Originally posted by Puritanhead
Well Mr. Howes -- not to shrug off personal responsibility, but I think our American civil society, political and financial institutions have a way of inculcating this aggrandizement of debt -- public and private -- for the enrichment of a fudiciary elite at the expense of society at large. Soon, over $1 trillion of federal taxpayer money in the annual budget will be merely for the provision of paying interest on the large debt. Bankers grovel about insolvency and have spearheaded an initiative to reform bankruptcy laws while they do nothing to correct their lax lending practices and easy credit... The whole nature of our debt-based monetary system is conducive to the aggrandizement of debt-- and the incentives are stacked against accumulation of savings and capital... it can actually be detrimental or disadvantageous to save money now. In a Cato Institute study, economists Leband and McClintock surmise in their research that there is much more to U.S. economic activity than the producing of goods and services, and that groups and individuals spend an enormous amount trying to appropriate the wealth of others (and conversely preventing that appropriation.) That amount is perhaps $800 billion to $1 trillion. There are hundreds of billions of dollars in costs from 'transfer activity' or 'legal plunder' borne by our society. As Frederic Bastiat says, "The state is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else." This proverb is all to applicable in our time and in our nation.
To say heavy financial burdens are always or entirely the fault of the person who bares exorbitant debt misses the point about the misplaced priorities in our American society, the high cost of living, and the ill effects of political manipulation, reckless government spending, and the utilization of the instrumentality of the law to appropriate vast sums of other people's money. Avarice is instutionalized and effects everyone-- it's present in the greed that compels politicians to raise taxes far in excess of economic growth, and put a mortgage on future generations. In North Carolina, state taxes have risen on average five percent per year since the 1970s and yet annualized real economic growth pales in comparison. It's felt in the exorbitant costliness of the overregulated and quasi-socialized health care system, and likewise in the education racket where annualized tuition inflation is sometimes annually approaching double-digits.
What gets most young people is education expenses, and college education is seen as a necessary hurdle to overcome. One most often get credentials, and they go beyond a bachelor's degree to open up a door of opportunity to certain professions and management jobs. Increasingly, in our time, unless one finds an entreprenuerial niche, not having a Masters degree is like being a second-class citizen particularly when one is married and starting a family. People can dub ambition to better oneself as avarice... but I know of one of my brother's friends that just had a baby, and their family had to come up $15,000 to pay the bill. You cannot raise a family without a decent-paying salaried job... and such jobs are only attained by getting the requisite costly educational credentials. Increasingly, young people (particularly Christians) are putting off starting families (and of course marriage) for longer and longer times well into 30s, and it owes to lack of financial resources, lack of career opportunities, or heavy debt burden from college.
I have more debt from college expenses than my parents had when they got their first house. College tuition inflates at ridiculous rates... For example, my law school raised tuition the same year I started roughly some $4,500 in one year I believe.
The public sector in America eats up over one-third of the economy, and for the more productive well-to-do give up 40% of their income from taxes. Successful businesses in America pay exorbitant taxes even higher than socialist Sweden for example. These high business taxes are passed onto consumers in the form of higher prices, and to employees in the form of reduced salary and wages.
Life is a rat race, and the bottom eighty percent of bread-earners have seen no real (i.e. non-inflationary gains) in their income since the 1970s. The government used to produce a so called misery index which was based on a compilation of various economic indicators, but stop producing it because it was so anguishing. Now, since the Clinton years, they just manipulate economic statistics to make things appear better than they are -- and are not adequately distinguishing between inflationary growth and real economic growth.
All I wanted to do was make something of myself -- get an education, finish my doctorate, pass the bar, and get a respectable salaried job, so I could do what most everyone wants to do... start a family, get a house, do right by my future children and give them things I never had (i.e. private K-12 Christian education). I wanted to be an advocate, an attorney, an officer of the court, and a principled one at that, and try and help people through my professional activities... not just line my own pocket or chase ambulances as a financial hustler. I was crazy though perhaps to try and be a joint law and divinity student... and God has humbled me.
To say debt is just some intangible thing or financial status visible only on paper, ignores the dead weight it puts on your shoulders as you labor in vain carrying it... it feels like a bag of bricks on your back and shackles on your feet.
Proverbs 22:7
[Edited on 8-10-2005 by Puritanhead]
Our government is promising, if it wins the election, to cut all interest from student loans. I just hope they will actually do it 
no one is really doubting that they will.
I think you are right about how our culture pushes us towards debt... And I think your final paragraph is dead on.
(joke...)
