{"id":1812,"date":"2010-03-26T09:26:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-26T13:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/03\/26\/shortening-the-long-recovery\/"},"modified":"2010-03-26T09:26:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-26T13:26:00","slug":"shortening-the-long-recovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/03\/26\/shortening-the-long-recovery\/","title":{"rendered":"Shortening the long recovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

I grew up thinking I was truly working class, far more farm-and-trailer-park than diploma-and-white collar.<\/p>\n

One grandfather was literally a dust bowl farmer. The other was a back office accounts clerk for Safeway who spent a lot of hard years hopping trains.<\/p>\n

My dad worked his way through law school tending hogs and managing wheat harvests across the Midwest.<\/p>\n

But when my mom started researching our family’s history a few years ago, we learned something interesting.<\/p>\n

Before the body blow of the Great Depression, many of our ancestors were professional people, well educated and affluent — including a prominent doctor.<\/p>\n

Then came the Crash and the crucible of the 1930s, wiping out our family’s grip on wealth and security.<\/p>\n

It took us a couple of hardscrabble generations to recover.<\/p>\n

I worry that the same downdraft is brewing now, a wealth-and-opportunity devouring cycle that might set families back in ways we don’t yet understand.<\/p>\n

Consider the new Pew study, released March 25th<\/a>, showing just how many people’s lives have already been scarred.<\/p>\n

Half of Americans say they’ve lost a job or had a family member or close friend lose a job due to the financial crisis.<\/p>\n

More than half have lost some or all of their savings.<\/p>\n

For most Americans, our homes are our single largest assets, the source of most of our financial leverage.<\/p>\n

But now, according to a separate study<\/a>, nearly a quarter of us owe more on our homes than they are actually worth. <\/p>\n

Whole lifetimes of wealth building, work and investment have been erased.<\/p>\n

I’m no doomsayer. I’m convinced that American ingenuity and drive will push the economy out of the doldrums faster than most pundits think.<\/p>\n

And I think the big systemic problems with our government — the Federal deficits, looming red ink in our social entitlement programs — can and will be fixed.<\/p>\n

But it’s time to start thinking about how we can prevent families from falling off the cliff, the way mine did during the first Great Depression.<\/p>\n

To create new wealth and opportunity, the first goal is to make sure that our fragile Middle Class doesn’t backslide even further.<\/p>\n

To the extent that the government feels a need to launch new stimulus programs, the money should be targeted there: at the people who, once back on their feet, will generate our next wave of prosperity.<\/p>\n

The second goal has to be creating new safeguards in our financial system, so that we can feel confident again.<\/p>\n

That same Pew survey found that 74% of Americans believe there’s an even chance that we’ll experience another financial crisis in the next three years. <\/p>\n

Sixty percent of respondents put financial sector reform at the top of their wish list, even above health care, immigration, and the Afghanistan war.<\/p>\n

Americans are tougher and smarter than we’re given credit for.<\/p>\n

But it’s hard to stand up and dust ourselves off and take new risks when we think the bottom might fall out again.<\/p>\n

Your thoughts? Comment below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I grew up thinking I was truly working class, far more farm-and-trailer-park than diploma-and-white collar. […]<\/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\/1812"}],"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=1812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}