This week's blog is purely extra credit, and it is blog that reflects on the movie you watched last week I.O.U.S.A. about our national debt problems. You are to write a 400/500 word post reflection on the movie including analysis of who is to blame for the national debt, and what our country needs to do to recover from it. This post is due by Friday at midnight.
Feel free to use this site to help you with analysis (thanks to Richie Starzec) http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Americas-hidden-debt-cnnm-3752158852.html?x=0&mod=loans
Word Count 400+
Due Friday 3/5 @ Midnight.
Posts
I.O.U.S.A. is a very interesting and enlightening movie; it discusses the U.S. debt without being overly dry. It discusses what the effects will be if we do not do something about our ever growing debt. However, I feel that it is trying to scare people into thinking that we are all going to die soon if we don’t do something about the debt. Even though I think that the movie is being over-dramatic, it is what America needs. People will not react until things are about to fall apart. This movie is trying to make people react and do something about the debt before it is too big to fix. The debt was not caused by one person or thing but by multiple people being irresponsible. The government has been running a deficit for many years and borrows the extra money that they need. However, the average American also has this attitude that they can borrow as much money as they want. The only way for Americans to recover from this huge debt is to be smart with their money. This means to stop spending outside their means, if you can not afford something right now you have to save up for it. The government should take the same approach; if they can not afford something then they should not invest in it. The government should not have a deficit every year because a deficit becomes debt. Soon we will not be able to afford our debt and what will happen when other countries stop allowing us to borrow from them? Our debt will grow and other countries, especially China, will begin to own us. To be able to afford our debt we will have to sell more and more of our country until we become a bunch of other countries. I guess America’s nickname from years ago, the melting pot, will be even truer once we are owned by a bunch of other countries. Oh well, we will get what we deserve if we continue down the path that we are on. The most obvious way to recover from our national debt is to stop running a deficit and start paying off our debt. As easy as it sounds to pay off our debt it can not happen until the government realizes that they can not have everything and must make choices about what is most important for our country. Once this happens we can finally begin to pay off our gigantic national debt.
ReplyDeleteI thought that the movie I.O.U.S.A. was a good movie for us to watch. It contained a lot of information pertaining to what we are studying, yet it also was not too boring. I think it did a nice job stating all the facts and keeping it somewhat entertaining. The movie was very interesting and made me see a different perspective. In addition, I thought it was pretty easy to understand. They made all their points without making it too difficult for those not too familiar with that particular subject. America’s debt is extremely large, there is no denying that. However, it is not fair to say that one person caused the debt. I believe it took the country as a whole to cause that sort of damage; I also think the only way we can resolve this problem is by working together. There is no solution that will solve it quickly and it is going to take a lot of people to achieve it. Everyone needs to be willing to put in effort and make sacrifices. We must also learn from our mistakes and not only fix it now, but create steps that decrease the chances of economic problems so sever, like this one, from happening again. Of course I am not saying that it will not happen again; it has happened once and very well could happen again after this. If we do not start resolving this problem now, however, we could be stuck with it for a very long time. As the movie said, it is going to be our responsibility to take care of. Which is not fair, of course but hopefully, we can create an efficient solution. America’s debt is obviously high and still rising. The movie mentioned that this could be a tragedy to the country, because we owe most of our debt to China. So, China is flourishing; they have money and control our debts. They are also swiftly advancing in technology, business and medicine. They could eventually reach the potential to take over the world, a theory that was discussed in the movie. We must stay allied and at peace with China, otherwise they could be a large threat, if ever there was a situation. There were many resolutions discussed in the movie and I have absolutely no idea which would be the best idea for our country to act upon.
ReplyDeleteOverall I really liked the movie entitled “I.O.U.S.A,” how ever it made, in a way, scared, terrified and worried about what is going to happen to me in the future. It makes me wonder how I will end up and what is going to happen to me after University and I am looking for a job. On the brighter side I thought that it was a good movie for me to watch because it explained the subjects in a way that was somewhat easy for me to understand. At the I.O.U.S.A website, there are comments that people have made and one of them stood out to me because it was something that I agreed with. Jennifer from California, thought that "it was a very timely film and [she] think it is organized and it explains the crisis the United States is headed into very rapidly” she also believes that “it lays it out in a way that's very easy to understand for the average American ... people are not paying attention to it as much as they should and I think this type of documentary ... brings the type of attention that the matter requires."
ReplyDeleteI do not think that we can point our fingers to one specific person, because it is not one persons fault, it is all our faults. However, what I do feel is that a majority of the blame can go to the government. All countries will be I debt, one time or another, but I feel that the American government has become lazy (no offence). I think that having debt for a few years is acceptable as long as you are paying it off, however, like the US, have been in debt for many years and I think that is unacceptable. We were able to pay of our debt hundreds of years ago, but now; we have made it so our debt is more than 13 trillion dollars, that’s not including the debt that is not being counted. There are no words that I can describe how I feel about this, because I am so disgusted about how irresponsible the government has become. I think that we need to get our act together, now!!!
One of the ways that I think that we can get out of debt, is to get out of this recession. A good way to do that is to stop not spending our money. This issue is simple economics, when people do not spend their money demand goes down. When the demand for most goods goes down, means that the companies that are producing their products are losing money and therefore, they are going to have to lay-off workers because of the lack of money. This will cause problems to the workers that got fired because they will not want to spend their money because they would want to be saving their money. As a result of this the whole cycle repeats it’s self. This is why many companies are going bankrupted.
I am going to be the outsider here and make a claim that I did not particularly enjoy the movie IOUSA. I found it fairly boring and droning about how poorly our economy is doing. Okay, we get it, our economy is going to collapse and we are going to become just another “third world” country. This is not to say that the movie was not informative, but it appeared its main function was just to scare people into worrying about what we could potentially do to ourselves if we do not start controlling our irrational spending. And yet again I have to make the argument that all spending is not bad. I feel that the biggest concept I have learned in AP Economics is that there is a particular balance that the economy must find where we rest on a sort of needle point to be able to maintain a perfect economy. As it stands, it is almost impossible to get this to happen. It is difficult to find what spending is necessary to stimulate the economy without causing a collapse of the value of the dollar. At the same time, where is the money going to come from? So many people are being laid off due to the caution that many Americans are exercising with the falling economy. Some say that the government should take on this burden, but at the same time, they want the welfare benefits they believe the government should offer. It is our own selfishness and ignorance which has brought upon us this monster of an issue. Hello people!! Money does NOT grow on trees!!! The government cannot just keep printing money to stimulate the economy; that is going to cause the value of the dollar to crash. Yet the government tries to do anything they can to keep us somewhat happy, just to save their own jobs, so if that means more government spending without any revenue, so be it; what is about 14 trillion more dollars in debt going to do to us? We are already about that much in the whole, so it seems to them that it can just stay there as long as while they are alive, they keep their jobs. There are few options that do not in some way or another contradict something else which will lead to some sort of crash.
ReplyDeleteThis movie was definitely informative of the issues, but all I saw was the stimulation of fear and no clear resolution on how to fix these issues. It appeared as if the director and producer were just ignoring that issue. Yes, we know, everyone can see that economic times are hard, but if you do not provide a solution, then all you are doing is causing more drama and chaos. People will only start to complain to their representatives in government but very few will start to propose solutions. And since there are a wide range of opinions, it will just cause a greater flare if controversy. I don’t want to sound socialist, but maybe if you want immediate action to fix the economy and you just might want to trust the economists in our country, maybe we might get some consensus on how we can attempt to fix this problem. I know they might have some contradicting view points, but they are not the ones who are constantly worried about getting reelected. This would provide for a better and more efficient method of fixing the problem, and hey, I hear they are pretty intelligent people, and just maybe we should listen to what they have to say. Another solution could be just for everyone to suck it up and just make it through the next ten years and the economy will start to fix itself. If you can have faith in politicians, then I feel you can have faith in the statistically and theoretically proven business cycle. Whatever the case may be, we either need to get help from people who are not influenced by the fears and passions of others (a.k.a. intellects such as the economists) or we need to stop complaining, cause it is essentially going to lead us nowhere or to worse if we keep letting our fears get in the way.
I actually enjoyed watching the movie “I.O.U.S.A.” because it was a wake-up call for not only students, but also for anyone who has watched this educational film. The trillions of dollars that our country is in debt for, is a scary but true event occurring in our economy and government right now. Some find it horribly frightening, some find it humorous how we let this happen in the first place, but everyone is wondering how we will successfully fix this growing issue. As one of the men in the movie stated, the next generation will sadly be stuck with the responsibility of cleaning up numerous generations’ worth of debt and financial mishaps. In our future we will have to make the decisions of our country even though we haven’t had any part of this enormous debt build-up amongst our government. The Democrats proclaim that they inherited this debt from the Republicans and before that the Republican Party blamed the Democrats. The bottom line is that our government needs to prioritize this debt reduction before we begin to self destruct and any blaming occurs. Now that we are in a global economy, the debt of the United States has begun to affect our national security. In the movie it was mentioned that a vast majority of our trillions of dollars worth of debt is owed to China, a big enough country to cause economic and national insecurity.
ReplyDeleteAs far as what we need to do in order to get on the road to recovery, our government needs to put our economic situation as a top priority along with national security. We need to start with local and state governments, because Illinois is just as bad if not worse when it comes to debt. Our corrupt governors and government in this state has contributed greatly to the poor financial shape we are in today. We THE PEOPLE of the U.S. have the obligation to provide leaders and good leadership through the voting process. It is our duty and responsibility to elect leaders that are true to the Constitution that our forefathers envisioned. We seem to forget sometimes our responsibility in this area, we become complacent, then those who are in office seem to get away with mismanagement and even corrupt behavior. This type of behavior takes out hard earned tax dollars and distorts their intended purpose. Our leaders need to become true leaders now more than ever, in order to keep this rising problem under control and begin a steady reduction of this already extreme financial issue.
After watching the documentary I.O.U.S.A, I personally believe that the large national debt that the United States has incurred is largely to blame on the American leadership. Rather than telling the citizens of the United States that tax cuts are unacceptable and that everyone should start purchasing domestic products over foreign ones, the government isn’t doing much to help decrease the debt. And with the healthcare bill currently being tossed around, the debt seems like it won’t start to decrease for a long time now. Not to mention that the trust funds America established years ago along with the New Deal (something created to prevent another event like this recession from ever happening again…) are slowly losing all of their funds. This means that once there is no money left in these billion dollar finances, the government will once again have to lend money to help cover the costs. In an article by Jeanne Sahadi, the author mentions that “the government will have to pay into the system after its payments to the trust funds end -- which will happen by 2037 for Social Security and within the next decade for Medicare.” Within the next thirty years, the government will have to continue to lend money to help cover the Baby Boomers as they grow older and are in need of their social security. The same article predicts that the debt will be about twenty-two trillion by 2020 because of more lending like this. In order to start decreasing the debt now, the government would have to start regulating trade and start exporting more than it imports, the opposite of what they are currently doing. However, not all of the blame rests on the government. The citizens of the United States continually tend to spend more money than they save and in turn acquire great amounts of debt. Until the recession, most people spent most of their earnings and it wasn’t until recently that people began to save money again. However, because they are making less bank transactions, the Federal Reserve isn’t making much money off of the banks. In order for the United States to start decreasing the debt, the government needs to start regulating the “free market” and people need to start saving more money rather than brining on debt to themselves and the country. If this is not done, the national debt will continue to increase and one day the goal of reducing the debt will become impossible for the next generation of citizens to pay off.
ReplyDeleteThe movie IOUSA was very interesting to see our country’s national debt, it taught us a lot about the country’s finical problems without being incredibly boring. I was shocked to see just how high our debt really was. I think that the enormous amount of debt is manly because of the leadership and government who allows and makes it legal for average citizens to go so deeply into debt. I also think social security was a terrible idea, and that it gave the government money to use at the time but as generations reach the age where they are eligible to use the money, our nation will fall even deeper into debt. But rather then decide who’s to blame in this situation; because just like many problems you can blame it on the people who provoked the action or the person who perused the action, the more important thing to do is fix these actions. Like our founding fathers did so long ago we need to start working our way back to zero, if that really is possible. I think a good place to start would be to look at china and see how they are doing so well in comparison to the United States. I think the United states need to stop poking our nose into other people business, because years of entering wars and other affairs that we don’t need to be a part of has become rather costly. Also stimulating the economy for the short run always helps right away, but the best thing to do that with would be to offer stimulus options for green appliances and recourses. Give people incentives to boost our economy right now and put that into things that will continue to save us money and help us out in the long run. I also disagree with the new health care bill, and other sorts of socialist options which make everyone more equal. Because the only people it benefits are those who can’t afford to pay for their health care, and then the government ends up picking up the slack, which in return just adds to our enormous debt. Anything that gives people benefits for free is a bad idea for our national debt, because one its not fair to others who have worked hard to get were they are and it only hurts our debt later. We need to start looking to fix our debt so that our children and their children don’t have to live with and attempt to fix our mistakes.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I.O.U.S.A was a very sobering movie, I have to agree with Ruchee that after a while, the movie seemed too repetitive and began to get a little bit boring. I realize that the national debt is growing and we are not doing the best economically but after a while the random stats and charts began to blur together and I found myself counting the minutes till the end of the period. Not to say that I don’t appreciate the nice movie break, Mr. Janczak but I just found the movie a little repetitive and frankly, a little too “in your face”. It is apparent that the national debt is quickly growing with only a greater increase in sight and the unfortunate problem is that no one really seems sure how to fix it. I really enjoyed the clip with Steve Martin promoting the idea that “you shouldn’t buy what you can’t afford”. The idea seems like common sense yet people seem to struggle with it. If only the secret to fixing the economy was that easy. But when you think about it, avoiding debt really is easily achieved when a person buys only what they can afford but there are complications that prevent this from being as easy as it sounds. With things like credit cards and loans, it is so easy for a person to spend beyond their means and quickly find himself on the verge of bankruptcy. We must learn to live more frugally and manage our money. Yet, if our nation abided by these same principles, we would not find ourselves almost 13 trillion dollars in debt. Another interesting point brought up by the movie was the fact that our generation is going to be the one restricted by this debt. A problem that was created by our parents and grandparents is going to inhibit our adult lives. Does this seem fair? Well it doesn’t to me. Unfortunately, as the youth of the nation, there is very little we can do to prevent this except hope that somehow, the debt will begin to decrease. It is almost like your parents throwing you into a hole without any means of escape and expecting you to pull yourself out. The odds of escape are very slim and it the cards are stacked against you. This is the exact situation that our generation will soon find ourselves in unless something is done quickly to decrease the debt. When the movie was made just a few years ago, the national debt was around 8 trillion. Now, we find ourselves with almost 13 trillion dollars of national debt! The debt is increasing very rapidly and we as a nation must find a way to decrease it quickly before it gets any worse.
ReplyDeleteI think that I.O.U.S.A was overall a good movie because it was not as boring as I thought it would be and it was kind of interesting also and it did not feel like boring straight facts. I found it interesting that they forcefully stressed the fact that America is in debt because that is sometimes sort of a touchy subject for us considering we are Americans. But I thought, besides that, that it was a good wake up call for everyone who watched that movie. Especially high school students like us because sometimes things such as our debt do not seem very important to us right now, but it is, because it is our future. We tend to think that this is an adult problem, and push it aside in our brains because it is the last thing we want to think of. But this movie bluntly stated the truth to us, and made us realize that our debt is truly as bad as we think it is, and even worse. I found it really interesting when they interviewed some random people and none of them really knew how much their own country was in debt. It just comes to show how oblivious people are to their own country when they do not have to deal with it. Yet future generations have to pay for their ignorance, because if the people do not start trying to help this debt problem then its only going to get worse and worse. And when Americans realize how bad our debt really is, they blame it on the government, despite the fact that they are not even trying to fix this problem and the government is. I believe that this debt comes from the people and the government and neither one should be blamed more than the other. While the government has more power to ultimately fix this problem, or at least have some effect, I do not think it is right for the people to blame them because they have the best of the best with them and they still can not fix this. This comes to show just how much of a hole that we have dug ourselves into. I think to improve our situation right now, America has to stop pointing fingers at each other and start taking the blame because after all, we are all a part of the same country.
ReplyDeleteIt was nice to get to watch a movie for a few days and I.O.U.S.A. was not all that bad. Even though the charts got a bit excessive and boring I thought it was interesting how they added things to help us realize what is going on, like the SNL skits and even applying the problem to our own city of Chicago and the struggles the bank had a while back. However I do agree that it was kind of repetitive in constantly telling us how much trouble this debt has put us in. Yes, we understand that this country is in an excess amount of debt, but I think it is a bit extreme to mostly blame us for it. The movie seemed to be more yelling at us than anything telling us that we pretty much have no hope for the economy in the future. The article however points out that the government is pretty much just as much to blame. I agree and I also think it is unfair that in the future we will probably have to pay for the mistakes the government is making. The article also talks about the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac companies and the problems their companies add to our debt. What I did not understand about this was that the government said that they would be there to back the companies if they got in trouble, but when they did the government complains about not having the budget for it. I think that is a pretty big part in our debt problem. We tend to think we will be able to accomplish something or think something will not cost as much as it does, and then we end up in more trouble than we were in before. Everyone knows that the big question is, “What do we do now?” This article brings up good point and is honest with the fact that it is going to take the government a long time to get itself back together and out of debt, and that “the government will have to pay into the system after its payments to the trust funds end”. It seems like the debt will never go away and it will probably feel like that for a long time and that is why I.O.U.S.A. was pointing it out so much that our future does not look to good economically. However I think that hopefully we will learn from the mistakes our country has made and take more interest in the future of our economy.
ReplyDeleteIOUSA, I believe is true, but in how its true, it creates a a feeling that it's really wrong. It made me feel like, if everyone else is doing it, why cant our generation. I then pulled back and realized the consequences of such. I believe what will happen in reality is there will be a war of some kind, whether if it includes guns or not, it does not matter. The problem with money, that I saw from IOUSA is that all it leads to is trouble. If we kept everything to a bargain, the owners of such items would have to argue out what they want to trade for. With money comes many many unexpected problems. We start to get tangled into macro-economics, and how there then needs to be a system to manage the money (banks) and then a system to regulate that system (FED) and then an even higher system to regulate that system to some extent (government). And then all three systems can create all sorts of trouble, such as lying about money, stealing, loans, and debt. But, back to IOUSA these problems can also create good consequences. IOUSA show's how money can help a country boom, and advance by far. But then again, this advance caused by money eventually leads to legal problems where other countries end up owning said country that advanced. I think that the problem of China kind of owning the US is not a problem, but rather a chance to come together. Again money has good consequences, where as it has a chance of CHina and America coming together. If we continue to outsource towards china, then china and america will end up to become a single country. And back to my original idea, to get to this state there will be a war of some kind between these two nations. Sorry for going off topic, but I will come back now. The markets that are being proposed for the incoming generations are impossible to bring back to reality. The inflation that has happened is impossible to overcome, within our lives. America will most likely end up driving the labor out of their markets because the demand for it is becoming so low. Overall great America has become the not so liked, kind of idiotic America. We, as in the older generations, have been selfish beings who are ignorant to all other people. Back to the markets, the overall AS is much higher than the overall AD. Too much is being made by too little people, at too quick of a rate, which is causing inflation, and overall is causing America to become not a world power.
ReplyDeleteThe movie I.O.U.S.A. was very interesting and informitive. It allowed me to understand the financial crisis that is facing this country. It’s very scary and daunting; 13 trillion in debt is not something one should be able to sweep under the table. And to most Americans that’s where it is, people have no idea what is really going on in our country. That is just social and he governments debt. If we continue on this path we will head to financial ruin. If you divided up our debt and gave it to all Americans it would be over $80,000! I don’t know of a lot of people who have that kind of cash just lying around; and our government doesn’t either. I can’t say why it isn’t more of a focal point in our country but it should. We have no way of paying this back; not even in the future. In the past our leaders have made great strides to get us out of debt, and I haven’t seen any progress since 2001. The debt has gotten bigger and bigger since then and looks like it won’t contract for some time. I don’t want to live in a country that has our necks in a collar like a dog because of debt.
ReplyDeleteTo whom do we blame for this problem is a good question; we could just say the government and who had an attitude of debt is good. This is a big chunk of our problem, but it would never have got out of control if it wasn’t for us. We were the ones who bought what we couldn’t afford, took out loans we had no business buying, and we invested into fraudulent companies who were designed to take our money. As a society we must learn from our mistakes and pick up the pieces, if we got responsible and take action, so will the government. America only responds to the world’s greatest problems. World war two the depression, as a nation we faced these times without fear. However, I don’t want us to get to that point before we decide to take action. We must look into ourselves to guide the way. As a country if we want to get out of the recession and knock out some of the national debt we need to get back to the basics. We must stop with all the bickering amongst parties and come together, an intelligent individual once said “a house divided cannot stand” his name was Abraham Lincoln and he knew some things. In Washington this is happening again, if we are to make progress we must all have the same vision on how to get out of the recession. The way to do it is to bring jibs back to the United States that we’re held in foreign countries like China. If we bring producing jobs and sell products to other countries instead of being the worlds foremost buyer I believe it would be a big step forward into cutting our national debt down.
Ok I was only able to view the first part of I.O.U.S.A. because I broke my leg Wednesday night and didn't come to school on Thursday. So if I leave out some important points from the movie, I'm sorry. Our country's national debt problem has been something we have struggled with ever since we broke away from Great Britain. After the Revolutionary War our Founding Fathers realized we had a debt and they quickly paid it off because they knew going into debt would cause a lot of problemsa and a great deal of stress for future generations. Over the years however, our debt has gotten worse and worse and most economists today predict that it will continue to get worse. No one specifically is to blame for our national debt because it has just been accumulating over so many years and Congress has never done anything to try and control it. Republicans will blame Democrats and Democrats will blame Republicans but in all seriousness, our national debt has been buiding up for many years and no one specifically should be blamed. I think over the years our government has lost common sense principles. There is no magic potion or complex plan to get us out of debt. Any nine year old kid knows that if he owes money he or she probably should stop borrowing and work to earn more revenues so he or she can chip away at the debt. Right now Obama is trying to spend his way out of a $13 trillion dollar debt and he's only making it worse with his spending. I understand that we can't just cut all of our spending and go cold turkey on imports but we definitely need to increase our exports and we need to find some way to slowly decrease our imports and borrowing and start finding ways to live on fewer spending. Another reason our country has fallen into an abyss of debt is because the American people have been a little too cocky with their money. We have had the mind set that our country is too powerful to fall and we can just spend, spend, and spend and banks can loan, loan, and loan and if we get in trouble our all powerful U.S. Government will come to the rescue. Money doesn't grow on trees people! I think once the government sees that the American people have become more cautious with their money, it will also become more cautious and stop this ridiculous and unnecessary amount of spending that just keeps making our debt worse and worse. Economists predict that our country's debt will be $22 trillion by the next decade. We really need to take action NOW or else our country will get to the point where our debt will just be to big for countries to do business with us. It might even get to the point where we might have to start selling some of our land to other countries to help pay some of our debt. The sad thing is that this burden we have put on ourselves is not going away any time soon and we will pass it on generation to generation and they will suffer from it. They will suffer from the bad decisions and lack of common sense that our ancestors for many generations made. It would be a tragedy to see this debt problem lead to the fall of our country.
ReplyDeleteI.O.U.S.A. Just the name makes me laugh. It is essentially calling the United States a borrowing nation, which it is. It shows that the US is in so much debt that it has to write IOU’s because it cannot pay back its debt. Our current Federal debt is around eight trillion dollars; which is at least twice as high as any other nation’s economic debt. What the movie, and the guys who ran around preaching to people, were getting at was about how we will all live worse lives in twenty to forty years if we do not fix our economy and do not reduce our national debt. I found this part of the movie to be extra fascinating because it showed that there are a majority of people in this world who still live in a cave, watching shadows on the wall and think that the economy will just naturally fix itself. Due to the people who they interviewed, I have realized that ignorance is not bliss and that everyone needs to know about the struggling economy, otherwise, the poor will be killed off, the middle class will become poor, and the rich will essentially become the middle class because a bad economy hit everyone hard, not just the poor. The movie did a good job of informing people about the dangers of a failing economy through all of their statistics, propaganda, and interviews. They showed examples of our national debt over time and of how much federal debt takes up the GDP progressively. What also caught my eye was that over time, whether it was for wars or something else, the government was usually the cause of bad economic decisions. Occasionally it was the companies, or stock market crashes that have made bad economic standpoints, but those could have been helped by good government spending. For example, during the Bush era, George W Bush issued pointless tax cuts that reduced income for the government by almost half and hurt their power of economic authority. Sure they gave people short term surpluses of money, but a lot of funds in which he got his money were from borrowing it from other countries, and the movie kind of got that across. It was a poor economic decision on his part and it is one of the major reasons why we are in our current recession. Over all I liked the movie, I thought it got major, critical points across effectively, and I thought it was good.
ReplyDeleteI.O.U.S.A was a very interesting movie. It talked about the FED and how they try and keep the country’s banks and economy working by keeping money supply stable and give banks the comfort to know that they can make loans. The movie also explained inflation and its effect on the economy. The FED does what it can to keep banks from closing. The movie talked about the struggles of the large bank Continental Illinois. In the ‘90’s there was a “run” on Continental Illinois because the large firms and businesses that had accounts in the bank took a lot of money out at once because of their fear of the banks publicized struggles. The run caused Continental Illinois to not be able to supply the common people that had accounts with them their money. This is when the FED stepped in and took control of the bank. The FED supplied the bank with money and seven years later Continental Illinois was on its own to feet. To keep incidents like the Continental Illinois incident from happening, the FED has yearly inspections of every bank. The movie used a bank in the small town of Jacksonville Illinois to show the inspections. Every year the FED sends someone to the bank to go over all the numbers in the bank’s accounting books. If the bank is doing too poorly the FED will either shut them down or help them out. The movie I.O.U.S.A. also talked a lot about inflation, and led me to believe that it is one of the biggest reasons for our debt crisis. In the early part of this decade people would go to banks for loans and would get the loans no matter what. It seemed that the only requirement for getting a loan was that you could breathe. Because of the low standards for receiving a loan many people took out loans bigger than they could afford. All of the loans that people got increased the money supply a great deal, and when they did not pay the loans back the money supply did not shrink back to what it was. This constant growth of the money supply caused a lot of quick inflation, and caused the national debt to increase faster because everything the government needs money for became more expensive. The low value of the dollar caused us to owe more dollars to the countries we borrowed money from. Also the amount that each individual needed for social security was going up and with the baby boomers beginning to retire that number grew exponentially. I believe that the cause of the national debt is not the fault of one group of people, but of everyone that impacted the inflation rate. Those that took out loans they could not afford. The banks for making those loans, and the FED for not realizing what was happening and making it less enticing for banks to make loans. In a nut shell everyone is to blame for the debt problems.
ReplyDeleteThe movie IOUSA showed me a problem that I knew we had, but I did not know the extent that it went to. The movie made me a lot more aware of how big of a problem we really have, and realize how I am going to have to pay for it as I grow older. I don’t think it is going to get better as fast as people hope. People are going to have to make a lot of sacrifices for a lot of years in order to pay off this debt. I think that the government is primarily to blame for this debt. Even with all of this debt that the country has, the government continues to spend. The debt is so large that we cannot spend our way out of this recession. There needs to be a lot of cut back in spending, and people are going to have to take some hits and not live above their means for a while. When Bush gave out money to the country in hopes to stimulate the economy, it did not help. People took that money and saved it and used it to pay off debts rather than spending it. The war also added a lot to the debt. Towards the end of Bush’s term he pushed the country into a lot of debt, but Obama is also doing nothing to get us out of it. He is almost making it worse. The government cannot keep spending and taxes should not be raised. The government can be extremely careless, and the people are the ones who should be in charge of their own money. No matter what happens to get the country out of this debt, I think it is going to take many years before we get better. The Democrats want increased government spending to get out of this recession, and the Republicans want lower taxes. The problem is that both cannot happen, because that will push us into an even greater debt. Because then the government will be spending tons of money, and they will not be receiving a lot of money because of lower taxes. I don’t think increased government spending will work in this case, but either way, both cannot occur. It only makes it worse. I really enjoyed the movie though, because it opened my eyes to a lot of problems that I had not realized before. It made me see just how big of a mess we really are in, and is encouraging to make smart decisions with money as an adult.
ReplyDeleteAnyones who watches IOUSA without any previous knowledge on the subject of our national debt will be left feeling both educated yet frightened of what the future will bring. It begs the question if the most sucessful country in world will fall due to an increasingly unstable economy. It's a tough question to think about, but it appears only economists and a few number of people who are aware of the issue are actually doing anything to help the country from going under. The movie really hit a huge point when it stated that Leadership, Trade, Budget problems, and Savings all were giant contributors to the mess we are in. In terms of leadership, the government has done little to stop the debt from increasing.The debt has become too insurmontable to stop because plans like the economic stimulous package from two-three years ago did little to help out our economy since people actually used their alloted amount of money to pay off their own debts. This issue should have been a huge priority of the government in the early 2000's, yet the focus was all on the Iraq war which caused the national debt itself to new highs because of the excess amount of funding put into it. Unforunately we still have that problem (which was not solved) and now we also have this one to worry about. In addition to the war, Bush's tax cuts also severely impacted the debt. However the movie did seem biased against Bush since the public generally favored the tax cuts and due to the media the public were also at first in favor of starting the Iraq war. Not to mention people buy way too much on credit, even to this day, which was also a huge contributor to our problem. So all in all this is everyone's fault. Unforuntaely at this point are very few viable options the government can take. Because we're in a delicate situation right now, although taxes need to be raised I do not think Obama's adminstration will allow that since numerous people have lost jobs in the recession. Another option could be giving out more stimulous packages, however disallow using that money to pay off their debts. Obama also needs to make drastic cuts in the budget so the debt does not increase more in the coming yeras. Also a lower budget would allow us to stop borrowing so much money from foreign countries. There are so many options that are available which I think Obama should all do for the sake of the country, but may not be pressured to do by his administration. By raising taxes and cutting the budget, Obama's approval ratings would probably drop to an extreme low, however when history looks back at our first African-American president, I think the textbooks would consider him a hero for saving our country. Otherwise this problem will continue to grow worse and worse until the day a country such as China overtakes the US as #1 in the world and that will probably be the end of the American domination.
ReplyDeleteI found the movie pretty scary, although that may have been due to the fact that the producers/writers of the movie decided that the message going out to the public should be that the national debt is going to kill us all if it is not paid off. I do think the debt is important, but I also think there are other things that are more important and that the debt is not the be all, end all and that we won’t all die of hemadeficitosis or something. For example, I feel that employment and education are more important than debt. However, something that I found interesting was the statistics about the debt and how it changed over the years; particularly I found the large percentage of the budget that goes to interest payment on the national debt interesting because I firmly believe that we should learn from the past—when 50% of the budget went to interest payments on loans in 18th century France, that in combination with high food prices (check), unemployment (check) and dissatisfaction with the government (check), sparked one of the biggest revolutions the world ever saw. Although I seriously doubt that we will have a revolution here in the U.S., these trends still exist and I think that the government should be trying to do more for the growing debt. I think the debt it the government’s fault and they should have to fix it. Just because we live in a democratic society does not mean our representatives actually do what we would like them to do—they pretty much just represent a laundry list of ideas that belong to one party or another and promise us all things that we can’t have and then go off and do their own thing when they get elected. Thus, it is not the fault of the people, but the fault of the irresponsible government. I think what the government needs to do to downsize the national debt is get out of the war that we are in that is sapping our resources. Obviously, they need to cut other areas of spending and raise certain taxes. I am a firm believer in taxing alcohol, cigarettes and other non-essential habits. Not only will this prevent kids from starting, (healthier people cost less money!) but it will squeeze money out of those who can pay for their habits. Taxing gasoline after a certain amount (kind of like tax brackets) and excessive water consumption is another way the government could make money, and only off of those who can finance their wasteful habits—all others would just have to be greener.
ReplyDeleteI.O.U.S.A, in my opinion, appeared to me as just a long rant. The beginning was interesting. The facts presented made it obvious that America is in big financial trouble and if nothing is done to correct it, we might as well just live in train stations like “hobo-people” starting now so we can get used to it. But after the first 10 minutes, the only things I heard were just so redundant I lost all will to pay attention. I seriously felt like I was being lectured by a silly-goose grandpa who had nothing better to do then lecture me. America is running out of money. We need to do something now. All our presidents are idiots. Blah blah blah. Rant rant rant. I.O.U.S.A only had one fact. America is spending too much and not saving enough. Nine words! Why was that put into a 2 hour film? Right, because the producers want to make money by having consumers spend money on the movie instead of saving it. That is just plain hypocritical. According to Wikipedia, their domestic gross was $821,000. Not extremely high for a movie but this was taken out of America’s pocket. Their intentions seem to be more towards creating fear and hype (creating higher revenue) then America’s economy. As a result, I think it’s fair to say that people should not watch this movie if they want an unbiased opinion on the economy. The movie also stated that America needs to be saving, not consuming. From my knowledge in AP Economics, a thriving economy is based upon consumption. If there were to be no consumption and only saving there would not even be an economy in need of saving. In short, movies like this do no good for our economy. Who is to blame? Well, I.O.U.S.A producers should get their fair share, but it’s only a small share. I believe the problem is within our leadership. Politicians are too focused on their image. They claim they will give us tax cuts and it will improve the economy and this makes everyone happy and love their leaders. But from what we’ve learned in Economics, an increase in government spending is a better way to improve our economy. Why is it that none of our leaders have the backbone to say this to us? Our leaders need to be willing to take a punch themselves because if they aren’t willing, how can they expect the American people to? Our priority needs to be to fix the economy. Why are we focusing on the using the band-aid before we have even stopped the bleeding? We need to survive now, so we can live later. America needs to prioritize, and the economy is the priority.
ReplyDeleteI thought IOUSA was a very interesting movie. It showed how much our country was in debt. It also showed how all the debt built up and how it got to were it is now. In the begining our country was doing pretty well until we hit a little big bumps along the way. At one point we had set our national debt to none, but then eventually it rose. We started to pay it off but then we couldnt and it became really high. I thought the video was good for informing us about the situation, but it over exagerated it too much. I think the debt will go down slowly but it will take some time if we make the right decisions. I think the government is to blame for this because they have been making it worse and not really making good decisions. The video stated that it is up to us to make it better and if we dont our children and grandchildren will have tough times with money and finding jobs. I think the government can help by starting to stop borrowing money from other countries. This video was basically sending the same message to us over and over again the our country owes alot of money to other places. I think they took it way too seriously because its not like we are going to stay like this forever it will get better over time we just have to be patient. I think it will be pretty easy to reduce our debt. Our government has to realize that we can not have everything we like and they also have to realize we do not need everything, we only need what is neccessary. Our government needs to make the correct choices to reduce the debt f they do not want to go bankrupt. That is why I think they are the ones to blame. Our government needs to know that our country is our number one thing to worry about and needs to help us fast.
ReplyDeleteThe video I.O.U.S.A did a good job at letting us know how badly the US has gotten itself into debt over the years. It talked a lot about how the reason we are in debt today is because of the habit we acquired of consuming and at the same time we were not saving. All the excessive spending and lack of savings has driven the US to borrow money from other countries and now we are in debt to them and cannot repay them. The video also talked about how every major war we fought in over the years has taken a lot out of our country, especially financially, which drove up our nation’s debt. However, we used to be good about paying off our debt, and a few times we paid it all off. Unfortunately each time we got back into debt it rose and rose, and eventually it go to be too large of an amount for us to pay off. And that’s where we are today, in debt and still spending way too much more then we are saving. In the video our country’s imports and exports were compared to that of China’s, and for their net profit they had earned some 300 billion in a given year; in that same year the US’s net loss was some 800 billion. This tells us that China is very good about making sure they export more than they import, and this is something we need to work towards in order to start to chip away at our nation’s debt instead of continuing to add to it. I don’t think that we can blame any one person for getting us into such a huge debt, but rather we should blame everyone as a whole because it takes a lot more than one wrong decision or one bad idea to get our nation into such a predicament. Mostly everyone has done their part to add to the debt in some way and the only way we can ever hope to get ourselves out of this problem is if we all start to manage our money more wisely. People can no longer make poor decisions with their spending and we should try only buying what we need for a while. That way we are able to pay all of our bills and we won’t have to owe money on things we really don’t need. If we continue down this path we are on who knows what our country will be like in the future, and we might have to start going to drastic measures to regain control of our debt. Altogether it is better for our country now and in the future if we start saving our money as soon as possible, like starting today or maybe even yesterday, because we can no longer continue to procrastinate.
ReplyDeleteIOUSA was actually a very interesting movie even though it was all about the problems in our economy. Although it was all about the economy and ours nations huge problems with debt, it was portrayed in a way that was not too boring. The movie did a good job at explaining the problems with our nations debt in a way that many people would be able to understand, even with little knowledge about the economy. It was interesting how they broke the movie into four main pieces and talked about how each contributed to the nations debt. I liked how easy it was to follow with the timeline of our nations debt. For every year that the debt was impacted in a major way they explained it and showed it. It was sad to see that there were so many times when our nations debt was low after fighting to get it that way, and then knowing how it stands now. As they continuously showed the timeline of our nations debt you can see that it either went up or down based on the choices made by our government or world issues. America is so deep in debt that many believe it is only going to get worse. In the movie it talked about how large the debt is now and how it is not fair to the children who are going to grow up and have to live with this debt on their shoulders. Why should the ones who dug themselves in debt be able to let others shovel the way out? The debt is too big to ignore and it is going to take everyone’s patience and time in order to decrease the debt. As it was said in the movie mistakes and choices were made but we need to learn from them and focus on helping the economy. Shifting over to the government, I think that they sit and talk about making plans and try to help the debt, but they never compromise and follow through with something that will actually help. How can we get anywhere when all government does it fight about who’s better, the democrats or the republics? I mean I understand that they have different beliefs but sometimes you need to choose your battles. I think that the government needs to step up and start working together for the sake of our country. They need to start thinking about the future, like the movie focused on, in order to make sure that the debt does not get worse and that future Americans are not struggling in the same ways that we are now. I think the movie did a great job of focusing on the future and what will happen if we don’t start working on our nations debt. The movie explained everything very well and it really helped me understand our nations situation a lot better.
ReplyDeleteI think that the movie was a good eye opener and wake up call. It was very scary because basically it said if we keep making the same mistakes we are going to all be in big trouble. Also I did not realize how deeply we dug ourselves into debt. We owe over 13 trillion dollars, and still we are not doing much to pay it off. I blame the government for our troubles when it comes to this matter. First off they made the United States too dependent on other countries like China. We keep importing stuff produced in China, when instead we should be trying to get everyone to buy United States made products; so this way we can make more profit. Second if Bush did not give out money to everyone when he took presidency, but instead paid off some of America’s debt we might not be buried so deep right now. After this mistake we got into a war that has been going on for more than five years now, and not only is it costing us more money that we do not have, but it is also costing us lives that are hurting families all over the world. All of the money we borrowed and used on the war put us more in debt, dragged on, and lost us many things. This massive debt we accumulated did not just happen in a few days, and it is definitely not going to be fixed soon either, but to me the movie suggested that we really are not trying to fix it and that is worse. Instead of working to come out we just keep borrowing more. We need to start making improvements together as a whole. The government needs to make more people aware of our situation so that we can look at good alternatives together. The faster we work as a nation the faster we can come out of our debt. Right now I think it is the governments fault, but it would not be just their fault if they make all of us more aware of what is really going on. The first place to start is to wake everyone in our nation up, and try to get out of the rescission we are facing because that is not helping with our crisis. Another cause of this financial crisis we are in should be blamed on interest and crooked management in government and public sectors. Government officials spend, borrow, and steal outrageous amounts of money, which hard working citizens are responsible for in taxes. The rich get tax breaks, while the low and middle income people get tax increases.
ReplyDeleteTrue Example: The mortgage broker my parents met twelve years ago made triple the annual income my parents made and was stunned to find out that my parents paid 17,000 dollars more in income tax than she did because of the tax breaks and shelter for the rich. If we had a more fair way of doing things there would be much less suffering. The best way of doing things to me is to not charge interest on loans, if you have more you pay more, if you have less you pay less. That would help to reduce debt and help humanity.
As for schools, some schools mismanage funds. One school gets new computers every year, while others have had the same computers ten years, and then there are other schools that do not even have computers. If we want to fix education in the United States. There has to be a more fair way to get supplies for schools. Everyone is afraid of government regulations, but sometimes it is necessary for governments to take control of situations. If you have honest hardworking officials that will fairly allocate funding to each school and hold each school accountable for spending we may be able to fix education in America; and in turn educate students to be more financially responsible, so we do not follow in the foot steps of the past generation.
Tim Adornetto
ReplyDeleteAP Economics
Mr. Janczak Prd. 6
3/5/10
I.O.U.S.A. Debt Problem
IOUSA is a movie that goes over the factors that have led America into accumulating such an immense national debt. There isn’t one singular major cause you can point an accusing finger at for creating America’s debt. The fault is shared between the government’s spending, the consumers’ spending, our lack of exports in comparison to the imports we take in, and various wars we have been involved in. The American government has taken a monetary stance where it feels that it can borrow as much money as it wants and spend way beyond its means. After our American Civil War, we had a fairly sizable amount of debt but the government worked hard to pay the debt off. Now, we have completely ignored the idea of trying to be self-sufficient. Our debts to other countries have piled up into the trillions of dollars. American consumers often buy products from other countries due to the lessened price. However, by doing this, we are also causing money to exit America and enter another country’s system. In order to correct this problem, I think America must start up a favorable balance of trade. We need to be chipping away at our debt rather than accumulating more. When we do finally pay off this gigantic debt, we will need to make sure we borrow money only when absolutely necessary and we must pay it back as quick as possible. When we are borrowing money without a plan to pay it back, we end up in a debt hole that is harder and harder to climb out of as interest from our loans piles up. Partially due to our current debt situation, we are slowly losing ground to China in regard to being the world power. If we eventually became incapable of paying back our debts, we would lose our alliance with China which would pose a huge threat to our nation. This current recession has been a wake up call for Americans and I think it is the first time where United States citizens have come to realize that they are living beyond their means and they cannot continue to do so. Our savings rate has been extremely low for a long time and this financial trough has caused Americans to start saving again. The only way America can eliminate the mountain of debt we have piled up is through a whole nation’s decision to avoid spending beyond their means. The government needs to learn to spend less than the tax revenue taken in and the American public needs to spend less than their income and buy their products from America’s market rather than another foreign nation. This debt is not going to go away suddenly. It is going to take generations of slow nibbling at it before America can start off with a clean slate again.
I am just going to be blunt and come right out and say that I did not enjoy I.O.U.S.A very much. It just kept dragging on and on about how our economy is doing so poorly and not improving whatsoever. It showed a lot of statistics on the past and how poorly we used our money, but I feel that it was almost scaring us into making wise decisions. While this is good for us and informative, half of the Americans who are in economic trouble know the facts, but just cannot help themselves. I did like how it was so blunt and came right out and said that if we keep up what we are doing, we are ending up being like all the other third world countries. I almost felt like it was saying to not spend money at all, which would definitely affect the money supply. I think we need to spend money on our necessities and rationally buy other material goods in conservative amounts. There are some things that we need and who are they to tell us how much we should spend when they really do not know our situation. If we do not spend our money, we will not stimulate the economy and the value of our dollar would decrease slowly but steadily….and where does money come from? Right now, many people are getting laid off and there is such a high percent of unemployment. It really is not the government’s fault though that we are in such a mess. It is our own fault for spending money that we CLEARLY do not have! The government cannot just suddenly print out more money because the value of the dollar would just go down the drain. I think that the only reason why the government is helping us even a little bit is because they want to save their own jobs. Because they need to keep their jobs, they will increase government spending without any revenue. We are about 14 trillion dollars in debt. How are we going to solve this? From this movie I just got scared. I did not learn how the government will resolve this issue. If people do not know how the government is trying to help their country, they will not put in the effort themselves. This will lead to even more ignorance and there will be no solution. People need to be encourage by strong government action, and by the looks of it, we are most definitely not convinced that we will ever get out of this hole. We may be able to stabilize our economy through time. We just need to make sure we rationalize our spending and we will slowly climb ourselves out of this economic hell-hole.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Ruchee and say that I thought that the movie I.O.U.S.A was relatively unexciting. I did enjoy the movie break though and it was nice that we were able to watch a comedic expression of our economy. Those are always fun. But the things said in the movie were pretty much repeated throughout the entire thing. There were a couple key points that I remember though. Like Jacob said, I also enjoyed the “don’t buy what you can’t afford” phrase by Steve Martin (especially because I like him from the movie Cheaper by the Dozen!). It is a very obvious “duh” statement but frankly, many people tend to fail to realize this. I think that one of the solution to our economy is to fix this. If people keep buying things with money they don’t have (=loans and such), it is going to build up to a huge loan. And like we learned recently, creating loans increase the money supply and when there is too much money supply, it is hard for the government to regulate it, hence the economy problem. So if EVERYONE surprisingly starts being responsible and buy only things that they are capable of, the loans will decrease and the money supply will somewhat be regulated and maybe even help solve the economy problem. Another key point that I remember is the movie pointing out that people need to start saving. I can understand what they’re saying but what confused me is that it contradicted with what we learned in class. From what I can recall, in order for the economy to be working in good shape, people need to consume goods. In an article that we read, it said that if everyone starts saving, then the economy will fall under an even bigger conflict. So another solution for our economy problem is to find a median. We need to determine what the right amount of consumption is. With all of these said, I think that the people who are responsible for our national debt is everyone. The blame doesn’t go just to the government and it doesn’t go just for the citizens either. We both share a fair blame. The solutions I stated earlier should be set by the government and followed by the people. The most important thing is for the citizens and government to work together to come up with a solution instead of everyone going bazooka from freaking out because of the debts.
ReplyDeleteI think the movie I.O.U.S.A. really highlights the urgent crisis that our nation is in. It really does a good job of explaining how America got into debt and why our national debt is so large. I believe it is a bit overdramatic, but I realize that many people do not really know or care about our rising national debt and it is a growing problem that we must face as a country. From the movie, I gathered a lot of information about how America is borrowing and lending money to countries without even considering the revenue they actually to lend and borrow. America is now beginning to depend enormously on other countries. It is not bad to depend on other nations but relying to heavily upon nations for imports can cause a lot of damage to the economy of the U.S. For example, outsourcing is one of many the reasons that America’s unemployment level is so high, and it is also a result of the U.S. importing so many goods. I also think it is ridiculous that the government is funding financial institutions because they owe so much money to them. This money could be going towards so many other things, like stimulating our economy. But, I think this movie looks too much into the past also! We need a solution! This movie addresses the problem very clearly, but we also need to address the solution now! For too long, our government has had this mentality that money grows on trees. Not only have they been irresponsible, but they keep spending more and more thinking that it will fix all of America’s problems. Politicians have made empty promises, and now America is suffering. Sometimes, I wonder if Congress actually thinks about the large-scale effect of their policies. The effects cannot always be predicted but must be thought through in order for the government to efficiently use its revenue. Efficiently using money available is what Congress and the government should do from now on. If this happens, then further deficits will hopefully be eliminated I the future. But we need to somehow find a way to pay off all our debts. This cannot be fixed right away but we have to start somewhere! I think the people of America need to be informed also, and should support the government in its endeavour to pay off our debt and use money efficiently. Americans should not expect an tax breaks in the near future which is sad because we also are in a recession! Nevertheless, if we as the people, show our government that we do care about the budget crisis, then maybe we can all work towards a better future!
ReplyDeleteI thought that the movie “I.O.U.S.A.” was a good wake-up call for America. Our country is in debt trillions of dollars and it is a scary thought but a very real event going on right now that we cannot just ignore and hope goes away. Everyone is scared of this debt that could turn us into a third world country if we continue to let it grow, but if we tackle it now and fix the problem then we can make the future brighter than it looks right now. The movie made it very clear that if we do not fix the debt, or at least lessen it, it will be left as a terrible burden for the next generation and that’s not fair to them, because they were not the ones who created this problem in the first place. The next generation will be left with this enormous debt and little experience as the “baby boom” generation is retiring and dying-off and the debt continues to grow. The Democrats blame the Republicans and Republicans blamed the Democrats. We need to stop placing blame and pointing fingers and all just work together to solve the problem instead of putting it on the backburner while we figure out who’s the one who started it, like kindergarteners fighting on the playground. Now that we are in a global economy, the debt of the country is beginning to affect our national security. Most of our trillions of dollars worth of debt is owed to China, the movie said, and China is a large country. China is big enough to cause economic and national insecurity.
ReplyDeleteIn order to regain our stable economy and get back on the road to recovery, our government needs to put other issues on hold for the moment and put our economic situation as a top priority in order to maintain our national security. Fist we need to start on a smaller scale, with states. Some of the states are in just as bad, if not worse, shape in relation to other states, than the US is in relation to other countries. For instance, Illinois is in deep debt and struggles to pay even their basic necessary state employees, which then leads to a budget problem on city levels as well. The corrupt government officials in this state have only added to the financial problems we are having in the United States today. In our government, we have the right to choose our leaders, so we need to take all of these issues into account as we elect our country’s leaders. It is our job and right to elect leaders that are not corrupt and will make good decisions for our country and we can trust. When we don’t take our responsibility seriously we end up choosing leaders who are not trustworthy, are corrupt and who end up only adding to our problems. Our government officials need to transform into the true leaders they were intended to be, now at our lowest point, more than ever before, in order to keep this growing issue from becoming too much to handle and be gin to fix the problem as quickly as possible without causing other troubles for our country.
In my opinion I.O.U.S.A was an interesting documentary that did what it wanted to achieve: scare people. To me, this movie was interesting but the democratic spin that was put on it really did not please me. It is easy to blame and point fingers, but some democrats are also to blame in this recession. Although the numbers are scary and very intimidating, the creators of I.O.U.S.A should not have made the movie so pessimistic and dark. Since I have seen this movie I feel as if as if my whole financial future belongs to the United States government. To me, both the government and its people have caused the country to go into debt. Both are responsible for over spending and greed for themselves. Politicians want to keep their jobs and protect themselves while the average American wants to help and provide for their families. Both need to be wiser spenders and only use their money for when it is needed, the only way the government should be spending ridiculous amounts of money is for extreme situations. Not for a bailout/stimulus package but a way to create new jobs or something else to benefit the American people. As for the average Joe, they should only buy the only amount of food they need and not go shopping at Gurnee Mills every Saturday. Even though I do believe that our National Debt is so extreme and must be paid off as soon as possible, I also believe that I.O.U.S.A and the government alike are just trying to scare Americans into throwing more money at the government. The one thing that I did think was very clever was when the filmmakers decided to ask the public some monetary questions that they did not know the answers to. This shows that Americans are really the main ones that need to wise up and understand not only what they are buying with their money but where the money is going. Then it is up to the government to wisely invest the money spent in order to continue to raise the economy and create somewhat of a better economy.
ReplyDeleteI love movies. I love movies even more when we watch them in AP econ. The movie I.O.U.S.A. was not all that bad, although it was a bit depressing at times. It was really in your face almost to the point it’s scaring you. I feel like I will be living in a box and working for the rest of my life. The movie made me feel like America is going to become a third world country. How did we get into so much debt? What scares me the most is that China practically owns us. America used to be the central for economic power, growth, and strength. I feel this was because we were heavily orientated in factory work and we exported more than we imported. Now China has taken over that position we once had. This is easy enough to tell though, almost everything you buy says “made in China”. Now America imports a lot from oil to simple goods and our biggest money maker export is scrapping metal. China could do the same thing America did to England when fighting over the Suez Canal, that move right there, ruined England and took them off the map as an economic power. Bush’s tax cuts seem to be a big source of our debt, but if we really tallied it up, the tax cuts would only equal around three percent of all America’s debt. Another part I liked about the movie was the debt clock. Will we ever see the day were it gets to run backward? America is getting into so much debt; we might need to make a new debt clock! America needs to start acting now and working to get this debt under control. I feel the debt is both the society and the government’s fault, but just like the movie said, most likely we will be paying for America’s mistakes in the long run. That is not fair, at all. This debt will take a long time to fix. To start we should educate the country on what is happening. In the movie most people did not know what a deficit was. If people are more aware of the situation, they will most likely want to fix it because at the rate we are going, America is going to have a bleak future. If people cut back a little on spending and do not buy things they do not need, America can start the long journey to a strong economy.
ReplyDeleteI have to say that I really like the movie IOU USA because it was a great wake up call for our generation because my generation is going to have to deal with the nation’s debt. In the movie IOU USA it went on and on about have we keep barrowing money form other countries like china. And in doing so china almost owns the American because of all the money we have barrowed. We could easily be turn into a third world country in the next few decades. If we continue to barrow money for other countries and plan for the short run profit we will turn this great country into a third world country. We need to start making tough choices about how we spend our money. We can no longer afford pointless programs in this country. Like health care, I believe most Americans should have health care, but we can not a afford it. So we can not spend the money to have most Americans covered. Yes it is a hard choice but it is for the greater good of the country. And sometimes we have to make sacrifices in order to survive. Another thing our country needs to start doing in raise taxes, everyone hates taxes that’s a given. In order to start the process of recovery, we have to start with the hardest sacrifice. Yes there are going to be people complaining about taxes but in order the save the country it will be worth it in the long run. Many people think that eventually over time our debt will go away slowly and surely, but in the movie there was a timeline showing how our debt didn’t go away it actually increased over the decades. Every generation had the same mind set that they could pass the debt along to the next generation and it will be there problem. And that is how we got into the debt, we need to break the ridiculous mind set of ours and roll up are sleeves and start breaking now this debt one step at a time. We can’t aloud this debt to get any bigger and leave it to our kids and grandkids. This movie was a great wake up call for our country and showed how people are unaware of how bad on debt is, its time for a change. In no way will the recovery be easy but in the end we will be better for it
ReplyDeleteI believe that the video we watched in class, I.O.U.S.A really got down to the point and told us the facts straight up. I feel as if the video was trying to scare us and it worked because it really put things in perspective for me. The video shows all the debt and how we accumulated it over the years to now be $13 trillion. This debt comes from Medicare and Social Security, and debt held by the public today. In the video it is mentioned that the things most people think are causing so much debt such as; the war are not the problem. The war is only causing a small amount of debt for the country.
ReplyDeleteWhen talking about ways to fix the debt we are in now they explain how our generation has to be more responsible with their money. Our parents and grandparents are getting into debt and leaving it for us. The best way to make the debt go down is by educating the future generations and teaching them to more responsible with their money and saving.
Programs like Medicare and Social Security are what are causing the most debt. As the “baby boomers” are retiring now all the Social Security and Medicare is coming into play and that is slowly causing the amount of debt to rise.
I believe that our country’s $13 trillion in debt cannot be put on solely one person. Instead it is the nation’s part as a whole that we are in such great amounts of debt. For years now the government and the people have been spending irresponsibly. They have the feeling that they can always get money by borrowing. What we as a country don’t understand is that borrowing money is what gets us in debt in the first place. And that at one point there will be nothing left to borrow from. This country is now suffering tremendous amounts of debt due to carelessness from early generations and our selves. The basic rule that we all should follow is to not spend more than you have. If you cannot afford something, then don’t buy it! Yes, the government has a part in the debt because they too have been spending irresponsibly but we are the problem too. It is time to wake up and start making changes in the way we spend otherwise we will be in so much debt that there is no way out.