Melissa - The Problem With The Economy is...The Great Santini.

Of course Pat Conroy has nothing to do with the demise of our ecomony.  But the We are AMERICA, we WILL NOT lose, we are #1!!! attitude we feed ourselves, much like Conroy's title character, does.

However, many would have you believe that the problem is with the lenders.  The FBI has opened investigations into 14 corporations as part of a crackdown on improper lending.  The FBI says the probes involved potential violations including accounting fraud and insider trading.  The cases could lead to potential civil or criminal charges.

But who are the ones borrowing? Me and you.  And why? Because We are AMERICA, we WILL NOT lose, we are #1!!! means to look rich to many.  Look rich.

As a freshman in college, I had to pass at least half-a-dozen tables from credit card companies letting me know how easy it was to get a credit card.  They were right, and I spent my 20's making up for that idea I was getting free money. 

Wearing someone's name on your body, or driving the car that could go 150mph but usually only goes 15mph in traffic, is how we let each other know We are not LOSERS!

I was truly a loser when my car got repossessed years ago, or when my stuff was thrown on the lawn as part of an eviction shortly after my car disappeared.  Mr. Lauren or Mr. Porche didn't come to my aid then, and they aren't saving anybody's homes today.

Oh, I still wear my designer jeans, jackets, shirts.....but they all come from Mr. Stein Mart.

Katie Jo - The Problem With The Economy...Is Us. 

The economy will dominate the election and will add a nuclear bomb to the raging inferno that is the last days of the George W. Bush presidency. But when no one was looking, the one thing that makes America really matter on an international level, the economy, tripped and fell in the hole.  The blame game is happening all over Washington and the political pundits are pointing every finger they have. But at the end of the day, no one seems to be addressing the elephant sitting in America ’s living room.

We are to blame.  (They don’t want to tell you this hard cold fact because you will turn the channel).  O.K., maybe it isn’t all our fault but the great majority of the economic issues facing Americans today are a result of our poor judgment.  Think of it like a seventeen year old girl who gets pregnant.  Sure, he may have taken advantage of her naiveté.  But at the end of the day, she was the one who said yes and she knew better.

We said yes to credit cards, we said yes to homes we couldn’t quite afford.  We said yes to  the BMW when we really needed to just get the Taurus. We said yes to dinner at Nava instead of Applebees.  And it wasn’t just a few of us saying yes.  Most of us said yes.

But that isn’t the biggest problem.  Americans have always indulged.  The problem truly lies in what we didn’t say.  Inflation has grown faster than salaries.  This means that gas prices rose, milk got more expensive, home prices rose and what did we do?  Nothing.  We didn’t demand and most of us didn’t even request that our salaries keep up with the rising inflation. Corporate salaries of top executives kept up. I promise you.   If you look at the salaries of the top executives at the Fortune 500 companies, they aren’t hurting for money.  Why haven’t their salaries been reduced? I believe that if the top executives’ salaries only rose at the same rate as the salaries of the lowest paid employees, we would not be in this situation.  When the prices for staple items like gas and milk rose, we didn’t cut back on our spending.  We kept living the same life even if that meant putting it on credit and buying the same type of cars and homes we are used to.

So, don’t blame the economy on Washington and don’t even blame the economy on our inability to control our spending.  Those are parts of the problem, for sure.  Blame yourself.  Most likely, you are getting paid less thanyou are worth.  And you can be sure that your boss doesn’t mind at all. If you really want to help stop the bleeding of the American economy, ask for a raise.