I saw over at Rasmussen Reports (via Instapundit) that 67% of respondents felt that their family was being stressed by the economy:
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 67% of American Adults say the state of the economy is causing more stress on their family. That finding is up 10 points from this time last year . Twenty-seven percent (27%) say the economy isn’t causing their family more stress.
The survey also indicated more arguments with friends and family members:
Still, 43% of adults say they have gotten into an intense argument with a friend or family member about economic conditions in the country. That’s up six points from 37% last year. Fifty-five percent (55%) say they have not gotten into a heated argument with a friend or family member about who is to blame for the state of the economy and how it should be fixed.
Senator Marco Rubio recently discussed the split in this country “between those who believe the government’s job is to promote ‘economic justice,’” i.e., the redistribution of wealth, that the government’s job is to determine the equality of outcomes in people’s lives, “and those who believe the government’s job is to promote ‘economic opportunity.’” Rush Limbaugh points out correctly that economic justice is not moral–it is socialism or Marxism and I agree with his point. But that is a separate issue.
As for family arguments about the economy, my guess is that family members are most likely to argue along these lines. Those who believe in “social justice” are arguing with those who believe in economic opportunity. It is sort of like the fight between Ayn Rand’s characters in Atlas Shrugged. There are those who believe in taking from others and those who believe in the right to their own production. This isn’t a fight that will be resolved easily and the bad economy is emphasizing the differences between how family members feel about these issues.
Is the economy stressing out your family members? Do you argue with them about the economy or just try to keep the peace?
Categories: Health and Fitness
The other 33% are not in families.
Exactly.
For many years we bought into the idea that we should not talk politics with anyone who might disagree with us. As a result, those who wanted to change the fundamentals that made this Country the most successful in history gained a foothold in our education, churches, government, ext.
If one compares early dictionaries with modern ones, they will find opposite definitions to words like welfare, democracy, republic…even the root word protect has now been changed to protectionism which has a very different definition from its root word.
In other words, communicating has become extremely difficult. But it is something we must work through if we have any possibility of returning this Country to what made it so great…freedom.
I have a 1989 dictionary that I use exclusively in preference to the “modern” ones. George Orwell is alive and well.
We don’t argue. Thankfully, most of my family members are pretty well on the conservative side, and are all just happy to be employed.
My immediate family all blames big government. I have some rich leftist in-laws who think everything is great except the terrible tea-baggers.
My family is mostly conservative too, except for this one family member that is a bleeding heart liberal to his core.
If you talk about the problems of the day with him, he’ll jump on the idea that this is all of Bush’s doing, that Obama inherited this mess and he’s just doing the best that he can with what he’s been given. He’ll tell you that the teabaggers are the scariest enemy this country has ever seen. He’ll tell you that the GOP is run by religious right-winger extremists and redneck nutjobs… all of them… And that they pose the biggest threats to our freedom.
BTW, did I mention that Republicans have no compassion? We stand for big, greedy, evil corporations, and when it comes to the poor and uninsured… well, us conservatives would just let them be dying on the streets and we’d leave the corpses there to just rot… because we just don’t have a heart… we even eat babies. I prefer mine extra spicy with a pitcher of beer and I eat them a dozen at a time.
Anyway, when you are talking with my liberal relative, if you manage to get a word in while they deflect and rant about the evil conservatives, and you actually ask a few good questions to try to get them to defend their liberal beliefs with good examples how the hope and change is working out… the conversation will quickly end, but not before the insults and ad hominem attacts are directed at you. Once they lose the argument and can’t defend the point, they will be sure to have the last word by attacking you with unrelated insults and accusation.
Things like, “Oh, well, why should I waste my time discussing this with you, because you can’t hear what I have to say because your head is jammed firmly way up between Rush Limbaugh’s butt cheeks, and you voted for George Bush twice, so you’re a lost cause anyways.”
In other words, I’m just to stupid to get the liberal wisdom… why bother.
If I say, “You didn’t answer my questions… please answer the questions.”
Then they walk away, saying, “I’m done with this. I should have known better than to get involved in talking to you because I’m always disappointed in mankind after listening to what you have to say.”
I completely agree with your liberal relative. It is all Bush’s fault. He was a moron. He got us into Iraq. The country is in the toilet because of it and friends and family members have died because of his greed. Did I mention he also didn’t believe in Global Warming until he left office?
My family is in construction and business has decreased greatly in the last 3 years. We are not making any money (our employees are, but the bosses are not) We are living off our savings and can see the end coming coming at us like a freight train.
So, yes, I’d say our family is stressed.
We’re in the same boat as you, but hope it turns around soon. Construction is doing so poorly now. Wish you all the best.
On the one hand, we’re doing better than most, as I’m in a startup in a rare growth industry (computer security-related). We’re actually profitable and hiring. On the other hand, my wife, who sells small businesses, just had her worst year since she started her profession, and this year may actually be worse. If there’s good news on net, it’s that we’ve always lived relatively cheaply, and don’t really “need” my wife’s income, most of which goes to retirement accounts. Also, we bought our house a long time ago and never played the cash-out-refi game, so we’re in decent shape there.
The main “stress point” is where to put our retirement savings and other investments, which went rather badly over the past several years. Fortunately, I sold most of them in late 2007, but didn’t get out of a couple and took a hit, and the rest are sitting in cash since and I’m not sure where to go next, or to just wait until the current crop of idiots leave Washington.
I’m not stressed although my relatives might be (siblings, cousins and their children). I am self sufficient and don’t need their company. So if any one of them gets in my face I simply terminate all contact with them. Life is too short to spend it in the company of people have not learned the meaning of respect.
My wife’s employer went casters up last year. Fortunately she was re-hired by the company that took over after the bankrupcy. I’ve seen a large percentage of my co-workers RIF’d. We all took 4 weeks of unpaid furlough time last year.
Our retirement savings took a hit like everybody else fortunate enough to have any. Of course we are stressed. I look at the positive side. We still have jobs, and our health.
It could be worse. Given time, the government will make it so.
I think most of the stress of the economy is on families who cannot pay their bills anymore because the economy has wrecked their ability to earn. A good friend of mine who is a lawyer has been unable to have enough business to barely pay the bills of the law firm. His wife has moved to another state for another job and their marriage is holding together by a string.
Some of my customers have lost homes, are at risk of foreclosure and and weeks or months away from being homeless.
My local bank has had all but two building contractors go bankrupt and quit paying on their loans.
This isn’t about having the luxury to argue with a family member about ideology, this is about the fabric of families being torn apart because large, structural changes have happened to breadwinners and there is no way to put it back together again until our government realizes that a centralized, top down economy run by a bunch of socialists who have no idea which end of the cow milk comes from is never going to work.
I have taken to asking people whether they vote Democrat, and then berating them if they answer “Yes”.
My immediate family (wife and 2 grown sons with families) are all conservatives and are doing reasonably well. Both sons are relatively secure for their ages (38 and 31), still bringing children into the world and preparing for better or worse. Both my parents are retired liberal teachers, living on fixed incomes and starting to feel the pinch. We rarely communicate with my parents due to their head-in-the-sand attitudes. Being depression era babies, you’d think they would have more of a conservative outlook but they apparently bought in to the pap spewed by our educational system for all these years. It’s a shame that politics makes it so difficult to connect with loved ones these days, but the lines seem to be getting too deep to cross.
All of my more stupid relatives live in other states or other countries. The group of families living around here are all rock-solid.
I am registered Independent. I agree with the Republicans on economic issues, but I agree with the Democrats on social issues. Unfortunately for the GOP, they rarely get my vote because social issues are more important to me. The economy comes and goes, but I cannot get around the anger that’s coming out of a lot of Republicans lately.
Every time I think about voting Republican, they do something crazy like scapegoat illegal immigrants or gay marriage, etc., and I hold my nose and vote Democratic one more time.
But of course; that’s what they’re designed to do. Social engineering always trumps fiscal issues, until the two halves of the equation collide, and reality begins to reassert itself.
See also: modern-day England and Europe.
Even for those who “can’t be bothered with abstract, philosophical stuff” and are range-of-the-moment pragmatists, even speaking just in concrete terms, one has only to look at how the U.S. has become increasingly socialist over the last several decades and ask, “Has it made things better?” If a more socialized government is supposed to be a good thing, as some insist, why have the practical results not borne that out? Fifty or sixty years ago, most households could live in reasonable comfort on one income. Fast forward to now and a much greater proportion of our income is sucked up in taxes to fund a bigger and more socialist government, and yet we’re not better off for it, are we? Many households now need two incomes to survive, health care costs are through the roof, etc. Yet people still have blinders on, blaming the capitalist half of our increasingly mixed economy for our country’s decline rather than the other half which is the part which has actually been on the rise.
Those who want to live under socialism would do better to move to another country more in line with their desires instead of trying to pervert this one. But of course they want to have their cake and eat it too; they want to enjoy all the benefits of western civilization while they’re busy decrying it and singing the praises of its antithesis.
Hey DMG, You are onto something here. What we see is too much compromise from those who are imaged as CONSERVATIVE, but actually implant PROGRESSIVE structures so they, CONSERVATIVES, can continue the good fight – NONSENSE, they do things contrary to what they say so that they retain their jobs, perqs, pensions, healthcare benefits – all at taxpayer expense. THESIS, ANTITHESIS, SOLUTION … HEGELIAN DIALECTIC. I think the powers that are predetermine what outcome they wish to see so each side of the power cabal continues to be employed and the outsiders must decide if they will become split-tongued. Things will only change when the side that values freedom more than money or power takes full control and reverses the socialist agenda.
Amity Schlaes’s book, THE FORGOTTEN MAN, presents an eye-opening account of those who were captivated by Mussolini “because he made the trains run on-time” – How simple it is to get people to give away their freedoms for a little convenience.
Working to find clients as a videographer has been fruitless for the past year. My gross receipts was $9000 for 2010. Our property taxes have gone unpaid for the last few years due to a chronic lack of work.
My former radio engineering business petered out by 2007 and I went full time to videography. I spend 95% of my time seeking new clients, and five percent or less actually working for pay.
Yeah, we’re stressed, because our home of 46 years is about to be tax foreclosed.
My family had the opportunity to leave Arizona just as the economy turned sour and move to New Jersey which was experiencing better job growth. I had been planning a move for some time, and when my company had an opening in a state with a Republican governor and decent economy, I jumped on it. You have to keep your eyes open to different possibilities. Be open to different career paths. I had never planned to go to New Jersey, and was actually looking for jobs in Colorado and Texas.
Also keep some hope. Economists predict our economy will have an big improvement starting in Novemeber 2012.
This descent into socialism has energized me. I have watched it and experienced it for the past 45 years. I am an anti-tax activist, and this doesn’t mean just writing letters to politicians, which is a waste of time. Freedom isn’t free, and you have to take some risks. I tell it like it is to all, calling them communists if I think they are. I don’t need “peace” or approval of those who would destroy my freedeom.