I just finished watching President Obama making his speech in Arizona about the mortgage plan part of the stimulus package. The part of his speech that stood out more to me than any other part was when he said, "people have got to learn to live within their means".
He got a round of applause at that statement. I think that the current generation of income earners have lived way too long on lines of credit. Even the companies we work for rely too heavily on borrowing to make payroll. The fiasco with the Vegas vacations for those lending companies only came to light because of some great investigative journalism.
I think that teaching people not to waste money or live beyond their means comes from example. I was once the low person on the totem pole at work, just like many of you were or are. As the lowly worker I can tell you that there was many a time when upper management were having parties or get togethers at work right in front of the workers that were not invited to join them. If it was not for the workers those managers are nothing. Of course that taught us to party on when we were able to and not to save for that rainy day. If those managers had not partied maybe the companies would have money to invest into their futures instead of laying off people.
Teaching people not to live beyond their means has to come down from the top of government through the companies to the workers and then to the children of the workers.
As a flip side note: if eveyone lived within their means then we would not need to borrow. The banking system is based on lending money so who would they lend to?
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