As a thinker and someone who ponders the future in so many different situations, I’ve been thinking about the new normal that we are seeing in society. This new normal being drastically different than even the normal we were even used to not more than five years ago.

The New Normal for Education

For sure 10 years ago, young Americans were able to graduate with a degree and debt that, for the most part, they could pay off with the new job they were planning for. The new normal now for students is to go to college and obtain a degree, take on debt, then drive back home to live with their parents and settle for a job that barely covers their student loan payments; and this is one of the better case scenarios.

For students that graduated from college and even high school the last five years, the new normal will not include a glorified perception of education that was inherent in prior generations when looking at college attendance and degrees.

The New Normal for Households

In addition, how about this for a new normal; the middle to upper class Americans are having less kids than ever. In fact, according to the Guttmacher Institute’s analysis of government data, about half of all pregnancies in this country are unplanned, with poor women now five times more likely than higher-income women to have an unplanned pregnancy.

The correlation of what we are seeing here is that the working class and those who aren’t on government entitlements are being discouraged to have kids because, believe it or not, it ACTUALLY COSTS REAL MONEY. For those who don’t have to directly pay for the consequences of their actions, nothing changes and on the contrary, they actually make money from irresponsible behavior. For the rest, a baby doesn’t just magically get paid for through some program designed to help.

We’d like to point out that this is not an example of good people versus bad people, it’s a direct example of human nature and how government handouts inevitably encourage bad behavior and unfortunately discourage productivity. So the new normal in this situation is smaller households among the working class communities and larger households among the poor.

QE will be the New Normal

People are wondering when the Fed is going to completely get away from QE (money printing). Unfortunately QE in my opinion will be the new normal. It probably won’t be long until it’s in high school text books as some wonderful thing that the Fed does to make sure people have jobs and stocks go up. Quantitative easing is being ingrained into society as something that has been good for the economy. After all, look how far we’ve come since the crash of 2008…

I believe that in the long-term QE will be the new normal. Inevitably it will cause run-away inflation because it is simply unsustainable, but as long as the train stays on the tracks, we won’t derail yet.

The New Normal in Healthcare: ObamaCare

My fourth and final new normal for today’s read is Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act will continue to destroy small businesses by making them less profitable, until many more individuals begin to qualify for Obamacare. Obviously the statistics aren’t even established yet, but I could almost guarantee that the number of Americans be boarding the subsidy train of Obamacare will go up exponentially as the country gets poorer. This is the vicious cycle that we are forced to comply with via taxes and regulations.

I’m personally compelled to think about the new normal more so now because I am anxiously awaiting the birth of my firstborn son. I can only imagine what things will look like when he is a young adult and establishing his own future. The phrase “land of opportunity” is meant to describe a nation that has an abundance of ways to succeed and thrive which I feel is becoming less applicable to the United States.  If you’ve looked around lately, you might be wondering what happened to the nation with this notion that used to exist at one point in our history.

I wish my son grows up and develops a passion to problem solve and succeed even when times are tough. I wish this for him, myself, and all of you reading this post today.

Until next time,
Kenneth Ameduri
Chief Editor at CrushTheStreet.com