Here are some facts, make what you will of them. How can 50% of Americans be so “poor” compared with other advanced countries in the world? What are your thoughts on this topic?
The majority of Americans may be financially and economically illiterate. Many have nothing, and likely will never have anything. Over 65% of American adults have a net worth under $100,000. In Australia, over 65% of all adults have a net worth exceeding $100,000.
The recent 2013 Consumer Financial Literacy Survey shows the financial literacy trends are getting worse:
In fact, as in 2011 and 2012, many adults (40% 2013, 42% 2012, 41% 2011) now give themselves a grade of C, D, or F on their knowledge of personal finance, marking a statistically significant change from 2010, when as many as nearly 2 in 3 adults (65%) gave themselves an A or B.
Pick your reason why the 50th percentile (median) American is so poor – education system, bad parenting, religion, nanny government, lazy sods, suppression by the 1%. Grab any prejudice and believe it – because no one can prove it wrong. The data simply does not exist to prove anything. Even so, this type of data only defines the problem, and not the cause.
Read more on this story HERE
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
Why do I need financial literacy? When I want something I can whip out the plastic. Can’t pay the bill, there’s bankruptcy. Want to go to college, I can get student loans. Can’t pay them back, there’s Obama to forgo the debt and dump it on the taxpayer. Save for retirement, that’ll have to wait until I get around to it. I’d start saving now but I need a new 80 inch flatscreen to replace the old 60 incher I bought 6 months ago.
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LOL we’ll said, but you forgot taking the family to Disney on plastic.
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All I know is this… 50 years ago when I was a child, my parents owned
a nice brick three bedroom house, a small farm, car, money in the bank
all on a carpenter’s income [mom was a homemaker]… income much less
than what is considered “poverty” today. My dad took an unpaid vacation
every year [usually we’d drive to the desert, mountains or coast.] We had
everything we needed and plenty to eat, and lived in a polite, law-abiding,
racial and religious homogeneous society.
America has changed a lot since then… and not for the better.
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America has indeed changed and most of the change has come from the breakdown in values learned in the years between the 1930s and 1950s. The one exception is the changing global economy.
Somewhere in the 1960s we sowed the seeds of change for the worse. The ability to distinguish between needs and desires was lost, the family unit began to dissolve, frugality was replaced by fulfilling immediate wants, all this driving up basic costs like housing so that both parents working became a necessity for families. Then when we got to where we are, we are relying ever more on the welfare state because we are constantly being told how we are victims and therefore entitled to everything from loan forgiveness to free birth control.
We are trapped in a cycle that seems impossible to break.
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In 1962, my parents bought a newish 1150 sqft brick, three bedroom, bath and a half
house in a nice new suburban neightborhood for just under $12,000. It was totally safe
for me to walk home for lunch from elementary school. My stay-at-home mom had a hot
lunch waiting. That was a wonderful time/place to grow up. I pity children today who are
raised by day care employees and are unsafe in their neighborhoods and schools.
If I had to choose a peak for the American civilization it would be July 20, 1969. But even
then rot infected the roots. It was only a matter of time before the empire collapsed… first
from the enemies within, then from the enemies without. Such is the cyclic nature of empires.
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Take a look at this post
http://quinnscommentary.com/2013/02/11/the-prosperity-of-the-middle-class-how-did-we-survive-my-life-my-story/
Dick Quinnscommentary.com
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