Hard times are coming to the US. According to a new study reported by StudyFinds, one quarter of Americans have no savings, and almost another quarter have enough to survive on for only three week, which takes on a new dimension of seriousness in the light of the current situation with the COVID-19 coronavirus.
A total of 1,100 Americans were polled, and one in four (25%) said they don’t have any emergency savings at all. Another 23% only have enough to get by for three weeks. While there is some help on the way in the form of $1,200 government stimulus checks, 42% said they’ll have to immediately spend that money on bare essentials like groceries.
The survey, commissioned by GOBankingRates, also came to a number of other financial findings. Perhaps one of the most eye-opening is the revelation that two-thirds of Americans have either already been financial burdened by the coronavirus crisis (36%) or expect to be soon (28%). (source)
It is true that a lot of responsibility lies with a lack of preparation. However, to this, how are most people able to prepare in light of the current and previous economic paradigm?
For yeras, really since the crash of 2008, the only “jobs” that have been “created” have been low-paying with no hope and no future. The US has been living in a fantasy land of economic prosperity when it really is a termite-rotted house of cards that survives solely due to a constant flow of cheap money being printed by the Federal Reserve that has continued to devalue the dollar and greatly expand the gap between the wealthy and the impoverished.
One of the effects of this has been the destruction of the value of labor. It does not matter how much work one does, or how hard one works, because the efforts of one’s labors, unless one earns a significant amount of money, is not enough to offset the rising cost of goods and services due to the continual devaluation of the currency through not merely irresponsible or misguided, but absolutely criminal monetary policies.
It is not possible to save not because of a lack of effort, but because money does not preserve value. A poor person will not put it this way, but this person knows by experience that because “prices keep going up”, one is better of to spend money instantly before they rise again, let alone the fact that most of such of these jobs do not generate enough to actually save. What is a man to do- save ten dollars a paycheck for a total of about $250 at most per year, only to have prices go up again? He is better to spent it on something that will better retain value, even if only very short term, as it is a better investment.
This is a partial explanation for why the current financial paradigm cannot endure longer. It was not meant to endure, and it is going to collapse because it is systematically created to fail. When one adds into this the fact that a man can no longer pay his bills, and now he may lose his home or apartment because he has not job, the economic angst will boil over into political angst with angry people demanding answers from the government. The response has partially come in the from of the Families First Coronavirus relief, or what I have called “Trump stacks” in the form of cash payouts from the government.
At this point, the economic damage has been done to the country so much that the economic system is directly on the way to falling apart and inevitably will because of the debt that has been laden upon the system. A lot of wealth will be lost, although in some cases much will be made.
With essentially half of the nation having no savings, and many more living on the edge of a fiscal cliff, it will not take much to convince the angry, tired masses that a revolutionary change is necessary for the “betterment” of the future of the nation, and that is an even greater danger than any virus.