Depressing News, And Then...

While driving around town today, I listened to KNPR.  The news was not only depressing, but distressing.  First, there was this report on the national debt: it's HUGE, not just currently but for the foreseeable future.  The vision of the future that the interviewee gave was that the government would essentially run out of money for everything but debt payments in 2035.  Then came a discussion of health care costs, and how they're bankrupting families.  The discussion was of a fictional novel, but there were certainly real-world implications in the story.  The final blow was this factoid: 43% of American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement.  So the future I envisioned now involves a lack of savings and a broken system of Social Security, coupled with crippling health care costs.  Pretty distressing stuff, wouldn't you say?  But there was one piece of somewhat good news on the public radio airwaves this afternoon -- Jaime Escalante's inspirational story continues (seen Stand and Deliver?), despite some real problems on the health care front (terminal cancer).  Read/listen to the story, and you'll see what I mean.