RSSThis Is What Socialism Brings
J.J. Jackson | February 2, 2007
Why should people save when they have been convinced that the government nanny state will take care of them if they get into trouble?
The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the savings rate for all of 2006 was a negative 1 percent, meaning that not only did people spend all the money they earned but they also dipped into savings or increased borrowing to finance purchases. The 2006 figure was lower than a negative 0.4 percent in 2005 and was the poorest showing since a negative 1.5 percent savings rate in 1933 during the Great Depression.
As long as you convince people not to save by mandating that the can get money in retirement by having other people pay for them, etc. do you really expect anything different.
Thank God I am WELL above the national average when it comes to saving because I sure don’t expect the federal government to make good on repaying me all the money it has stolen from my paychecks when I retire in 30 years.
Contributor's website: http://www.libertyreborn.com
Content posted by users from other sites is posted for commentary and news purposes under fair use and each author is responsible for their own postings and a particular posting should not be construed as being endorsed by this site or its owner.
3 Responses to “This Is What Socialism Brings”
Leave a Reply
Loading ...Recommended Reading:
Isn’t one of the benefits of the economy that people are so willing to spend? The economy is in the best shape it’s been in since pre-9/11 and personal savings has hovered at low rates below 2% for most the decade. Don’t get me wrong, I think everyone should be saving adequate amounts to fund their entire lives, but we should also be happy about current spending trends. Like your post on Exxon, (not the greatest example because consumer spending doesn’t translate as easily into oil profits) we are all profiting when people are borrowing.
I think a lot of this can be attributed to consumer confidence in the market and willingness to borrow for pleasure or venture capitalism. Also, we are in a rebuilding phase since the economic dip after the .com fallout and 9/11.
Here’s something interesting. China has the opposite problem that we have. Personal savings is between 30-40% of their GDP (last I knew in 05-06′). They have empty shopping malls. All of this because many know and remember the first-hand tragedies of a communist system…which I guess I am a huge supporter of.
Just kidding everybody.
Sure it is great that everyone is spending and borrowing, but eventually you have to save or your are up poop creek without a paddle.
I see the lack of personal initiative in terms of taking care of their own financial security as a sign that we will have socialism if not communism (Social Security, Welfare, etc.) for a long time to come. Which is a darn shame.
There’s no doubt that we’re in for a heavy dose of socialism, but this is the way it’s been for most of U.S. history. There just isn’t such thing as a purely free market economy in the world. Once you have a government, the people in it are going to want to gain as much power as possible. Their two mediums to do so are the military and the market. We should all be thankful that we can still (for now at least) opt to save on our own. If taxes go up, a lot of people will start to lose that option, which just continues to build a dependency on the government.
Still though, I don’t think these numbers are nearly as ominous as they were made to sound like. Two sides to every coin, and I say they’re a sign of a healthy spender’s economy. And if savings rates are the lowest they’ve been since the Great Depression, maybe we are in for a Post-Depression era boom of sorts?