DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post

**ligaliaCods** · 11-11-2007, 01:14 AM

Obviously, poorer people can save less, but even upper middle class Americans don't save money. Most of those people have employer based health care, but just blow away the money on things they don't need. And when they do get money, they run up absurd credit card debts, and then get another mortage to pay them off. I had a friend in college who would go buy $1000 worth of clothing to make herself feel better whenever she felt down - and she carried $10K or so of credit card debt.

The reality is almost everywhere else in the world, the average person is MUCH poorer than America, but they don't have negative savings rates elsewhere. Go to any Asian country and you'll see my point, and even in Europe, people save much more of their income. We're a debt addicted society, and we need to do more to encourage rational savings and investment.

11-11-2007, 01:14 AM	#18
ligaliaCods Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 349 Senior Member	Obviously, poorer people can save less, but even upper middle class Americans don't save money. Most of those people have employer based health care, but just blow away the money on things they don't need. And when they do get money, they run up absurd credit card debts, and then get another mortage to pay them off. I had a friend in college who would go buy $1000 worth of clothing to make herself feel better whenever she felt down - and she carried $10K or so of credit card debt. The reality is almost everywhere else in the world, the average person is MUCH poorer than America, but they don't have negative savings rates elsewhere. Go to any Asian country and you'll see my point, and even in Europe, people save much more of their income. We're a debt addicted society, and we need to do more to encourage rational savings and investment.
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