In one of the conversations with my father which took place years ago (I am the age now which he was then) he once uttered the platitude, "Life is hard," and my reaction at the time was a resistance to this notion being a particularly apt description of his situation and postion. I knew damn well that MY life was hard. But his? C'mon, I thought, Dad, you must be pulling in about $75,000 a year, you're a fully-tenured professor near the end of your career. But I said none of this to him. I expressed none of these reservations.
I think the British economist Maynard Keynes had a theory that people will spend close to every penny they earn, that this was natural human behavior. This sounds fairly plausible since everyone seems to have a hard time saving a dime.
Perhaps the hardest struggle begins in one's twenties, on the first occasion when one tries to live entirely on one's own. But realistically I can only speak with assurance about my own situation in a matter like this. Sociologists might have some ideas on the matter but I haven't read any of them recently.
I will say that America is overall a profligate, spendthrift country now deeply in debt. Why is that so? . . . In the end it's because most of us want things immediately and there are such things as a credit card and the installment plan which makes it so wonderfully easy to acquire them.
I remember years ago when I read Michner's Hawaii, and the reader is now among an imporverished Chinese family newly arrived on the island. The husband and wife work all day long like pack animals and are so exhausted each night they hardly have enough stamina left to make love. But they plod on each and every day, and they save, and they save, and they save. Two generations later the family is now quite a wealty clan, with all manner of holdings.
Americans have lost the Pioneer Spirit. We lost this long ago with the advent of cars and the installment plan, and the addition of Hawaii as the 50th state.
GroundsKeeper.
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