Jim Bakker Show - A Credit Card Lifestyle - Michael Snyder
Aired: 2017-01-17
Duration: 02:47


=== Living Beyond Our Means (02:47) ===

[00:00:00]  Well, Pastor Jim, let's try to break this down so people can understand because in the United States today, we're living a standard of living that we don't deserve to be living.
[00:00:10]  People say, well, let's make the economy better.
[00:00:12]  And what they really mean is, let's make things better for ourselves right now so we have an even higher standard of living.
[00:00:18]  Well, we consume far more than we produce.
[00:00:23]  We use more wealth than we create.
[00:00:26]  How are we able to do this?
[00:00:27]  Well, let's break it down real, real simply.
[00:00:29]  Because on a family level, on an individual level, you could start living like a millionaire today.
[00:00:37]  All you got to do is go out, apply for a whole bunch of different credit cards, start spending money like there's no tomorrow, and you could live like a millionaire for a while.
[00:00:47]  Now, a day of reckoning is going to come.
[00:00:49]  Anyone who's ever gotten in trouble with credit cards knows how that feels.
[00:00:52]  But for a certain amount of time, you could live like a millionaire.
[00:00:56]  And collectively, of course, that's what we're doing.
[00:00:59]  In fact, in the fourth quarter of last year, Christmas season, everyone loves the Christmas season.
[00:01:04]  Well, in the fourth quarter of 2015, Christmas season, Americans added more to their credit card balances than they did for the entire years of 2009, 2010, 2011 combined.
[00:01:19]  Just in the fourth quarter of 2015.
[00:01:21]  So we're going into massive amounts of debt.
[00:01:23]  Now, corporate debt as well.
[00:01:25]  We are seeing the greatest corporate debt, business debt binge we've ever seen in United States history.
[00:01:30]  So corporations are just going gangbusters for debt.
[00:01:34]  But now the day of reckoning has started.
[00:01:36]  Corporate debt defaults are the highest they've been since the last financial crisis.
[00:01:40]  We're starting to have a big problem, which is causing banks and financial institutions starting to have problems because they're not getting paid back on their debts.
[00:01:48]  But of course, Pastor Jim mentioned the U.S. national debt.
[00:01:51]  What we're doing is we're bringing future consumption into the present.
[00:01:55]  That's what debt does.
[00:01:57]  We're borrowing from future generations, making things worse for them to make things better for us.
[00:02:02]  So when Barack Obama entered the White House, we were $10.6 trillion in debt.
[00:02:07]  Now we're $19.4 trillion in debt, an increase of $8.8 trillion.
[00:02:13]  So when you break that down by year, we've been averaging an average of adding $1.1 trillion a year to the national debt since Barack Obama has been in office.
[00:02:23]  We were told deficits are under control.
[00:02:25]  What?
[00:02:26]  Are you crazy?
[00:02:27]  No, $1.1 trillion a year.
[00:02:29]  That's money we're taking, consumption we're taking from the future.
[00:02:32]  Standard of living we're taking from the future, bringing it into the present.
[00:02:35]  That's why I'm saying we're living a standard of living we do not deserve here in the United States of America.
[00:02:41]  We're stealing it from the future.
[00:02:43]  What we're doing to future generations of Americans is beyond criminal.