A Pessimistic View of the Current Situation

I am usually fairly optimistic. Recent events, however, have challenged my generally positive outlook. My crystal ball is a little hazy so making concrete predictions about the future is not going to happen here, but today I will outline what I see as the current state of our life in America and tomorrow I will offer some suggestions about what can be done about it on the individual level:

• Unemployment is high, especially for college graduates. This doesn't bode well for a couple of reasons. One, whenever you have very high unemployment for young people it means they are not working and gaining experience. This causes recovery to drag and sometimes come to a standstill if unemployment hangs on for years because it creates a gap between the older, educated masses who want to retire and the younger people who don't have the skills and/or experience to take over where the older generation left off. Second, with the Boomer generation soon to be retiring en masse, many will be depending on Social Security. Now who is going to be putting funds into the Social Security system if the younger generation is unemployed/underemployed?
• People are getting out of real estate, whether by choice or by circumstance. The people who are losing their homes due to foreclosure, aren't doing so by choice, but because of their situation, and because many others are walking away from home loans that are underwater, there is a chill running through the housing market (which impacts most other markets) that won't be remedied any time soon. This also impacts people who have a great deal of equity in their homes and are having a hard time selling at anywhere near a normal price due to the glut of foreclosures and short sales on the market. On a side note, a handful of real estate investors that I know seem to be liquidating their properties as quickly as possible. Hmmm
• The government, from the local level to the federal level has, as my southern granny used to say, done lost its mind. Judges that don't know the constitution. Cities, counties, and even states that are on the verge of bankruptcy (with the federal government not far behind). Government programs run amok (**cough** TSA). Prisoners held virtually forever a la the Guantanamo detainees. Are we going to house, feed, and clothe these people forever? Try them, sentence them, and get it over with already.
• The US has the highest rate of documented incarceration of its citizens. Great. In addition to paying for every other boneheaded program the government can dream up, we also get to pay to support all of the people who are incarcerated.
• The US is knee deep in a war they are not fighting to win (our guys on the front lines could win the war, they just aren't being allowed to). Now we are heading full force into Afghanistan, and, well I guess the people who plan these wars have not read much about the history of invaders in Afghanistan.
• The world is getting smaller by the day, technologically speaking. Outsourcing to countries where you pay a couple dollar for a product or service instead of a couple of hundred is now not too far from the norm. How does that impact Americans? Not favorably overall. Yes you get cheaper products but all of the money spent goes to support the people of another country, not our own.

Tht's enough negativity for one day. Tomorrow we will discuss how to mitigate these conditions in our lives.