QUINNSCOMMENTARY;863052 wrote: Living pay check to pay check, you hear that phrase a lot these days and one can easily get the impression that many, even most Americans are bordering on being poor. Andy Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union said in a recent WSJ article that 7 out of 10 Americans are living pay check to pay check. To me living pay check to pay check was what my parents did. They paid their basic bills like rent, bought food and clothes, saved virtually nothing, had no debt, didn’t own a car for most of their marriage and couldn’t afford to pay for college or weddings.
Notice I didn’t mention vacations or trips and certainly no purchases beyond the necessities, only small gifts at Christmas and for birthdays. To do this my father worked six days a week (seven until the law barred sales on Sunday). Today with an average credit card debt of about $9,000 it appears that the pay check to pay check thing includes a lot more than the bare necessities.
If seven out of ten Americans were living like my parents did, they would all be driving ten year old cars, theme parks would be empty, all TVs would be 21 inches or less (with an antenna on the roof or rabbit ears in the living room) and we would have one phone in the house that actually rang instead of playing Beethoven’s 5th. Only the very wealthy would ever see the inside of a cruise ship and I wouldn’t be typing this on a laptop while enjoying a $4.00 coffee at Starbucks. There is a heck of a lot that comes between paychecks beyond struggling to get buy – and that’s for at least 7 out of 10 Americans. We may not be able to afford to save, but we sure as hell can afford to spend…or at least borrow.
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I enjoy your commentaries and tend to agree with most of them, perhaps it's the age. With many of our citizens it's not a lack of $$$, but the inability to manage $$$ as well as debt.
Speaking of Starbucks. I went grocery shopping early last Tuesday and this particular super market has a Starbucks. The smell of the coffee really got to me and I thought what the hell, have a Starbucks. I went to the counter and noticed at least 15 people standing in line. The three bucks is bad enough, but there is no way that I will stand in line for a cup of coffee. I went home and had some instant Yuban.
