Local, State and Federal payrolls have exploded in recent years…The modern government employee has HUGE retirement packages, many of whom retire making as much or more than when they were working…on top of free healthcare… our local and state government is going broke due to hudreds of billions of dollars pledged to public employees. In the private sector these people would make half as much money and maybe 1/10th the retirement package… Being a government employee is the new aristocracy in California, especially in Sacramento..it seems like they are the only people who have jobs in this town…all off the taxpayers back…they keep voting themselves more pay and more benefits…it’s no wonder why our state is broke. Most government jobs should be privatized and contracted out to hard working Americans; or bring their retirment and pay inline with the private sector.

As for saving..no kidding we dont save as much..big suprise…Today, it is much harder to save when the cost of putting a roof over your head has increased as it has. We now need two incomes just to “scrape by” in our American standard of living..

Consumerism and advertising has brainwashed Americans into believing that we need the newest and latest electronic gadget, appliance, car or clothes. Our generation, unlike those before us or around the Depression, have been raised on television. 73-75% of our economy is based off of consumer spending, and has for many decades. Spending and the access to credit cards and cheap cash (loans) has propped our economy up for many decades…it has been a house of cards ready to fall for a long time…What amazes me is that it took so long, not that it is happening.

Our politicians knew this in the late 90’s when they came up with the sub-prime mortgage scam…our economy was about to fall hard due to the Internet bubble…instead the Fed kept dropping interest rates and Fannie Mae and others let anyone who wanted money take it with no proof that they could pay it back…Our leaders wanted a soft landing from the Internet Bubble..but they created this current financial crisis…coupled with deregulation…all of the cheap cash did was drive up housing prices and leave us where we are today…having to pay the piper for our elected leaders failed fiscal policies.

Corporate greed helped obviously…they took their cue from the government and jumped in with both feet…plucking as much profit from this roller coaster ride as possible…with seemingly no oversight whatsoever…but who can really blame then…it’s like the scorpion and turtle parable…thats what they are…greedy profiteers…out elected officials should have had more regulations in place to protect us from this banking crisis.

On top of all of this, and which will cost us much more in the long run is our entitlement programs, in unchanged, they will destroy our country. The modern liberal social theory that the government must provide for everyone from cradle to grave has caused the vast majority of this debt. The hippies and dope smokers of the 60’s have infiltrated every aspect of our government and set themselves up for corporate golden parachutes and free medical, free prescriptions and social security for life at the peril of our entire country. Baby Boomers are selfish socialist liberals who were the designers of this crisis, the sole benefactors, and they seem to care less that our children and grandchildren will be living in huts working 60 hours a week to pay for their retirement and entitlements.

Our future is bleak for many years to come, the rich have made their profits and will survive for the most part…the rest of us are going to see a huge drop in the lifestyle we have become accustomed to and it will take a decade or more to get out of our current crisis; It may even take another world war.