Fiscal Responsibility is the Dullest Topic

No one cares about fiscal responsibility. Why do I waste my time? I should be happy thinking about food, television, celebrity, entertainment and sports. No one thinks about the government bailouts or what they are going to cost in the future. Everyone simply wants their handout, as quickly as possible. Greed is good and much of this financial recklessness is being rewarded. Everyone who made a bad judgment in the mortgage debacle is being bailed out, the lenders, the borrowers and everyone in between. The bailout mentality has taken hold of the government, much to the delight of Wall Street and I’m pretty sure that there will be more to come now that the trough has been opened.

The value of fiscal responsibility with which my generation was raised is no longer part of the vernacular. Save now to buy it later has been replaced with get it now and pay it later. Everyone is entitled to have whatever they want, whenever they want, with as little down as possible. There are few savers out there, they are in the minority, and in fact the national savings rate is practically zero. We have become so addicted to debt that we are immune to the billions and trillions of debt being reported. Yet, if you ask most people how many zeros are in a billion (9) or a trillion dollars (12) they probably don’t know. People spend to buy things on sale when they don’t even have the money. The logic is that it was a bargain. The question of whether it was a necessary expense is dismissed without a second thought. The fact that it was charged and that any and all savings will be negated by interest payments doesn’t seem to register.

The fact that the average interest rate is approximately 12% for your basic consumer credit card and the average family has close to $9000 doesn’t seem to bother most people. No one sits down to do the math because most people hate math anyway. If they did, they would see that if they never charged another thing until this debt was paid off, it would take 5 years with a payment of $200 a month to pay it off. Debt never really seems like that much until you actually try to pay it down. But most people don’t think that far ahead when they are in the store whipping out the card to purchase some soon to be forgotten item and why should they? The government is sending the debt is ok message loud and clear to the tune of $10 trillion dollars and counting. All those who made it this far should be applauded, fiscal responsibility is the dullest topic, if only I could stop talking about it.