Economic Crisis Worries Older Americans Too!
Posted 10/30/2008 @ 5:20:55 pm by mywetplanet.com
In spite of numerous economic "bailout packages" that our federal government has initiated there have been very few accomplishments to change the lives of Americans living on fixed incomes. Millions of middle-class citizens have lost a tremendous amount of money in savings that were put into 401k and IRA accounts.
Older people on fixed incomes are unable to keep up with inflation so their real income has actually decreased over time. These people have planned heavily on retirement accounts to make up the difference, only to see those accounts drop in value recently. The result is that people are not able to fully retire as planned and, instead, try to find work in a market that is seeing hundreds of thousands of people loose their jobs.
Since we have entered into a deep and prolonged recession there appears to be little opportunity for older Americans to either keep or find jobs that are lucrative enough to make up for the loss of retirement savings. How are these people capable of contributing to the economic recovery when they cannot find enough money to pay their obligations?
This situation is yet another example of the slow, but sure, destruction of the middle-class in America. It hits home directly, since both my wife and I are included in this socio-economic group, so there is little wonder that retail businesses around the country face a very bleak future!
|
|