We have occasionally followed new reports on the economic condition of the public and the news is rarely good. After an extremely very poor jobs report, a new study found that twenty-eight percent of Americans have nothing in their savings accounts and another 21 percent have no savings account at all. Only 29 percent has $1,000 or more in their accounts.
The recent survey by America Saves, as part of a campaign from the Consumer Federation of America, surveys 1,000 people three times per year for its Personal Savings Index.
Not surprisingly, top earners continue to sock away savings — 84 percent of people who earn more than $100,000 annually reported to be interested in saving compared with 72 percent of people with annual incomes between $50,000 and $75,000 and 68 percent of people who earn less than $25,000.
The economic situation in this country is far worse than most people appreciate. We live in economically stratified areas where there is little interaction between distant economic classes. These reports are a startling wake up call for policy makers. The goal of everyone having a few months cushion for bad times is clearly not occurring — leaving at least half or more of the population on the razor’s edge of poverty.
Source: CNBC
Mike, I guess you don’t get sarcasm then.
Watch some baseball, it will make you better people.
Behave now people, JT is watching his beloved Cubs, as am I.
Nick said:
I simply don’t believe that.
Ha!
Lots of people don’t believe LOTS of stuff that is written here. May I assume Nick’s statement provides a ‘precedent’ on the reasonableness of a similar response?
Damn.
Philly makes Nick seem reasonable. Never thought I’d see that happen here.
Hmmmm.
I never heard back from Nick regarding the number of employees a ‘small’ business must have before having to provide health insurance of all full time employees. That number, in case he still doesn’t know is 51. Not exactly the little mom and pop that most think of as ‘small business’.
I have an idea. Let’s raise the burger flippers minimum wage to, like, a trillion dollars and then they could pay off the national debt. You know, if they didn’t spend it all on weed and Obamaphones.
Nothing more than comments to simply disrupt a good discussion, no substance, foolish assertions about people, just the same blah, blah, blah.
I simply don’t believe that.
Sorry Nick. I have owned small businesses for most of my adult life. You are just missing on all cylinders today. More so than usual, and that’s a lot!
Trouble figuring out wordpress is not the same as trying to fool people with your BS.
New names, new avatars, same BS. You can tell no one here has owned a small business.
By the way, David, people pay into Social Security. We all do. Only the wealthy get away without paying a full share to support the safety net. If we lifted the income cap, Social Security would be immediately viable for a very very long time. Or would you rather see old people starving and freezing to death like they used to?
philat wrote: “By the way, David, people pay into Social Security. We all do. Only the wealthy get away without paying a full share to support the safety net. If we lifted the income cap, Social Security would be immediately viable for a very very long time. Or would you rather see old people starving and freezing to death like they used to?”
The wealthy pay more than their fair share into Social Security. The Social Security system is a pay as you go system. When we pay today, we pay for others living right now. Yes, there is a cap on how much income to tax, but why should there not be that cap? If one individual fully supports another stranger who he does not know by that tax, why should that not be enough? How many people do you think is fair to force him to support?
I am against Social Security because it is wealth redistribution by force. What is right about robbing hard working citizens to give away their wealth to others who may or may not need it? Few systems are as abused as Social Security. I can find many homeless guys who blow their Social Security every month on drugs. Why should you force me to pay for that? And why does the government think that once someone turns 65, he is no longer able to work, so we will rob others to give him a free check? What is possibly right about that line of thinking?
I also am against Social Security because it splits up families. With senior citizens getting a free check, families do not have to take care of their elderly family members. This is unnatural and wrong.
Those without families can be helped VOLUNTARILY by those of us who care. I am helping an elderly man right now who was a stranger to me just two weeks ago. There are millions of people who care, but when the government takes care of them by robbing the people of their earnings, they take away the incentive of people to care for one another. Therefore, I see Social Security as immoral. Social Security does not stop people from starving and freezing to death. That is a canard.
Right, Annie.
The problem with Cabrini Green was that they didn’t build it right in the middle of the Gold Coast thereby raising all the rents in that neighborhood and making all that property even more valuable.
Thomas Sowell has about as much credibility on economics as David Barton has on history. Both are serial confabulators. Lying for Jeezus no doubt. Laughably awful except that some people take them seriously.
The ridiculous notion of raising a minimum wage worker’s salary to $500 and hour is such an obvious logical fallacy I won’t even bother. Sad effort. Just sad.
And the history of discrimination in housing, from both sides of the aisle, goes back generations, and has put us exactly where we are today. Look at Levittown. Red-lining. Active discrimination in renting, leasing, neighborhood covenants. At every level of government. The active, intentional creation of ghettos. And people have the nerve to point to the gun violence in Chicago, Detroit and Camden and ask why there is so much black on black crime. Are you joking?
Fleming wrote:
Wrong, they exacerbate the increases in rent elsewhere, thereby worsening the problem.
(end of Fleming)
Explain how building federally subsidized housing increased rents elsewhere and worsened the problem of unaffordable rents for the poor. Let’s use my infamous example: Cabrini Green.
I used to save until I realized that all the money I saved had less purchasing power than if I had spent it when I got it. Then going into business, I learned to make money I had to spend it. Any money I left sitting in the bank never did much good there, so I stopped believing in saving.
I know a lot of people who know that Social Security will be there for them, so they figure why save anything. The government takes care of everything. If you don’t have a job, they buy you all the food you need. They provide medical care. They will give you a few thousand a month for spending money. So why save?
Fleming wrote:
“no resources cite INCREASING RENTS as a reason for the failure of Cabrini Green.”
Addressing an argument no one made is called a “straw man.”
“Fleming posits that every subsidized dollar leads to at least an equal amount of increased costs.”
False.
(end of Fleming comment)
Okay. Perhaps I misunderstood when you said housing subsidies would do the same as college subsidies have done to college costs – that is increased them. Here is your comment which left me with that impression:
Fleming wrote:
Government subsidies for college tuition only ended up raising tuition even further, contributing to the huge student loan debt crisis that itself keeps young people unable to afford a house.
“The basic problem is simple: Give everyone $100 to pay for higher education and colleges will raise their prices by $100, negating the value of the aid. And inflation-adjusted aid–most of it federal–has certainly gone up, ballooning from $4,602 per undergraduate in 1990-91 to $12,455 in 2010-11.”
Thus begins a classic upward price spiral caused by government intervention: Subsidies raise prices, leading to higher subsidies, which raise prices even more. Yet this higher education bubble, like the housing bubble, will eventually pop. Meanwhile, large numbers of students will graduate with more debt than they would have in an unsubsidized market.”
Same problem exists when you subsidize housing.
(end of Fleming comment)
Now care to set me straight that you don’t see federal housing subsidies increasing rents in the same way that college subsidies (according to you and your pals) have raised college costs.
And then explain again about the straw man.
“thus the suggestion that subsidized housing might remedy that.
Wrong, they exacerbate the increases in rent elsewhere, thereby worsening the problem.
Nick @ 5:35
Are you feeling better now that you have made such a brilliant contribution to the thread?
Subsidies do distort the market. Dusty laments that the market is making it difficult to live in SF or NYC, thus the suggestion that subsidized housing might remedy that.