This is a thread I’ve pulled a couple of times in the past and as New York’s fiscal crisis deepens, it seems worthwhile tugging it again.<\/p>\n
Here’s what we know, regardless of our political stripes or our ideological persuasions: We’ve been living beyond our means.<\/p>\n
Whether you’re a Wall Street investment banker or a local government official bringing home the bacon for your hamlet.<\/p>\n
Whether you’re a college student racking up huge credit card debts or a senior who didn’t put enough aside for retirement.<\/p>\n
We are a society built on debt; and at long last the bill is coming due. <\/p>\n
Which is painful and frightening and potentially devastating.<\/p>\n
But I can’t help thinking it could also be renewing and full of opportunity.<\/p>\n
So here are some of my questions:<\/p>\n
What will the government of the future — one taxpayers can actually afford — look like? <\/p>\n
What services will we still want when we stop borrowing to pay for them? <\/p>\n
Will we spend more of our own time and money taking care of our elderly parents, rather than handing them over to the government?<\/p>\n
Will we expect a slightly smaller paycheck if we have the good fortune to enjoy a stable government job?<\/p>\n
Will we stop spending more on our military than the next half-dozen largest nations combined?<\/p>\n
And how about our personal lives? After we max out our last credit card, will we sit around glumly thinking of the good old days?<\/p>\n
Or will we find more rewarding things to do that aren’t built around spending money we don’t have? <\/p>\n
Is it time to swap the TV dish for a night at the grange?<\/p>\n
I’m guessing similar questions are coming due on the environment. <\/p>\n
If the vast majority of scientists are correct, we can’t keep burdening our climate and our soils and our oceans.<\/p>\n
But maybe forging a cleaner economy will have real virtues in our lives; and it might prove far more sustainable.<\/p>\n
I don’t want to sound overly pollyanaish here. This is going to sting. For millions of Americans, it already stings.<\/p>\n
And compared with about 99% of the planet’s population, we have it really good.<\/p>\n
But I have the feeling that we’re going to have to do this, one way or the other. <\/p>\n
Our lines of credit are tapped; China’s getting squirrely about loaning us money; New York state is going begging; the planet is heating up; and we’re past peak oil.<\/p>\n
So here’s the question for the thread:<\/p>\n
What are some real-world, practical, normal life changes that you think are coming.<\/p>\n
Not ideological stuff, not hairshirt suffering and finger-wagging.<\/p>\n
I’m interested in the little, cumulative ways that you think our lives will likely shift, for better and for worse.<\/p>\n
Comments welcome below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is a thread I’ve pulled a couple of times in the past and as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1750"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}