas to send the house of cards to the ground.

As for the title of this entry, when the hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the dim of mind wandered around in their immense ignorance saying, "how could this have happened?" It happened because a filthy city that was fully 6 feet under sea level, boardered by the Mississippi river, a huge lake to the north, and the gulf of Mexico to the south, was hit by a category 5 hurricane, but not without a good 5 days of prior warning. The ONLY thing that has always kept The Big Easy (what a name!) from becoming a huge pond are a handful of man-made, diesel pumps that bail out the ever-present water. How could it have happened, indeed. And now, people all over this great nation are crying, "how can this be happening?" Cry on, boomer babies, and spend away like it grows on trees.

People are losing their homes. People are losing their second homes, their third homes, their 3,000 square foot homes in elite neighborhoods that they could never afford, their homes that they intended to "turn over" for an easy profit. If these boomer babies had bought homes that they could actually afford, and worked hard to pay them off early (saving tens of thousands in interest, like their builder parents did) they would be sitting back now, relaxing on their paid-for decks, smugly indifferent to the so-called "housing crisis," fully aware that their credit and financial status is impervious until a real crisis comes along, and even if that happens, they may survive that well too. Take a history course: there were millions of people in the Great Depression that went through it with little discomfort, mainly because they entered that time with low debt, or no debt. That one factor alone carried hundreds of thousands through without a scratch. Forget job skills, or money put away......just having no significant debt was enough. Today, boomers and X'ers think that anything less than $10,000 credit debt is not significant.

People can't afford to fill up their tanks. Boomers and their younger bretheren can't afford to fill up their 12 mpg, blinged out SUV's because they spend hundreds a month in interest payments on their electronic gadgets, their plasma screens, their elaborate vacations, their designer shoes and pants, their 22" dubs that they had to have on said SUV. Funny thing is, today, with gas at over $4 a gallon, all those pretty SUV's are still zooming up and down the roads, speeding merrily along, burning fossils with one blonde driver on a cell phone, without a care in the world. You may now see 2 mopeds on the road, instead of 1, but that's about all the adjustment you see in your driving world. People still gun it from every stop light, drive 80+ on the interstate, and race through suburb streets as if escaping a nuclear blast.

Food prices are "soaring." Well, an industrial, capitalist society does run on fuel, so if gas prices rise $2 a gallon in 2 years, then yes, banana's are going to cost 10 cents more per pound. Soaring? Expect such extremist language from the democrats who run the liberal media, in the hopes that they can get their candidate in office. Are restaurants closing? No. Are people still eating out? Of course! Are boomers, especially late boomers, and extra-especially X'ers going to actually begin cooking? Heavens, NO! No on is starving, and no one is shutting off their cell phones, or their children's cell phones, or refusing to rent movies, or game boys, and so on. Obesity is still a national problem, and will continue to get worse. Despite "soaring" prices.

Our current national financial situation can only be good for those who have never practiced financial responsibility in their lives. Conservative financial methods will either be adopted, or forced financial adjustments will bring the spend, spend, spend generation to their collective knees, eventually. Meanwhile, the godless liberal drive-by media will continue to tout these, poor, suffering spend-easy's as victims, duped by ruthless lenders, unable to help themselves. Be that as it may, when an entire generation of Americans cannot afford even a rudementary rise in gasoline prices without financial ruin, there are greater issues than price per gallon. Would lower gas prices be nice? Of course! But if that happens quickly (not likely without more domestic drilling and refineries) the spender generation will have learned nothing.

Immoral lending practices are not the problem. If you can afford to buy a $100,000 home, you should have enough sense to know how to borrow, spend, and lend responsibly. Even this author knows that an ARM or Balloon loan is a poor choice at best, as interest rates can change dramatically in less than a year. Consumers are not being duped. Lenders are responding to the incredibly irrational and selfish nature of this no delay, no penality generation by offering them exactly what they want: immediate gratification, and let tomorrow take care of itself.

Irresponsible consumer spending has been a national problem for decades. Few save, few invest, few put aside money for emergencies. Most spend all they make, spend it quickly, and borrow without any forethought about paying back. The paint themselves into a financial corner, and then whine when that practice bites them in the butt. Live on the ragged edge, and eventually, you take the fall. Live conservatively, and you ride out times like this with little guilt or pain. Which do you want?

Stupidity rises with ego-centrism and selfishness. America is losing its conservative, hard working, sacrifice now for a better future, past. Americans have been sewing to the wind, and are now reaping the whirlwind. Americans have denied themselves nothing, and now with a minor economic bump, have nothing. IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE. How could this have happened? How could such a ignorant question be asked?

Conservative, responsible, no-debt economic practices may deny those who follow them of some things in the here and now, and they may seem boring and old school, but those who are of that school are laughing NOW at the spoiled, selfish, it's-all-about-me, generation that is losing their homes, selling their SUV's, and breaking out the cookware, hoping for a miracle.

The miracle would be this -- pay off your debt while denying yourself of all the useless and worthless pleasures you've enjoyed for so long, and get those pimple-faced morons who do nothing a J O B and make them pull their weight.

Heck, while you're at it, sell the plasma, buy some good walking shoes, and spend some time with your kids in the evening while getting some needed exercise.

It couldn't possibly hurt more than losing that 3rd home.