I live in Australia, although we are told that we are travelling ok, I wonder for how long. I see the European union under a lot of pressure and also observe that the US is in a lot of debt, has a crippling health care system that will (aledgedly) overtake GDP by 2050?, money has been shed of assets such as houses across parts of the country as well.
I have always found the US to be resilient and the EU I believed to be comparable (but not equal) in terms of prosperity.
In Aus, we are relatively small, approx 21 million, we are told that we are going ok and should weather the storm ok, but I am led to believe that this may not be the case. When I see such large economies going through what is currently occuring I cannot help to think that there may be something far worse around the corner.
I do not see this as textbook part of the economic cycle, am I a fatalist, pragmatic or just ill informed.
Is is really all doom and gloom?
- Thread starter tomartomau
- Start date
- Status
Yes, it is. Lots of young folks are un/under-employed, which does not bode well for the future. Add the massive student loan bubble here that's ready to burst, and the US is set to have a lost generation. Europe is self-inflicting pain, which also will result in disadvantaged younger folks just as the most experienced older folks retire or keep the jobs that previously would have gone to the younger folks.
If you Aussies can keep your wits about you, your country has a very good chance of being insulated from the rest of the world's mistakes.
Things are really not much different than they've always been. The world has always had a series of issues that the doom and gloomers were sure was going to be the end of civilization as we know it. You should have heard them wailing in the 1970's when we had the cold war, gas crisis, massive inflation, riots, pulling out of Vietnam, a president who resigned, the hostage crisis and the death of Elvis all in the same decade.
I think those that are sure it's "worse" now than it ever are either too young to know better or failed to study at all in American history class.
History is always more interesting when you live through it.
In the 1960's we started lots of social/monetary junk that would be the ruin of us (really started in the 1930's) - OTOH there were a couple good things we needed to straighten out. That is over. When such socio-upheavals happen in any countries often a generation or two will be lost. Problem is, at both ends of the spectrum - people started taking advantage of milking the system vs. forging forward on their own. Way too many sponges right now. "I'm this....so I should get that" combined with "Too big to fail"
So is it all doom and gloom? No - we will prevail. With some decent discipline and leadership we will be just fine.
Originally Posted By: Pop_Rivit
Things are really not much different than they've always been. The world has always had a series of issues that the doom and gloomers were sure was going to be the end of civilization as we know it. You should have heard them wailing in the 1970's when we had the cold war, gas crisis, massive inflation, riots, pulling out of Vietnam, a president who resigned, the hostage crisis and the death of Elvis all in the same decade.
I think those that are sure it's "worse" now than it ever are either too young to know better or failed to study at all in American history class.
History is always more interesting when you live through it.
Originally Posted By: Pablo
So is it all doom and gloom? No - we will prevail. With some decent discipline and leadership we will be just fine.
I just talked to Nancy, Harry and Barney Frank, all is well , trust me..................omy
JHZR2
Staff member
Originally Posted By: dwcopple
Originally Posted By: Pablo
So is it all doom and gloom? No - we will prevail. With some decent discipline and leadership we will be just fine.
Originally Posted By: JHZR2
If your total student loan is only $26k, youre better off than a LOT of recent grads.......
The biggest issue facing our (the ~30yos) generation is the prerception that we deserve everything, spending too much money on stuff of little value, and not living beneath our means enough. Vanity will be our downfall.
Originally Posted By: JHZR2
The biggest issue facing our (the ~30yos) generation is the prerception that we deserve everything, spending too much money on stuff of little value, and not living beneath our means enough. Vanity will be our downfall.
Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Originally Posted By: dwcopple
Originally Posted By: Pablo
So is it all doom and gloom? No - we will prevail. With some decent discipline and leadership we will be just fine.
Its all about how you manage your finances and don't allow your ego to get in the way of thinking you are more successful than you really are.
$26K is really not that much of a loan to pay back if you are currently working. Some law school grads have over $120K in student loans with no hope of finding work.
Even with 3 years worth of my gross income saved in cold hard cash in the bank.... I am still cutting coupons, watching every penny, more than maxing out my retirement contributions and refuse to spend money on [censored] I don't need.
Originally Posted By: eljefino
This lie is perpetuated by college admissions staff. Noone is "occupying" higher education to demand more value and less fluff, yet.
Last edited:
Its much worse that your elected reps and the lamestream media paints it. John--Las Vegas
Originally Posted By: Pablo
With some decent discipline and leadership we will be just fine.
In the 10,000 years of mankind's recorded history, there has never been a more prosperous time than right now. People In America don't starve, no matter what they do. Even the most poor can find somewhere to sleep that is outside of the weather. Much of the civilized world is similar.
Certainly, there are sections of the world suffering and I will never dismiss that fact. The poor will always be with us, for various reasons.
Basic needs consist of food and shelter. Everything else is a luxury. Household running water? That's a fairly new concept. Same goes for automatic heat and air conditioning. These things were not available 100 years ago. Not to mention 500 or 3000 years ago.
I'm not convinced there won't be a collapse. However, I am convinced that not everybody suffers in a collapse. Some, the industrious, succeed in spite of it. They may not be "rich", but they succeed. That's the kind of success I "bank" on. Nor will I ever expect more.
I assume you work for the state, in my line of work in the DPS(Dreaded Private Sector) if you dont like it, they point to the door and tell you to leave if you feel you can do better somewhere else. I am an Engineer and we have has a total of 1 raise (avg 2-3%) for all salaried people in the last 5 years.
So dont feel bad.
Per the school debt, it is too bad the [censored] government wouldnt get out of the student loans where some hack picks the winner and losers, and the schools continue to overpay the Professors, administrators and what not. If the government got out of it, the schools woul have to compete, and price would come down.
got any recommendations?
Yep, It's doom and gloom. I am 32, college educated, licensed medical professional, and not living comfortably at all. My student loan is around $26K or so and a major PITA each month. I am paying into a retirement savings plan that I am sure will disappear before I get to claim it, my governor just passed a ridiculous law that I now have to pay 20% of my healthcare coverage, even though I had to take a two year wage freeze (and I am on a step system, severely underpaid, thinking the steps were guaranteed just like they promised in the interview). It is just getting worse and worse each year. ugh.
Originally Posted By: dwcopple
Originally Posted By: Pablo
So is it all doom and gloom? No - we will prevail. With some decent discipline and leadership we will be just fine.
We'll get by and figure this out. Prior to 2008, unemployment was only 4.1%.
This was a financial crisis. Trying to balance the budget right now is the absolute worst thing you could do right now. This is a balance sheet recession. The right has been proven wrong on monetary policy and their doom/gloom predictions of hyperinflation, crowding out and soaring i-rates. Hasn't happened because they don't properly understand the monetary system.
Balancing the budget, ending the Federal Reserve all together and going back to a gold standard could potentially throw the country into the greatest depression ever. We don't live in that world and it wold be a disaster if we reverted to that type of monetary policy. IMO
"This used to be viewed as somewhat trivial when Kalecki and Lerner were around. So much so that Kalecki proposed a research agenda to understand why (it was kind of a [censored] moment) there were still economists who rejected the idea that a monetarily sovereign government faced no financial limit regarding its ability to secure full employment. After all, the point could not be made any simpler than Keynes and Lerner had made it. I love it when he dismisses the whole notion that the separation between monetary and fiscal authority can get in the way of fiscal expansion by suggesting that the fiscal authority could simply pay for things by delivering bonds which the monetary authority would then monetize (The Political Aspects of FE from 1943). In simple terms, the government can chose any number of accounting gymnastics to achieve its fiscal goals. The simple fact of the matter remains: it should be always able to pay for things priced in terms of the national money-of-account. What MMT has done (and circuit theorists have done as well) is to expose with absolute empirical and logical precision what we had known since the days of Knapp, Keynes and Lerner: that fiscal and monetary authorities can always work out their balance sheets in order to run deficits if they choose to do so as long as they get to define the economy's money"[b][/b]
Originally Posted By: tomartomau
I live in Australia, although we are told that we are travelling ok, I wonder for how long. I see the European union under a lot of pressure and also observe that the US is in a lot of debt, has a crippling health care system that will (aledgedly) overtake GDP by 2050?, money has been shed of assets such as houses across parts of the country as well.
I have always found the US to be resilient and the EU I believed to be comparable (but not equal) in terms of prosperity.
In Aus, we are relatively small, approx 21 million, we are told that we are going ok and should weather the storm ok, but I am led to believe that this may not be the case. When I see such large economies going through what is currently occuring I cannot help to think that there may be something far worse around the corner.
I do not see this as textbook part of the economic cycle, am I a fatalist, pragmatic or just ill informed.
- Status
Similar threads
