Financial Fragility Reaching a Critical Mass

 

There are several key factors that have contributed to the financial fragility of the masses and our economy today. First, is that over the past 30 years, globalization and technology have helped to reduce the number of middle-class jobs available domestically. Fewer jobs and superfluous workers have led to stagnating incomes for most. At the same time, living expenses for critical services that are domestically-produced like education, medical services, child-care, housing and fresh food have all strongly outpaced income gains.

47 Percent Of Americans Cannot Even Come Up With $400 To Cover An Emergency Room Visit

If you had to make a sudden visit to the emergency room, would you have enough money to pay for it without selling something or borrowing the funds from somewhere?  Most Americans may not realize this, but this is something that the Federal Reserve has actually been tracking for several years now.  And according to the Fed, an astounding 47 percent of all Americans could not come up with $400 to pay for an emergency room visit without borrowing it or selling something.  Various surveys that I have talked about in the past have found that more than 60 percent of all Americans are living to paycheck to paycheck, but I didn’t realize that things were quite this bad for about half the country.  If you can’t even come up with $400 for an unexpected emergency room visit, then you are just surviving from month to month by the skin of your teeth.  Unfortunately, about half of us are currently in that situation.