You don't get old being a fool

My Uncle Pat died a few years ago at the age of 92. There's an old saying that you don't get old being a fool. Uncle Pat was a testament to that.
He was a prolific reader and largely a self taught man. According to my cousin Vic, it wasn't uncommon for Uncle Pat to read a book a day. Although Uncle Pat didn't say a lot, when he did, you listened. He was the Merrill Lynch of our family. The only extravagant thing Uncle Pat and Aunt Katherine ever did as far as I know, was buy a new Buick every couple of years, whether they needed it or not. Other than that, they kept things pretty simple (for example, they lived in the same 1000 square foot house for over 50 years).
The one thing Uncle Pat was always concerned about, was the fear of living through another economic depression. He lived through the first one and apparently didn't like it. He always told my Dad, that to protect yourself against going hungry in the event of a repeat of 1929, you needed to own things of "real value" as apposed to stocks and bonds. Stocks aren't worth much if the entity behind the stock goes out of business and bonds are only good for starting a camp fire if the issuer of the bond can't pay you back for the money you loaned them (paraphrasing here-I wasn't privy to the actual conversations).
Bottom line: I think he was right. I also sense strongly that our country is not going to be able to print it's way out of debt. I'm no financial genius but the fact that our country has over $14 trillion in debt and has, for years now, been spending more than they take in, points to a financial disaster the likes of which none of us has ever seen. I don't normally buy into the prognostications of those who preach doom and gloom. I'm actually not buying into it now. But on a common sense level, I don't see anything related to our economy that tells me things are going to get better, without making radicle changes to the way we do business as a nation.
If for the past several years, you've been spending substantially more than you earn (government spending versus tax revenue); if you have racked up more debt than you could ever possibly pay back (14 trillion and growing by the second-no possible way to ever pay this off) and if you don't have a way of generating an income above your current pay check (the maximum amount you can tax the people is 100%), then at some point you're going belly up. And if you go belly up, it will be years before anyone is ever going to take you at your word that you'll pay them back if they'll loan you money like they used to back before you went belly up eg: China and other countries buying US Treasury Notes and similar debt instruments from our government on the hopes that they'll eventually get their money back.
I think we'd all be wise to focus on paying off what ever debt we might have, and while we're doing that, learn to live on less than we make. We might also be well served to think about how we're going to buy groceries if the value of our currency continues to decline, to the potential point of being worthless. They don't call that a depression-they call it a total financial collapse (just like personal bankruptcy-only worse).
Whether or not things get better or keep getting worse, it looks like Uncle Pat was right; we need to own things that have an actual value, so we're never in a position of having to stand in a soup line or live in an old bus.
Thanks Uncle Pat for passing along your wisdom. You didn't get old being a fool!