Posted by
BECOLBY on Friday, February 13, 2009 7:58:12 AM
Back in 2000, I was living in the San Francisco bay area, making good money, living in a nice house, and driving new cars. Then things went down hill for me financially. I had to sell my home for little to no profit, sell the one car I owned outright for the cash and move to Washington State because it was cheaper to live here.
So why do I bring this up? I mention this story because it shows that when I hit difficult economic times, I had to make difficult economic decisions. Gone where most of the luxuries that I had become accustom to. Gone were the nightly steak dinners. Gone were the fancy restaurants. Gone were the weekly salon trips for my wife. Gone were the friends and neighbors we knew in California. We pulled the belt in a couple of loops, made some difficult decisions and made it through a very difficult time.
Today we rent a nice house and drive nice cars, one of which is owned outright, but neither was new when we got them. Hard work and perseverance have brought my family through the tough times and things are looking much better, bad economy and all.
Which brings me to the moral of this story. Why do we (the US) seem to believe that during hard economic times we have to increase our spending on more and more luxuries? Do we really need to refurbish various government offices right now? Can we really afford to spend $400 million to help people quit smoking? Should we spend $600 million on new cars for the government, or just continue to drive older cars until the economy turns around? When we the people hit economic times, we are forced to make tough decisions to continue to survive. Why does the government seem to think that the billions spent on “necessary” programs that we could cut and continue to exist as a profitable nation must be continued, even increased?
In the world of business, boom times are when a portion of your profits are put aside for the inevitable recession. How come after finishing one of the biggest boom times in the history of the world (the Internet revolution) we put nothing aside. Worse we increased our debt dramatically. Now that the inevitable recession has hit, we are spending even more money that we don’t have in hopes of paying if off when? Are we planning on the country filing for bankruptcy so we can be forgiven for all of our debt? This is not the way it works and the monies we continue to borrow every year will have to be paid off at some point. This deficit spending cannot continue unabated forever.