The Long Road Ahead
No matter your political persuasion, it is undoubtable last night was historic. John McCain gave, in my opinion, one of the best speeches of his life, again reminding people around the globe why he has been, and will continue to be, such a beloved patriot.
Barack Obama’s speech was immensely powerful, a testament to himself, his family, and his campaign. He rightfully started to look forward: our economy is in tatters and desparate need of repair. An election is but a stepping stone on the way:
We know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.
Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.
There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after the children fall asleep and wonder how they’ll make the mortgage or pay their doctors’ bills or save enough for their child’s college education.
There’s new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair.
The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.
I promise you, we as a people will get there.
And so begins, in my mind, an evolution of the concept of an ownership society. Notice the use of the plural in both speeches - neither McCain nor Obama promised they would bring the change our society needs. Rather, it is something we must work on together. We all must own the change we want to see in the world, to paraphrase Gandhi.
The central premise of this blog is that we have been living beyond our means, we’ve spent more than we’ve earned for too long. That, as a society, we are poorly equipped with the basic tools of financial literacy that might have prevented some of our current economic mess. We lack the basic understanding of credit, debt, mortgages, credit cards, and so on, that empowers individuals to take their financial future into their own hands.
We are in need of a paradigm shift of how we see the economy and our own financial future. The first step towards this empowerment is an educational one.
And that is why I blog.
