A Trillion Reasons for Young America to Set Goals Now Before it's Too Late

Oct. 26, 2010 - PRLog -- So there you are…skipping another class. Handing in an assignment late…again. Sleeping all day...playing all night. A life challenged by the newest electronic game. Future…what future? Do you even care?

OK KIDS. SIT UP STRAIGHT IN YOUR CHAIR. Listen up. You’d better be concerned.

Anybody ever heard about the trillion dollar deficit and all those government bailouts? According to Lawrence Kotlikoff, things are not as grand as the media spins them to be. Nor have we turned the corner. “Let’s get real”, he says. “The U.S. is bankrupt and most of us don’t even know it. Neither spending more nor taxing less will help the country pay its bills.”

O.K….I’m still watching you. While you wait impatiently for your game to reset, I want to suggest that you should be troubled to know that the USA is currently home to 78 million baby boomers that, when fully retired, will collect benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that, on average, exceed per-capita GDP. The annual costs of these ‘retirement goodies’ will total over $4 trillion in today’s dollars. “Sure”, you say. “The economy will be bigger in 20 years, just in time to provide me with the retirement dough I so dearly deserve.”   Newsflash! The experts are already saying that the economy you envision, based on the facts of today, will not be big enough to handle this size load year after year. Who woulda thought?

Some notables point out (OK, let’s call this their combined educated opinions) that this is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight, taking ever larger resources from the young and giving them to the old while promising the young their eventual turn at the trough. OUCH! Which party are these guys from anyway?

So what can you expect…really? How optimistic should YOU be right now, closing in on the tail-end of October 2010? There are 3 possibilities: there will be massive benefit cuts dropped into the laps of the baby boomers in retirement. Astronomical tax increases will leave the young with little incentive to work and save (heck, a lot of the young don’t want to work now). The government will simply continue to print vast quantities of money to cover its bills. What value will your money represent then? And to think that the media pounced all over the fact that the Greek economy was in trouble! And here’s one final sobering thought….I have only presented you with 3 possibilities.

In a word, YIKES!

You don’t have to say where you heard this from, but…’what goes up, must come down’ (I think that was Galileo). Sooner or later something or someone (or both) will come crashing down to earth. Will that ‘someone’ be YOU?

You have options. The United Student Registry  is offering a starter Guide to “Setting Goals for Amazing Results” for the ridiculously low price of $1.00. Setting realistic, achievable, and measurable goals is the key to amazing success down the road, but you have to know how the system works and take action NOW. These 34 helpful tips will assist you step-by-step to determine your goals and give you a fighting chance to achieve them so you can attain the real power…THE POWER OF CHOICE. Acting on this information should help make the climb up the mountain….. that your parents and their parents (and their political systems) threw in your path…….much easier to stomach.

It’s time to take action. We’re United Student Registry. We’re here to make a difference.

Editorial Source Material: Laurence J. Kotlikoff is a professor of economics at Boston University and author of “Jimmy Stewart Is Dead: Ending the World’s Ongoing Financial Plague with Limited Purpose Banking.” Some of the opinions expressed herein are his own.

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