Is U.S.'s storybook image lost forever?

It was once a classic storybook image: The American family with a middle class income, 2.5 children, a nice car to get around town, and a white picket fence with a house behind it. Life was good. Now that image is distorted severely. Middle class Americans today are finding themselves trapped between stagnant wages and a high cost of living. Many worry they will not have the money to pay their bills, purchase a house, or provide for their family. The dollar simply does not stretch like it used to and, according to Curtis Arnold, author of Honey, Who Shrunk Our Money? Protect Your Savings and Profit from America's Woes, the situation is only going to get worse.

"The truth is that many Americans could face a financial future even bleaker than they expect. Outsourcing and offshoring jeopardize an increasing number of industries," says Arnold. "What began as a trickle will soon become a flood as a growing number of productive enterprises move overseas to produce products more cheaply and more efficiently."

Despite these problems, Arnold points out that there are ways to protect one's savings and actually profit from the country's woes. "The quality of life for most Americans may decline, but with crisis comes opportunity. All of these trends will adversely affect most Americans, but it's possible to survive and even thrive."

For instance, "we often hear that our trade deficit is growing because China can produce nearly anything more cheaply than we can. This is only partially true," contends Arnold. "We can still do some things better than anyone else in the world and there are still industries where we export more than we import."

He suggests investing in those industries as well as in natural resource stocks that will benefit from the rapid growth and industrialization going on in China and India.

Arnold warns that we can expect higher costs, especially for services such as health care and education. In addition, he cautions that the real estate and stock and bond markets--where most Americans have invested--could be in for rough times, partly because of a vulnerable dollar and the financial implications of terrorism.

COPYRIGHT 2007 Society for the Advancement of Education
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning