by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: September 23, 2010

America is the best example of a nation that built a whole economy around innovation, marketing and convincing people to buy what they could not pay for in cash. The innovation allowed people to have long and dependable careers, barring death, disability, crime or other reasons for an early end to a 20 or 30 year career. The smooth career was to be followed by a comfortable retirement, with income that would continue to pay for a quieter life.

With a huge middle class that had more disposable income and likelihood of being able to pay off debt than at any other time in history, Americans began to believe that the newer generations could incorporate the same concepts of debt, money, work and life as their parents had.

It became possible to "own" property, if it was heavily leveraged by debt. It became possible to travel, get educations, buy new cars every few years, dine out, enjoy entertainment, wear new clothes and to keep the kids happy with newer and more expensive toys...all with debt.

Then there were ideas about "innovation" that led to ideas about looting the national treasury, aggregating profits and investment money to the smallest proportion of individuals and corporations in American history, taxing them less than they had any excuse for paying and using the national, state and local treasuries to subsidize their schemes, all based on the false promise of "jobs".

 At the same time, the public was rewarded by having the jobs and work processes that they created, developed, improved and built transferred overseas, with the full support of their own government and former employers.

Debt became the only prop for an excessively materialistic and over the top system that was built on growth for no good reason but its own sake. The average American found that there was no work to pay off the debt. There was no treasury to help them through hard times, to start their own businesses, or to pay their unemployment income.

And there was no support for stopping the banks from insisting, despite horrendous amounts of bailout money that was handed over, that their egregious and usurious lending rates entitled them to force people from their homes. The homes now sit deteriorating, waiting to profit the same banks that have neither used the bailout money to help the public nor repaid the bailout funds.

Americans are in debt because debt became the engine for lifestyles that became cultural norms. It was simply not socially acceptable

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