So I dare ask. For whom the bells toll? Eh?

Give it some thought… Mr. Rich-Man! Beware! And this is especially pertinent to CEOs at Goldman $acks! A hungry man is a terrible thing to behold, but when he sees his children hungry, he becomes extremely dangerous. He becomes a guerrilla (i.e.: Joe Stacks and Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kazinsky, et.al). Yes! Indeed! Old Coyote Knose… it’s a lot easier to burn down a rich man’s mansion than it is to build that mansion.

Also, note that in 2008 “financial services and insurances” took another .28 of expenditures. Even when times were good, the insurance industry was taking a big chunk of what would have been profits. The two categories together give a better picture of the general tax on the economy finance and insurance represent.

BTW, how many of those 618 million cards are in business names?

Why does this seem so radical? Why do so many seemingly intelligent people jump on this line of reasoning as some kind of cop out? If you only earn 40 thousand a year, this means you don’t earn 80. Hell, it means you don’t even earn 50. It means just what it means….a number that is only representational of itself.

Numbers have a way of biting your butt, if you ignore them. They’re worse than terrible toddlers.

I dunno…..if they offered me the job of star spangled dictator or something……..the first thing I’d do is make debt and its accompanying interest payments illegal for a year. No-one buys anything on credit.

But seriously – I guess they’ve pushed the envelope far enough and hard enough that a lot of people are going to arrive at this point all by themselves anyway.
And then we’ll see what the credit hounds do….as all that tasty compound interest slips away like wolves into the mist.

Get ready, Freddy…..the American dream has turned into a nightmare.

As more folks wise up (a dozen times bitten, a hundred times shy?) we’ll no doubt see a new trend of discontinuing conspicuous consumption….no more keeping up with Joneses.
It’ll be a matter of just keeping, period. (home, family, a car, the dog, and sanity…)

Real middle class, as we used to know it….has probably scampered like a frightened rabbit upwards into the top two quintiles (the top 40%) leaving what’s left of the bottom 60 floundering like catfish on a Mississippi levee…..high and dry.

Of course, most of the bottom area of that segment are all probably trying to sustain lifestyles of the rich and famous…so the scramble continues.

It isn’t just a lame thing that real home economy has been hit in the teeth with income stagnation (or worse.)
It’s this weird thing….that great social shame seems to beget the impoverishment of non-aquisition in such a consumerist society.
As if we had to shop like Titans just to keep the whole GDP going.

The American middle class did not rise and thrive through the 1950’s and 1960’s on crap service jobs. It took real jobs to do that. The crap jobs were what ambious housewives and bored high school students fought over.

And that right there – is the continuing shame our decimated economy. The dignity of work is the real glue that holds a political economy together. Playing with exotic pieces of paper hardly qualifies as nation-building enterprise.

These so-called “jobs” are the crumbs thrown to placate the masses?
Marie Antionette’s cake, more likely. And just look at what happened to her………..

If you don’t agree with the terms of the card, just don’t use it!

Cancel your account and pay off what you owe. Real simple!

Quit the Entitlement Attitude: no one deserves a credit card and generations of Americans did just fine without using one.

I think part of the problem here – goes back to all the plans laid for a jobless economy. Every way possible that could be conceived to create a model of economic activity that required less labor cost, was a boon to the ownership class, and doom for everyone else.
Actually having to hire people – is a toxic notion in most boardrooms.
Having to hire them and pay competitive American wage rates is the equivalent of high blood pressure and heart failure to the suits, it seems.

It says a lot though, doesn’t it? That the notion of a “recovery” at all, could be so passionately embraced by the privileged few, while so very many are left out in the cold.
But there it is – they’ve recovered…no-one else has.

What amazes me is not only the waste of workers…and their lives.
That is after all a moral issue.
Beyond that, is the bad management. Chronically unemployed people provide negative returns to the state. (they cost a bit, don’t they?)
Whereas gainfully employed people pay taxes! (imagine that)
Something to think about the next time Uncle shrugs and turns out empty pockets.

Some kind of weird system expects working people to close their eyes, hold their noses, and take the plunge (which used to be based on solid employment.)
That employment is no longer solid. Somehow every single worker caught in that trap, is a deadbeat? Bad planner? Gambler? Or pick any one of the smorgasbord of lame excuses offered up by the system, instead of the obvious one – the system is broken.

But you know – we must admit that the two-income model at first, was quite breathlessly lucractive (through the latter seventies and into the early eighties.)
I think part of the problem there was the ramp up in consumption as a consequence of the extra income.
Picture a time when there were still lots of affordable modest homes around, able to be purchased for not much more than one income. Likewise, lots of smart economical choices….late model but not necessarily new or high-end cars…
Gradually, this all changed into some weird societal zombified paralysis of reason. Everyone had to have 2 Infinity FX 35’s, and 3600 square feet to house a family of 3.

I wonder – is this another treat served up by the banks (and the advertisers and media as well) that suddenly it was ok for those earning relatively modest incomes – to start living like they earned twice as much?

Make no mistake – for many, that decent employment they based decisions on WAS decent, at one time. Only fools would have taken such risks otherwise….and really, a McJob would not have begun to finance such lifestyles. The income to debt ratio wouldn’t have qualified.
Perhaps the cautious few decided to wait it out, hedge their bets, see if that career ladder was indeed sustainable for ten years or so…
But let’s face it: in today’s “fast food” economy, results are measured in yearly quarters, not years. Who was going to wait?