What motivates you to keep working despite government bailout/theft 
david927: Well, one reason I keep going is that I'm not you and I don't have 15 years of living expenses.  I have a wife and three-year-old girl who depend on me.  I still have value in my house, even at deflated prices; it makes no sense for me to walk away from it. With my education and skill set, I can probably weather the storm as merely underpaid and underemployed.  As long as I can put food on the table and keep the roof over our heads, I'll be happy.> The older generations are gonna want us to work extra hard to pay off their debtI agree, but what hasn't played a role in the prognosis for the future is technology.  Slavery used to be the only resource leverage factor.  But for the last two hundred years we've had technology as well.  How many "unserviced people" (people who work but are not really paid, such as slaves or machines) x does it take to do the work of y?  The further we push technology, the higher we can push that x:y ratio.  So, if you look at it, at current ratios, we're screwed.  But if we can really push technology, we might pull out of this ok.  It's not fair that we should have to, but those are our cards.And I don't want to be one of the millions of people telling you what to do, but in a similar situation to you, I would take everything and go someplace stable, safe and quiet, such as Switzerland, and keep things liquid and diverse, such as gold, silver, Singapore Dollars, Swiss Francs.  I would absolutely get out.  My wife's grandmother is Czech, and she was very rich before she had it all taken away in the 40's.  It's not an uncommon story in such times, and such times are coming again.  Get out; get safe.