Nearly 2/3rds of a century ago when I was born people thought of millionaires as very wealthy people, now it's billionaires, 1000 times more. People are barely making it with a million in assets, but some how we survive.
Our country back then was much the same, I suspect it's debt was in the billions, perhaps tens or hundreds, now it's trillions.
I don't know if I'll live long enough to have trillionaires and debt in the quadrillions, but don't doubt that it will happen some day. My point is, everything's relative.
The only thing that will defeat us is seeing this as a crisis. Remember, Manhattan was originally purchased for a handfull of beads as I remember the story, at that time both sides felt it a fair price, perhaps it was.
Please don't get me wrong, National and other debt isn't something desirable, but I'm afraid it's reality, and that reality applies to everywhere in the world. The good news is that while we're deeper in debt then we ever were, we're also worth more, so there's a balance. Sure in the past few years property values are down, but over time if you look at the value of our holdings, or the govt. holdings, they're generally up.
I guess all I'm saying is we should certainly be concerned with debt, but it's not the end of the world. 100 years from now if humanity's still around they'll probably have a dialogue that's very much like this one, but the wealthy people will be quadrillionaires, trillionaires will be doing okay, billionaires will be middle and lower class and millionaires will be on welfare.
Gary |
