To My Generation:

To My Generation:

For many years, the United States has enjoyed its role as a global superpower.  We we wanted, we got.  For the most part, the attitude was the truth.  Economically, militarily, you name it, we gained it.  That is due to generations who came long before who worked tirelessly to support their families to give them more than they had in their life time.

This generation will be the first in several to have less prosperity than our fathers. 

Welcome to reality.  This is in part due to those who came before, riding on a tidal wave of wealth that afforded opportunities to spend in ways that hadn’t before existed.  Expansion of credit and availability of money truly fueled venture capitalism.  Greed and trickery bread corruption and wrong doing that lead to the extreme wealth of some at the expense of the livelihoods of others.

This striking fact is also in part due to the inability of individuals to control their own spending.  After all, it is the actions of the many that create the whole.  The average savings of Americans has dipped into negative percentages many times within the last few years.  China, one of the fastest rising economic superpowers, has individual private savings rates in double digits.  Those savings fuel expansion of credit and availability of money.  It also puts you into a healthy frame of mind knowing you are free from the dangerous coils of the python of debt.  Once it slithers, untempered, around your ankle, it’s only a matter of time before it is too late.  One must have a plan to escape.

Do not be fooled about those who say that the recession is over.  American real productivity has been in decline since the middle of the last century.  A decline in productivity equals a decline in affluence and wealth.  The greatest debt crises in the history of this country, perhaps this planet, looms close at hand.  Many say it could be a few decades away, all things held constant.  But we know all things are far from constant.  Some say that it could be two years away with only a few minor changes.

We will not live with as much as we had in the past.  But we will live, and we will live comfortably, if we are prepared.  It isn’t a matter of if, but when.  This isn’t about a political party, one nation against another, this isn’t about young or old or whose fault it was.  Those things all don’t matter in retrospect to the question:

Are we prepared?


Sincerely yours,


Ike Bennion