What Should We Do?

Toastmaster's Club Speech

Presented August 30, 1993

The following is a speech I presented to a Toastmaster's Club concerning our country's greatest problem. It is more true now than then.:

What should we do?

That is the question before us tonight. Should we do nothing, as we have for many, many moons in the past, or should we do everything in our power to stop it? Stop what? You ask?

OK--try this on for size. What if a giant meteor was heading straight at the world, scheduled to land in the middle of the United States a year from now? Can't you just imagine what our government would be doing trying to stop the danged thing? They have even made movies about this subject, showing the total confusion being expressed by everyone.

What if a new kind of plague was slowly developing out of New Mexico, that if not stopped would eventually kill everyone in the world? Would we be trying to stop the danged thing? Or would we just all lie down and say: "what the hey, there's nothing we can do, it's too late, already."

So far, my suppositions have been pretty far a field, and the likelihood of anyone in this room still being around to see such things is pretty slim. So let's try something a little more realistic. More apt to happen. Or to be crudely blunt--it's just around the danged corner!

What if the coming disaster was the TOTAL FINANCIAL COLLAPSE of this once great country we at one time proudly called The United States of America? What if you knew you were going to lose everything you have by March of next year? Lose your money, your savings, your insurance, your house, your car, everything you own and fought for so dearly? Maybe even lose your life?

"Can't happen", you  say! "THEY (in capital letters) won't let it happen," you hope. "Our country is just too big for anything like that," your father told you.

Suppose that the Social Security System does collapse and Medicare and Medicade can no longer be funded? What will all of you, that depend upon your Social Security check for survival, do when it doesn't come? Where will you put your mother when Medicade is no longer able to pay for her place in the nursing home? Just how many jobs frying hamburgers will it take when unemployment jumps to 30 or 40 million? What will people do when their mortgage becomes larger than the value of their home and they have no money to make the monthly payments?

Congress has spent years trying to steal the seven or eight trillion dollars our old folks have put away in savings. They stole the Social Security money and everything else. Do you think they'll just ignore the money in the banks? What will you do when your savings are stolen by Congress?

It is nothing new to have 25 and 30 year old children still living with mom and pop. Think what it will be like when grandma and grandpa have to move in, too? And to top it off, there will probably be no one in the house with a full time job. Maybe no job at all. Who is going to take care of you when the Government goes broke?

Now picture, if you can, yourself living in a neighborhood where houses on either side of you are empty and for sale. Windows are broken. The homeless and squatters break in to sleep there. There are no police to stop them because the local government is also broke and the tax base has fallen sharply.

For the same reason, the streets are full of potholes and street lights are broken. Power outages are common. In this dark, menacing environment, crime runs wild. Almost everyone drives a "clunker" because few people can afford a new car anymore. Mountains of green garbage bags pile high, stinking to heaven, because it's three weeks between trash pick-ups. In short...the suburbs will become slums. It has already happened in communities that went broke. It is going to happen in a great many more, such as ours here.

What makes me think that such things are just around the corner? Here's the reason: It will take less than five years for the national debt to reach a point whereby it takes every dime our government takes in to pay the interest on that debt. When that happens our country will no longer be able to borrow money and those who have loaned to us in the past are suddenly going to want their money back. It's called: going broke, kaput, finished, or as they say in Japan: ah-cha-pa.

Everyone enjoys laughing at Ross Perot, because he has a big nose and ears large enough to use for flying. The real reason I think people laugh at him is because they are afraid he is right.

I realize that I don't know enough about the subject to answer my opening question: What Should We Do? I'm also not sure if Ross Perot knows. What I do know is: Ross Perot is the only person in this once great country that is giving any consideration to the financial problems we as individuals will face when the crash comes. He is at least trying to give us an answer to the question:

What Should We Do?

(I believe the above is more true now than ever and that Ross Perot is still the only person trying to do anything about the problem. I heard him speak July 21, 1996 and he listed about 25 or 30 things that need to be done to save our country. None of them had anything to do with abortions, gay marriages, or any of the crazy things our media big shots seem to think are important issues in the coming presidential election.)

by William L. Wright

I must add this -- back in 1993 everyone thought I was the craziest person in town, spouting these kind of ideas. Now who is crazy???

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