How do you handle worry about the economy?

I watch Star Trek episodes.

I go live my life. What good does worrying do me? I can’t change it, so I just need to live with it.

I fret a bit, but there’s nothing I can do about it. So I generally get on with life.

[I’m waiting for GaryF’s copy-n-paste entry about the “beast called government” and its insatiable appetite for all of his money.]

Living within your means is the first step.

I changed jobs six years ago and went through some very lean times and learned to live within my means. That has helped me survive through this bad economy because my income has dropped significantly over the last 3 years.

Keep watching your 401K and investments, diversify, I bought precious metals two years ago.

You have to keep moving. You have to adjust to what’s happening in the marketplace. No one owes you a living. Attitude is everything.

with a fixed income, I just have to sit tight and ride things out. I know there are people worse off than I am so don’t tempt fate by complaining.

husband and I have cut back on spending. We play more cards and dice instead of going out and spending money. We are even thinking of getting rid of our cable service and land line service. Comcast is our biggest expense each month except for Xcel in the winter. Tightening up allows us to save more money. Someone said consumers need to spend money to help the economy get going. Well, not my money.

I’ve been saving money since 911 but I found out that inflation has eaten up 40% of its value in the past 10 years. So, I started buying up supplies for the collapse. I never owned a gun and I just bought two last month along with a bunch of ammo. I started meeting my neighbors and organizing meetings to discuss the problems that face us all. I’ve been reading a lot of the alternative news on the internet because the mass media is clouding over the real information. Ron Paul seems to have it right but he has no chance due to the media control. God help us.

I do what I always do. Live within my means.

Don’t panic folks, it just feeds the problem.

The politians want sheeple to borrow and spend money.

Sheeple (a portmanteau of “sheep” and “people”) is a term of disparagement, in which people are likened to sheep.

The term is often used to denote persons who voluntarily acquiesce to a perceived authority figure’s suggestion without critical analysis or sufficient research to understand the ramifications of that decision. By doing so, Sheeple undermine their own individuality and may willingly give up their rights. The implication of the term is that people fallaciously appeal to authority and believe or do what they are told by perceived authority figures who they view as trustworthy. The term is generally used in a political, social, and sometimes religious sense.

Worry about the economy is chump change and a distraction from what’s really worth the mental energy and consideration required to worry about something (or better still, plan on how to cope with it).

Compare the current US economic issues to climate change and how it combined with a post peak oil reality will challenge governments and their citizens with increased pressures for diminishing resources. When you couple weather extremes like we see now with scarce fuel for existing energy infrastructure and limited research and development for alternatives, it means the current energy source will leap in price and be less available even to those who can afford it. Humans get ugly in such situations.

Read your ancient human history, folks. Major climate change impacts established civilizations in huge ways. They become more warlike struggling over once ample resources that drastically diminish in availability. I’m not interested in apocalyptic dystopia imaginings because humans could make the evolutionary leap into something quite splendid. But when you place this piece of worry next to current economic problems, the larger of the two seems to me to be abundantly apparent.

It might even be possible that some politicians, corporate leaders and other power brokers are grateful we’re not focused on the real threat because dealing with it would change the way we look at them and give over control to them in hopes they’ll keep this tired old machine’s gears turning away just a few more years until the last drop of oil is burned to keep our inefficient homes cooled and our ridiculous lawns green.

Wake up.

I have to second CJ’s statement about climate change dwarfing the economic crisis, but add a few more global issues: resource depletion (more than oil to worry about), availability of potable water (1 in 3 people are impacted by water scarcity), population growth (7 billion and growing rapidly), consumption rates in developing countries growing to developed country levels (1 versus 32 units), impacts of emerging economies on resources and prices, and habitat destruction.

I worry most that the country is seeing the real face of Obama and the Progressive agenda and that_ will cause much unrest.

Our GDP today is now worse than it was in 2007 when the Democrats took control..Of all adults able to work above age 18 to 65, we have 48% unemployed.

If we confiscated all the assets and wealth in cash from the 400 richest in America, that would pay for about 242 days of our spending..so raising taxes is not the answer.

I worry about all those billionairs that attended Obama’s fund raising birthday bash in Chicago, spending up to $36,000.00 to attend , not to mention they are often the evil private jet owners that Obama says are not nice as they don’t pay their fair share…funny he doesn’t say what percentage of their income they should pay in taxes yet, 47% of American adults pay NO income taxes…Hmmmm…I worry that the middle class workers building jets will be laid off now. Thank you Obama for your concern for middle class workers.

Three years of proven failure to improve the economy and job growth is Obama’s biggest worry…like some, he must worry that eventually his incompetence and lack of business experience and his ideology of wanting USA to become like a European socialist society just isn’t working. CAN anyone show how his policies have doen any useful good for America? His loaning 200 billion to Brazil helped them and hurt us_ just saying that is one good example of his incompetence.

Wonder when my children or grandchildren will be moving to other countries for jobs like my ancestors did from Wales and Germany.

“It appears there are a couple of posters that have been grossly misinformed about the topics they have chosen to write about.”

Not to mention their believing preposterous conspiracy theories.

I don’t have time to worry. I’m too busy clipping coupons, using my bicycle to get around, reusing plastic bags & tinfoil, making meals ahead of time to avoid going to the drive-thru, growing vegetables of my own, making my own coffee in the morning, making new clothes out of drapes, hanging the wash out to dry. I’m thinking of adding chickens and honeybees to the backyard too. My oh my, this sounds alot like an era gone by doesn’t it?

Vivan, you have correctly identified the problem (consumerism), but Raoul’s extreme right-wing prescription is hardly the solution. The trouble is, we assess the health of our economy mainly with one key statistic: the GDP. The GDP goes up any time anyone spends money on anything, no matter how useless, and no matter what for. According to the GDP, crime is good for the economy, because it makes people spend money on security measures and replacing lost property. Same goes for natural disasters, which lead to more money spent on rebuilding. When people don’t spend, because they decide they have enough and realize that more stuff won’t make them happy, that’s “bad for the economy.” Likewise, when people economize and spend less, get more use out of their old car instead of buying a new one, learn to find joy in watching a beautiful sunset instead of buying the latest video game, etc., it makes the GDP look worse, even if people are objectively better off. Both the far right and the far left miss the mark, because both are more concerned with money and the stuff people have access to than what actually improves well-being. We would all be better off if our goal for the economy would move from “growth” to “sustainable sufficiency.” Neither major party is saying anything like that.

Vivian, it sounds like you’re not disagreeing with me, but I’m not sure I’d go so far as to advocate breaking the system. Perfect fairness will never happen, and trying to get there would cause more suffering than the end is worth (which is why communism collapsed worldwide in the early ’90s). A regulated-but-mostly-free market economy with an adequate social safety net is the least-worst system we can expect to achieve.

Maybe so, Vivian, but I don’t trust any alternative ideology, either. Utopia is impossible in this world.

Fine. Just don’t foist your Utopia on me, Vivian. If you think it’s possible, power to you, but please don’t get in the way of folks who are trying to make marginal improvements that might actually help people.

But what happens when two or more different ideas of Utopia collide, and supporters of each are all willing both to destroy what we now have and to violently oppose competing ideologies? You run up against the truth of that old saying: The perfect is the enemy of the good. Learn from the French Revolution (or, heck, even the recent debt ceiling impasse in Congress) to avoid going too far in pursuit of ideals.

Vivian, I can’t tell from what you’ve posted exactly what your vision of Utopia is. No matter. Whatever it is, it’s a human invention, and therefore I can guarantee it will have flaws. If it ever gets implemented (over the objections of whatever vociferous and vehement opposition you find among people who aren’t persuaded that your ideal is the right one), whoever is disadvantaged by those flaws is going to complain and raise up an alternative vision, and then we’re right back where we started. Dreamy-eyed idealism doesn’t have a very good track record of solving real problems faced by real people.

Good luck with that project, vivian! You’re going to need it.