We are all in debt. Individuals, companies, towns, cities, states, and the whole country. Debt is an epidemic right now with no signs that it will ever get better.
Perhaps one of the ways to slowly get ourselves out of debt is for our government to adopt the same policy of only allowing one child per couple like China does. Sound crazy? Well it might be but Vice President Biden understands that policy and that in itself is scary. He apparently then went on (during his China trip) to say that the United States could improve it’s debt situation with such a “one child” policy.
It will never matter how many children we have as long as our country is filled with people who are uneducated about finances and feel they have a “right” to things regardless of whether they can afford them. When did parents stop teaching their children to save for the things they want? Those are the lessens that are lacking and have led to a generation of people who think being in debt is totally normal.
Lets look at the housing crisis that was reported to have been brought on by bankers and other financial institutions that lent money to people who couldn’t afford it. No money down and all sorts of other irresistible gimmicks were too enticing for people to turn down. While that may be true, part of the blame has to go to every homeowner that signed up for those deals. Didn’t they know or care that they were a paycheck away from defaulting on those mortgage loans? Didn’t they realize that the loans they were taking out were way bigger than they should have been? With proper finance knowledge and training, people SHOULD have turned those loans down. But they didn’t because they were greedy and financially naive.
During the last 20 to 30 years we have become a society that has become obsessed with having things right now regardless of whether we can afford it. People feel they have a “right” to material things and too many of us are willing to go into debt to satisfy our lust for that wealth.
Our government is just a reflection of us. We elect politicians that have the same contempt for prudent spending as we do and because we let them get away with it, we find ourselves at the edge of the cliff. Biden and Obama can blame the number of children we have or any number of other stupid reasons but it won’t change a thing. The reason we are in debt is because we have been unwilling to spend only the money that we have or are going to get. We have a spending problem not a baby problem!