PBS News Hour Explores Financial Illiteracy in the Middle Class

This video is an interesting look at a specific writer who lives in the Hamptons, an area of the world who's name is often spoken in the same sentence with Tuscany or the South of France as euphemism for "the good life", but who is living a very modest middle class lifestyle. He courageously breaks the social taboo which prohibits us from speaking frankly about our own finances to demonstrate that he, as well as about half of all middle class Americans, cannot generate a quick $400 if their life should sustain some manner of financial shock.

When living in a world where we are all one diagnoses from disaster, one good storm from homelessness, one twist of economic fate from the bursting of an other of the world's great economic bubbles, this is a very important topic to discuss among ourselves which I think this community in particular has the maturity to be a meaningful voice in. The only thing about this video I was disappointed in was the lack of an appropriate society-wide framing point that in fact a big part of the US economic problem s that so much of the wealth is locked at the top, where the 1% tend to vote for tax break after tax break for themselves, and who break the promises of those tax breaks by not reinvesting that newly freed up money into businesses that provide jobs or public infrastructure for the communities they work in. Personal responsibility will always be a thing and it is incumbent on all of us to be frank with ourselves in the business of living within our means.

But there is no excuse for the dire straights the middle class is in. This country is not poor. We are, in fact, still the wealthiest nation on the planet and we need to be having this discussion about wealth inequality and what it means, not for individuals either at the top or at the bottom, but for society as a whole.

I hope you will enjoy this video and that it sparks a curiosity in you similar to the one it did in me. Seek your answers and share with me your discoveries in the comments below! I look forward to hearing what you have to say about the matter, but I will be keeping mostly silent in the discussion past this post because I am as much on a fact finding mission as I am trying to spark a debate.