Boom-bust cycles leave the millennial generation more wary of credit card debt and more prone to thrifty lifestyles.

Ringed by the posh shops of Beverly Center, Tim Ratliff said no — he didn’t have a credit card. He didn’t need one.

“I just hear so many horror stories about people being in debt,” said Ratliff, 21, who studies psychology at Ohio State University. “When you have a credit card, you feel like you have a lot of money when you don’t.”

Ratliff is like many young adults, emerging data show. His generation, dubbed millennials by academics and marketers, grew up during the boom and bust cycles of the U.S. economy over the last decade and a half — crises that appear to have reshaped their attitudes toward spending and debt.

Millennials, who range from teenagers to people in their early 30s, are more financially cautious than the stereotype of the spendthrift twentysomething, several studies suggest. Many embrace thrift.

Some experts say their habits echo those of another generation, those who came of age during the Great Depression and forged lifelong habits of scrimping and saving — along with a suspicion of financial risk.

“Both generations had a childhood memory of wealth and then saw that wealth yanked out from under them” in or around their teenage years, said Morley Winograd, who has co-written several books on the millennial generation. Though the pain was much more severe during the Depression, “Both generations are very conservative spenders,” Winograd said.

During the economic downturn, while older households ran up credit card debt, younger households whittled it down, a Pew Research Center analysis of federal data found earlier this year.

More young households had no credit card debt in 2010 than was the case in 2001, the data show. Among those who did owe on their credit cards, the median amount fell from roughly $2,500 to less than $1,700.

Maria Garcia, 30, said she gave up her credit card seven years ago. “The fees — they get you,” said Garcia, a mother studying Web development at Los Angeles Harbor College. Her attitude these days is, “If I can do without it, I’ll do without it.”

Other studies hint that Garcia is not alone in that attitude: Young adults were less likely to report using a credit card for everyday expenses than the average adult, a National Foundation for Credit Counseling survey found. Another survey from the Corporate Executive Board, a business advisory company, found that millennials with credit card debt feel worse about it than older adults do.

“They’re keenly aware that the decisions made by their parents, politically and economically, have put them behind the eight ball,” said Michael D’Antonio, co-author of “Spend Shift,” which draws upon an international opinion survey about values and spending. “This is the screwed generation — and I think they know it.”

Many young adults have forgone big purchases. Millennials buy fewer cars and own fewer homes, federal data show.

They cook from scratch more often than older adults, are more likely to try homemade beauty treatments, and are more apt to use coupons to find deals, the market research firm Information Resources Inc. found in a survey last year.

I recently talked to a doctor who retired after a 30-year career. I asked him how much medicine had changed during the three decades he practiced. “Oh, tremendously,” he said. He listed off a dozen examples. Deaths from heart disease and stroke are way down. Cancer survival rates are way up. We’re better at diagnosing, treating, preventing, and curing disease than ever before.

Consider this: In 1900, 1% of American women giving birth died in labor. Today, the five-year mortality rate for localized breast cancer is 1.2%. Being pregnant 100 years ago was almost as dangerous as having breast cancer is today.

The problem, the doctor said, is that these advances happen slowly over time, so you probably don’t hear about them. If cancer survival rates improve, say, 1% per year, any given year’s progress looks low, but over three decades, extraordinary progress is made. 

Compare health-care improvements with the stuff that gets talked about in the news — NBC anchor Andrea Mitchell interrupted a Congresswoman last week to announce Justin Bieber’s arrest — and you can understand why Americans aren’t optimistic about the country’s direction. We ignore the really important news because it happens slowly, but we obsess over trivial news because it happens all day long.

Expanding on my belief that everything is amazing and nobody is happy, here are 50 facts that show we’re actually living through the greatest period in world history.

….all 50 HERE

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, fellow citizens:

This summer we will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I.

This senseless, destructive war was started and championed by politicians who cared nothing for the 9 million people who lost their lives.

And in doing so, they began a century of warfare which continues to this day.

Our military industrial complex is larger than ever. We have nearly 2 million troops and national guardsmen, plus 3.5 million civilians employed in the defense sector.

With such awesome capabilities, we continue to resort to violence and death to exact political goals which benefit a tiny elite.

All of this has created a police state in the Land of the Free that is a far cry from the country we all grew up in.

Your government has spawned a culture of fear and intimidation. Nearly every federal agency, including the Fish and Wildlife Service, has its own gun-toting police force to pistol-whip citizens into submission.

And we’re stocking up. Your government has recently procured 1.6 BILLION rounds of hollow-point ammunition to supplement our existing supplies.

But frankly, we don’t need guns to harass citizens.

Our tax authorities have become more threatening than mafia warlords. The plunder is so severe that record numbers of Americans are renouncing their citizenship and leaving the country.

There are now dozens of federal, state, and local agencies and courts which have the power to confiscate your assets without any due process.

In addition to your house, your business, and your savings, we also have the authority to take your children away from you as if they are property of the state.

We are here to tell you what you can and cannot put in your own body, or whether you can collect rainwater that falls on own property.

In fact, on any given business day, the federal government issues hundreds of pages of new ‘rules’, proposed regulations, draft bills, executive orders, and/or regulatory notices.

And if you are not compliant with these rules, you may be committing a crime. Whether you know it or not.

When this nation was founded, there were four federal crimes on the books. Today there are THOUSANDS. Plus we have millions of government employees at all levels to enforce the penalties.

All of this, of course, is financed by you the tax slave.

You (plus unborn generations) are the poor suckers charged with paying off the national debt we politicians have created.

Officially the debt is just north of $17 trillion. But if you include Social Security and pension shortfalls, the figure is several times higher.

You’ll never know for sure because we have become masters of deceit regarding official statistics, whether inflation, unemployment, or our liabilities.

But the situation is so dire that the Congressional Budget Office projects the Social Security Administration’s disability insurance trust fund to RUN OUT by 2017.

We get by year after year by increasing the debt. And at well over 100% of GDP, we have truly reached the point of no return.

We are now in a position where we must default. Either we must default on our national debt, or we must default on our obligations to you the citizens.

We may end up stealing your savings. Robbing your Social Security. Taxing you to death. Or simply inflating away the value of our debt.

Naturally, we’re going to screw you in the process somehow… so be prepared for that. Especially the inflationary tidal wave that’s coming.

Our central bank has expanded its balance sheet at an unprecedented pace, creating massive asset bubbles in its wake. These asset bubbles have disproportionately benefited the ultra-wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

Such wanton money printing has also been tremendously destructive to our credibility. Other nations worry about our reckless irresponsibility. That’s why we keep spying on them.

Make no mistake: the consequences of our actions are here. And the days of the United States as the world’s dominant superpower are finished.

As the decline hastens, we will struggle to sell our debt to the world and to ship our dollars abroad. Fewer nations will be interested in our empty promises.

And without the generosity of other nations loaning us money at record low interest rates that fail to keep pace with inflation, you will really be screwed.

When this happens, you can absolutely count on us to clamp down even harder on the economy and control even more of your lives. For your own good, of course.

No, this may not be the country that you all grew up in. But it is the state of our union… whatever remains of it.

And so my fellow Americans, I urge you to grab your ankles and get ready for a little ‘shared sacrifice’.

But don’t worry about me, or my senior staff. We will leave government with cushy pensions, $750,000 speaking fees, board seats on public companies, and top positions in the industries that we have accommodated at your expense.

And of course I will be paid handsomely for the arrogant memoirs I will write in which I deny any responsibility for the shit I’ve gotten you all into.

So when I say “shared sacrifice”, I really mean “your sacrifice”.

Thank you. God bless you, and God bless these United States of America.

Until tomorrow, 
 
Simon Black 
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com

Ed Note: Found this cartoon that pretty much explains Michael Campbell’s commentary this morning:

Michaels Comment: The lack of sincerity is breathtaking. Want to know if someone is sincere? Watch them ignore any information that is inconvenient for their political agenda. Explained pretty well by this cartoon:

{mp3}mcbuscomjan28cc{/mp3}