A Nation of Indentured Servants

Yesterday, I was reading T. Thorn Coyle’s Musings concerning the difference between wanting something and needing something, between being hungry and being starved. My first reaction was negative; I adore language and enjoy the colorful use of language. What’s the big deal about saying you’re starving when you’re merely ravenous or that you’re ravenous when you’re merely hungry?

And, yet, Ms. Coyle does have a point, I think. In America today, we’ve more or less lost the distinction between wanting something and needing something. Of course, we have an entire industry -- advertising -- devoted to blurring that distinction and to making us “need” things we’d never even heard of before. Then, today, I began reading about Howard Karger’s new book, Shortchanged.

Mr. Karger looks at the growing “fringe economy” devoted to providing credit -- at usurious rates -- to poor and, increasingly, to middle class Americans. As Karger points out, there have always been pawn shops, rent-to-own furniture stores, and payday loan joints. What struck me is his description of how America’s increasingly cash-strapped, debt-ridden middle class is turning to these operations. Karger says, “Some readers may be put off by the book’s focus on the economic straits of the poor and the middle class, thinking that it minimizes the true impact on the poor. I had originally titled the book Scamming the Poor , but as I dug deeper, I soon realized that the fringe economy is also affecting a growing number of functionally poor households — those with above average incomes but with little or no assets and high debt. Indeed, many financial transactions have become so tricky that the middle class, especially the functionally poor middle class, is also vulnerable to the predations of the fringe economy. As Shortchanged illustrates, the lines between the fringe and mainstream economies are blurred, and the interests of the poor and the functionally poor middle class are growing closer.”

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Americans aren’t special, no matter how much we believe that we are. The world doesn’t owe us anything, including Chinese credit. We can’t, either as individuals, as families, or as a nation keep living beyond our means and using more than our fair share of the world’s resources. Quit living on credit. Get your credit cards paid off. Get at least six month’s net salary in a liquid form of savings. This is all about the two topics I’ve been pondering this year: fear and thriving. Living in debt means living in fear. Thriving is about so much more than acquiring new things. What do you need?