It is interesting to ponder what the cultural effects of being a nation of borrowers, rather than a nation of savers, have been. Clearly, it has been the policy of the bankers behind the Federal Reserve to, in effect, get us addicted to easy money, to spending more than we make. What they want is a nation that is constantly making interest payments, but never paying off their debts.
If not one of the effects of never thinking in the long term frivolity? A sense of tenuous and superficial pleasure in material things, that never quite scratches the itch, because you haven’t earned them?
Does not a sense of dependency emerge? One thinks of the movie “Brazil”, where Michael Palin’s character instructs the protagonist not to hold out too long, lest it affect his credit rating. Our credit ratings: surely this is a point of vanity, to “earn” the right to spend considerably more than you make?
Is any amount of money enough to avoid bankruptcy, if you spend just a bit more? Are the foreclosure rates less in the swank neighborhoods than the poor ones? Probably a bit, but there have been many, many bonfires of the vanities lately.
Does easy credit not alter our perceptions of what to value, what to pursue? Does it not alter it in slight but real ways in the direction of materialistic acquisitiveness?
Worth pondering.