If I Were a Rich Man

What would happen if all of a sudden everyone in the United States became rich? By rich, I mean never have to work again rich. In a nutshell, if everyone became rich a great many bad things would happen. I give the answer based on what I would do. I myself would not do anything bad, but on a national level bad things would happen.

After becoming rich, I would probably quit my job and become a fulltime blogger. It is not that I dislike my job, in fact I very much enjoy it, it is just that a job is still a job. Imagine how fast people would leave a job that they did not like. Who would do those jobs?

There would be the adrenaline junkies to take some of the more exciting jobs, but we would probably still not have enough policemen and firemen. Most of the people who still wanted have a job would probably become teachers. In the end, we would not have enough people to do some of the basic things we need done to keep the economy, and the country, going.

We would probably see inflation. For example, a housing bubble would occur since people would now have the money for that second home and/or waterfront property. Large screen TVs would fly off the shelves and luxury autos would sell out.

People from around the world would flock to the U.S. for the jobs that are now available. This would surely mean illegal immigrants and would put a strain on our society due to the influx of people. Not to mention the strain on the health-care system and the infrastructure. Thank God that everyone can’t all of a sudden become rich.

Unfortunately something almost as bad can happen. People can start thinking like they are rich. If you do not believe me, just think about our country’s current economic situation and how we got here.

Today’s economic woes can be traced to two things; the belief that everyone deserves to be able to buy a house and the belief that buying a house means that you are rich. Since more people started buying houses there was a housing bubble. For an extended period of time, the people who bought the houses thought that the extra equity in the house made them rich. They went out and bought a new car, a large screen TV, went on vacation, and sometime upgraded to an even larger house. I know families that remortgaged their houses, to the maximum allowed, so they could go on vacation.

At some point reality set in and the bills came due. People found out that they were not as rich as they though. Houses were lost and people started to cut back. The problem now is that our thinking has sung in the other direction. We now think we are poor. Even people with secure and good paying jobs are cutting back on spending. Is saving a bad thing? Not in and of itself, but the current delusion of poverty is only making the effects of the delusion of wealth worse.