Earlier this week, a man in Los Angeles shot and killed his wife, his three children, his mother-in-law and finally himself in their bedrooms of the house they all shared. Some might assume something terrible happened to the entire family that caused this man to murder his family and commit suicide, but the reality of the situation is that it only took the stock market’s plummet to drive this man to the point of killing.
Karthik Rajaram recently lost most of his assets in a recent plummet and did not want to leave members of his family to deal with the national financial crisis. Coincidentally this week, the national debt clock began closing in on room left to display the digits in our $9.8 trillion debt. The clock only holds 13 digits and with $10 trillion having 14, a new clock is being built to hold the disaster of our country.
This concerns me. First, it’s never good for a man to shoot everyone in his house in one day, and second, it will soon be me and people graduating from college who will be dealing with this crisis on a firsthand basis. With rapidly increasing college tuition, gas prices and a fall in the economy, we are already dealing with it, but for most of us, it is beneficial that we are in college and not supporting ourselves by holding a full-time job.
The last time the national debt clock saw a decrease was when Bill Clinton was still in office in 2000, but that only lasted until July of 2002 when $545 billion was borrowed within two years, sending the country back into debt. I’m not saying the near doubling of the national debt in the past eight years is directly linked to the Bush administration, but I’m not saying his borrowing of trillions of dollars didn’t make a dent. I won’t be venturing further into the topic of how and why we are in such debt because I can’t wrap my head around the idea of how that much money is borrowed.
But I do know that with thousands of college students graduating soon and looking for full-time jobs, the economy needs to improve drastically to have jobs for these young professionals, including myself, to fill. If the economy keeps falling, the chances will decrease drastically. It is terrifying to think that with just $1 trillion you can cover tuition for 45 million people at the average tuition cost of $22,218. And I won’t even begin to tell you what I could do with $1 trillion.
If things keep going at the rate they are now, by 2040 the government won’t be able to provide money for anything other than Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and interest on the money we’ve already borrowed. In laymen terms, we will be screwed, because most of us will only be in our early 30s. Some might have children to provide for. That makes it that much more important for people our age to vote in November so that maybe the next president can help get us out of this debt, although right now both candidates are avoiding this topic like the plague. The plans they have concerning other areas will make the debt worse. If we keep falling downhill, we might have to change some rules and let old Billy back in office to clean this mess up.
Obviously, something has to be done, and we know it’s not happening overnight. But I wonder how many people are going to murder their families because of lost assets in the stock market and bank foreclosures on homes before we become boring grandparents with stories of the depression “in our day.”
Bailey Singletary is a senior majoring in communication. She can be contacted at [email protected].