Can We Talk About America's futute for a minute ?
 

Can we all share a little of our ideas and what we know today and our predictions for short and long terms of America tomorrow?

Currently, we are facing many problems, let me list a few and we can discuss.

1. The Economy:
* The stock market continues to tumble, The Dow probably going to lose around 250 points today or even more.

* Inflation is now above 6%, the highest in 26 years.

* The Dollar keeps on losing its value, even against the Vietnamese Đồng, isn't that sad? The goal of the Vietnamese Đồng is to lose 1%-2% a year against the Dollar to help Vietnam export more but since 2007 til now. The Đồng gained about 2% against the Dollar.

* Oil price: We are the number 1 country in the world when it comes to using oil from burning inside our homes to running our cars and running the factories where we work at. Not even 3 years ago, the oil price was only $40 per barrel, that was just over $1 a gallon. Now, it is around $100 per barrel that's above $3. If you drive 25 miles to work and 25 miles home, plus 10 miles to pick up your kids or for grocery, you're are basically spending around $20 a day. $20 a day? That's more than 30% of your minimum earning wage.

* Debts: Total debts is $48 trillion. Around $9 trillion of that number is the money we are borrowing from other countries everyday. $39 trillion remaining is the debts that every person in this country owns to the banks and credit cards take up a big portion of this. On an average, there is around $10,000 in credit cards debts for each family, I am sorry, I helped brought up the average a little hehe. Also, on an average, each student carries a loan of around $20,000 afater he walks out of college.

Ok, I'll stop for now, let's discuss this, what are the problems that causing these problems and how are we going to solve? Any predictions for the future short and long terms?

There are definitely a few problems, but other things are just misinformation.

For instance your $20 a day isnt quite accurate.

25 miles + 25 miles + 10 miles = 60 miles

Taking a decent mpg of 17 that means that 60 miles = 3.52 gallons.

3.52 gallons * $3.50 (Premium 93 gas in NY) = $12.35

Not the smallest sum of money but at the same time its 38% lower than what you estimated.

Take into account that in NY the subway costs $2 per ride, one trip to work and back is $4 a day. If you count your kids commuting that aren't subsidized thats another $4, so thats $8 a day. So $12.35 isn't that much more than $8.

If anything you should look at the rise in oil prices and wonder to yourself, has the cost of anything risen so much but had so LITTLE impact before?

Think about it, we are all paying 3x more for gas, and personally it hasnt affected me in my daily life drastically. The only other time this occured was with the oil crisis, but there it wasnt even just the high prices, but the fact that there was an actual oil shortage which created massive issues.

Now everyone is paying 3x more for a large portion of their daily oil needs and yet there havent been huge ramifications yet.

The only real issue is the housing crisis, which is basically just a problem of the information age, where there are so many things happening so rapidly that people just lose sight of the simple things.

The crisis is just bad lending, pure and simple. But because it went unabated for several years it raised the median home price drastically and in the largely populated cities despite the crash the prices havent really come down (ie: NY).

The banks that gave out this bad debt are now paying the price, and yet because everything is all traded, packaged up and resold, its mostly the end consumer, who bought the house and cant make the payments thats getting to get the worst of it.

No major bank has yet closed as result of this and in fact because they are so large, the price drops will only motivate outside buyers to pick them up because they all still have core competencies but just got caught up in bad trend trying to turn a buck all so that their year end financials wouldnt get overshadowed by other banks doing the same thing, not realizing that these new schemes cant cover up the fact that if you lend money to people who cant pay you back eventually it will bite you in the ass.

Prediction: Gas will have to go to $8/gallon before you see a real change in driving habbits of americans.

The "crisis" is a result of bad borrowing. Stupid consumers who chose to neglect responsibility and have, as a result, paid the price.

I am still trying to figure out what "Futute" is .. lol

That's how they spell "Future" in the future. The spelling will be officially changed in 2116 A.D.

Don't you just love threads where they want to sound intelligent about a given topic but can't spell correctly?

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

I make enough money that I don't mind all of this.

I believe that the issue is a combination of the housing crash, the crooked passage of bankruptcy reform (after over 20 years of banks bribing, blackmailing and lobbying and only under GWB) and irresponsible, consumerist spending on the part of Americans as a society. Everybody wants to be like the Joneses, even if the Joneses are millionaires and the wannabes make $25k /yr.

Let's start with personal responsibility and go on to the blame game later.