Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

I got married in 1979 during record inflation. We were both in college working part-time to completely support ourselves since we had no student loans, no scholarships and no help from family. We lived in a cheap apartment and drove an old car, had no loans and paid all our bills, yet we saved up enough to tour Europe for a month before moving out of state for my entry-level job as an engineer. My wife worked part time as a clerk, had a kid with no Family Leave nor any kind of financial help yet we were able to buy a house at 10% down and 22% interest. Two more kids soon followed yet we bought a new car. Nothing going on in the economy made any difference to our quality of life. Same with the 1989 and 2008 crashes. The upcoming crash is set up to be worse but will it affect me or mine? Probably only tangentially. The fact is, I don’t think anyone will be affected in a real way: if you lose a lot of savings, so what, by definition you didn’t need that money anyway. It’s true that the best things in life are free, and kids don’t know that they’re poor. This only applies to people who live conscientious lives: folks out at the extremes may have to reel in their excesses, but even that isn’t clear because the concept of accountability is gone so they’ll probably get to keep their cake and eat it too. With student loan forgiveness, stimulus checks, bankruptcy, eviction prohibition & Basic Income, everybody be chillin’.