Long day! Today I had my Latin class, which I began a couple of weeks ago, paid for various car things and spent a lot of time waiting in line. I had two washing machines and a dyer eat my money in the laundry, someone touched my stuff (which really ticks me off!), a got some new narrow leg jeans and changed my bed sheets.
Now that the boring, mundane stuff is out of the way I can get on to the interesting stuff. Whilst I was eating lunch, dinner, in between washing and whilst making my bed I watched parts 1, 2 and 3 of "Addicted to Money" a 3 part series on the ABC which aired a while back but I hadn't watched until now. Now whilst I felt that the guy kind of over-did the dramatisation I've seen some amazing things. None more incredible that his explanation of a Trillion Dollars. We hear this talked about quite a bit but don't ever think about how much that really is. One Trillion Dollars has 12 0's after it. That is: 1 000 000 000 000! Apparently you'd have to spend 1 MILLION dollars every day for over 2,000 days to spend 1 trillion dollars. 2,000 days is about 6-7 years!!! And this is the amount of money lost during the financial crisis!
However that isn't even what gets to me. What gets me is the blazae attitude that politicians, bankers, and even the public, has taken. Most money in the world is imaginary. It is a bunch of figures on a computer and most of it doesn't even have a home anymore. Globalisation has caused so much financial trade that we don't know where our money comes from and where it goes. It astounds me that more care is not taken and I reckon that people are amazingly naive if they think that it's all happened and is over.
I suspect that we are headed for major changes in the next few years. According to the documentary we've been living on credit, not just as a person or even as a nation but as a global community. We cannot continue in this way and I would even go so far as to say that we are living on credit not just in terms of finances. We all know that something big is happening to the planet. So what do we do now?
I personally feel like something in the world is very, very wrong. We exploit children, we live beyond our means, we trash our home, we are rude, smug, insulting, violent, condescending and selfish. We seem to care little for others, we live off credit and gossip and we trash people who are simply trying to do their jobs.
Some of you may think I'm over dramatising but let me be clear. I am not talking about every single person being all these things. There are wonderful, kind, generous, loving people in the world too but they are rare gems. Let's face it most of us don't just get over it. Let the person with one item ahead of you at the shops, allow someone into your lane on the road, save for our future, live within our means, take care of the planet....I try but I don't succeed all the time. It's hard. But what will be the cost of we fail?
Give me your thoughts - Do you think we over spend? If so do you think we can change?
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