Indentured servitude - it's the American way
for me, the worst part of coming back to the united states is seeing how people are so completely enslaved by the consumer economy... this alternet article skirts around the edges of the real issue, but then wusses out...
it ain't just young people fresh out of school, although i am watching my daughter struggling with all the above... my son and his wife, in their mid-30s, both holding good jobs with a very respectable combined income, are carrying a debt burden that i find positively staggering, and probably won't see daylight for at least 30 more years...
look, let's get really, really real... it "almost seems to function like a conspiracy" because that's exactly what it is... if you're burdened by huge debt, what other choice do you have but to keep working to pay it off, supporting the same system that put you in that dilemma in the first place... this article's author, however, seems to reveal the depth of his own "consumer society" brainwashing, because he just can't resist extolling the virtues of materialism...
now that i'm spending the majority of my time living outside the u.s., i am stupefied at how big the trade-off of getting to "live their dreams" is for americans... while it's true that having the latest gadget is an obsession the world over, there is nowhere that is more true than in the united states... constantly, everywhere i go here, people are rushing madly about in search of the latest "thing" guaranteed to make them happy... it's impossible to avoid because those "things" are constantly in your face, everywhere, all the time... coming in from south america, three hours after landing, i am with my daughter-in-law and her mother in a hospital gift shop to rival any large store in a shopping mall... oh, it's a conspiracy, all right... don't think for one minute that it isn't... Submit To Propeller
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For new college graduates and people out of school for only a few years, financial worries are enormous. Home prices, even if they are starting to fall, remain very high relative to ordinary incomes, and higher mortgage rates are no balm to money worries either. All Americans carry more debt on average than in the past but the increase for young people is most striking since young workers generally earn the least. Between college loans and car loans, people in their 20s are amazingly burdened financially compared to earlier generations, especially compared to my own generation of late-stage baby-boomer.
it ain't just young people fresh out of school, although i am watching my daughter struggling with all the above... my son and his wife, in their mid-30s, both holding good jobs with a very respectable combined income, are carrying a debt burden that i find positively staggering, and probably won't see daylight for at least 30 more years...
Americans get ensnared in a web of debt spun by a "credit industrial complex" that almost seems to function like a conspiracy to drive people into financial servitude.
look, let's get really, really real... it "almost seems to function like a conspiracy" because that's exactly what it is... if you're burdened by huge debt, what other choice do you have but to keep working to pay it off, supporting the same system that put you in that dilemma in the first place... this article's author, however, seems to reveal the depth of his own "consumer society" brainwashing, because he just can't resist extolling the virtues of materialism...
Americans get to their live their dreams in way few can in some other countries.
now that i'm spending the majority of my time living outside the u.s., i am stupefied at how big the trade-off of getting to "live their dreams" is for americans... while it's true that having the latest gadget is an obsession the world over, there is nowhere that is more true than in the united states... constantly, everywhere i go here, people are rushing madly about in search of the latest "thing" guaranteed to make them happy... it's impossible to avoid because those "things" are constantly in your face, everywhere, all the time... coming in from south america, three hours after landing, i am with my daughter-in-law and her mother in a hospital gift shop to rival any large store in a shopping mall... oh, it's a conspiracy, all right... don't think for one minute that it isn't... Submit To Propeller
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posted by profmarcus at
11/18/2006
