Americans Are Living Paycheck to Paycheck
thestreet.com
thestreet.com
I tried YNAB three different times before it finally clicked for me and I can attribute a lot my success to Nick True's videos (specifically his "YNAB for beginners" [1] video) and a friend giving me a push at just the right moment. Let this comment be your personal wakeup call to get your finances under control and remove the background (often subconscious) stress that worrying about money causes.
[0] https://www.youneedabudget.com/
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exS0gU-Ie8E (NOTE: This is the updated 2022 version, I've only seen his original version but I assume this is the best one to watch now)
The ruling class seems oblivious to the sociopolitical implications of the imbalance. The 2016 election should have been an epiphany moment. Instead they pushed their heads deeper into the sand, and ratcheted up the rhetoric and distractions.
This isn't sustainable.
In fact as much as I hate Trump he was change: the first evidence of the old elite losing control.
> the first evidence of the old elite losing control.
Best interest here means best economic interests. About 25% of Republicans earn less than $30K/yr, another 25% earn less than $50K, another 25% earn less than $100K/yr, and another 23% of Republicans earn less than $300K/yr. This means 98% of Republicans have absolutely no idea what they're doing and are voting themselves into economic stagnation. The 2% of Republicans earning more than $300K/yr are quite shrewd, but at moral cost. The Republican Party is made up nearly entirely of the bamboozled, yet while they will never see economic opportunity while Republicans hold power, they are paying for the 2% to make inroads on the 0.01%.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-stu...
As a practical matter, moreover, tax cuts are something Republicans can do with only 51 Senate votes, because the budget is an exception to the filibuster's 60 vote requirement. Query what would have happened if we eliminated the filibuster and the GOP had more room to give their voters what they want.
The SALT change and the deductible increase affected large swaths of taxpayers favorably-mostly the working poor who made enough to pay taxes but not enough for much deductions.
Put another way, if you don't have anyone worth voting for you're not going to vote. Voter turnout is very low. What does that tell us? Oddly enough, there's no one responsible and accountable for voter turnout. Funny how that is.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/09/29/a-study-...
(And that isn’t even considering the sharp drop in population growth China is about to experience)
Plus the GDP (per capita and otherwise) in Africa and India lead me to believe there really isn’t much money being reallocated to them.
- The U.S. goods trade deficit with China was $310.3 billion in 2020
- The U.S. goods trade deficit with China was $355.3 billion in 2021
I think their choice of "growth" was bad, but their point of "sucking up money" was spot on.
It is not an accident that China maintains a surplus, they are intentionally extracting money from them.
Have you looked at our trade relationship with Japan? Germany? It’s been negative by tens of billions for decades. No one claims they are depleting America of money.
Trade deficits aren’t a zero sum game. Countries end up putting those earnings back in American securities, burning that money on useless investments (particularly relevant to China right now) and many of the inputs/outputs (like services which America excels at) aren’t ever properly recorded.
Worth-less to that buyer from Wichita, but worth-more than Renminbi to that seller from Guangzhou.
But slurping up the middle East’s oilshake whilst sitting on our giant reserves is a good trick whilst it works.
And what I do with my money is meaningless unless I coordinate with millions of other people to do the same thing. And the probability of that happening is extremely low.
I admire the optimism, but I just don't feel it's realistic. There is absolutely nothing an individual, on their own, can do to change anything in the current world.
At least it's not illegal yet to live without credit cards and/or lead a frugal life.
But it is arguably part of the problem IMO that credit scores have become so necessary it's difficult if not impossible to find an apartment without one. That alone is a forcing function pushing young Americans to rely on credit, greasing those consumer wheels by decoupling their spending from their earning at a young age.
I'm Canadian and lived in the US for several years and can attest this is a strange system.
Here (Canada) credit scores are starting to become more and more common but this is a new thing, and probably something we 'borrowed' from the US.
When i moved to the US I had a credit score of zero and a really good income. I had problems finding a place to live as everyone asked for my credit score.
I finally bought a car and took out a loan which i paid off a few months later simply to attempt to build a "credit score" and make my life easier.
Things may be different now, but I dont recall ever being asked for a "credit score" when attempting to rent in Toronto many years ago.
why do you feel this indicates anything behind what it is, "Keeping up with the joneses".
Large swaths of people do strange things with their money on a regular basis :
- State Lotto tickets
- people visiting casinos
Individuals are not the "source" of the problems, group think, media, etc encourage it. Just because my neighbour has a new car doest mean i need one too?
Back to the core point, the US does have a bias towards overconsumption. During the financial crisis Stimulus packages were issued to "encourage spending"
https://www.thebalancemoney.com/stimulus-checks-3305750
DEFINITION
A stimulus check is a direct payment made by the government to its citizens. Unlike tax credits, which come as deductions from taxes owed during tax filing, stimulus checks are designed to give immediate relief to taxpayers and encourage stability and spending during an economic downturn.
What happens if everyone stops playing state lottos, and engaging in vices like drinking, smoking or doing drugs?
Take it to the logical extreme.
I’ll help.
Virtually every state experiences massive budget shortfalls overnight.
Police departments become critically underfunded.
Schools become insolvent.
Pensions go underwater.
Massive unemployment occurs do too bars, detox centers, etc closing.
This unemployment cascades as the supporting industries and businesses experience severe austerity.
I can continue but I trust that I’ve painted a grim picture of what will happen if rampant consumerism stops. The only way America can function without drastic change to the fundamental assumptions used by economists is by correcting people to engage in financially destructive or illegal behavior.
That is a pointless exercise.
If state lotto ticket sales dried up they would most likely raise taxes.. but let your crazy theory run wild and end with "pensions go underwater".
Thank goodness we have state lotto??
>It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented.
Have you considered what the money would be used for if not spent in doing drugs and gambling? It is true that rehab centres and some police stations might no longer be needed, but perhaps society would find a better use for that money.
The write:
> Take it to the logical extreme.
Then proceeds to make a number of serious illogical comments?
Killing off state lotto leads to pension defaults, bars going bankrupt, etc?
as you said, no better use of the money?
The entirely missed my point which was people do dumb things with their money on a regular basis, lotto and gambling were two examples in my opinion. Naturally people who gamble would disagree and they are entitled to their opinions.
It's not about assigning fault. But if you wanted to fix the problem, understanding the role people's own decision making factors into it would be a big part of it.
The system leads them to water but at the end of the day, they choose to drink.
And if the end result isn’t healthy for society then perhaps society has to step in.
I speak of Germany, circa 20 years ago. Unfortunately, consumer credit of all sorts has become a lot more available and accepted here, and I’m worried for a lot of the people around me for when the looming global recession really gets going, and we see the full impact of Putin wrecking the energy order Germany had allowed itself to be lulled into - those higher energy bills won’t start showing up for a lot of folks before next year.
But not my husband’s family, or us - we live small, in a culture that still doesn’t pressure us to live as large as US culture, especially my Texan culture, does people in our general walk of life.
And when it’s easy to get people who would be better off not getting it will get it.
The only solution may be to make bankruptcy even easier until the banks stop being dumb.
It's not possible to succeed without one, so they fail.
There's not much more to it. People who prioritise other things above essentials fail in every endeavour. Wealth, health, happiness.