EVEN IN BOOM TIMES, BILLS MUST BE PAID

For workers at the low end of the wage scale, paying the bills can be quite a struggle. But the U.S. Census Bureau finds that it isn't just the poor who are in financial trouble. A fifth of all Americans say they can't make the dollars stretch every month. The interesting thing is that those folks are spread over just about all income categories.

Why?

Here we are in one of the best boom times ever. Prosperity is all around us. Inflation is extremely low. Employment is high. There seem to be more jobs available than there are workers to fill them. With all of this, why is bill collecting still a prosperous profession?

There is no single answer. Part of the answer is that prosperity has the effect of increasing our wants way out of proportion to our needs.

Another part of the problem is easy credit. It has never been easier to use non-existent money to purchase large-ticket luxury items with little or no idea how they will be paid for.

Still another problem is taxation, which takes away more and more spendable income that, by rights, ought to be discretionary for anyone with an income. But there are any number of taxation experts who could rightfully argue that lower taxes wouldn't mean more savings.

There are generational differences too. The generation that remembers the Depression tends to be more frugal with its dollars. Baby Boomers were raised by parents who didn't want their children ever to experience the deprivations of those years, so they tend to rely more on offers for new credit cards than on savings passbooks.

Looking ahead, it is easy to wonder what will happen to a society of ever-growing debt. Some examples are all to easy to cite: Social Security and Medicare, for starters.