I Owe, I Owe, It's Off to Work I Go

I could go on and on about the purely economic evils of a nation that lives in debt, and I probably will in future posts. But there is a more serious issue. Debt is not just an economic question, but a moral one. And a moral fault is always a kind of enslavement. Sometimes, we must live beyond our means, because our work does not provide us with reasonable means to live, or because we can't find work at all. But that does not seem to be the cause of most debt today. Rather, most consumer debt today reflects our status as consumers; we identify ourselves not by what we are, but by what we have; identity has become a matter of having rather than being.

This is a kind of slavery. Americans work more than anyone else because we owe more. It is not the so-called "Protestant Ethic" that keeps us chained to our desks, but rather its break-down. Our forebears might have gone into debt for a few long-lived items: a house (purchased with a heavy down payment), a car, a piano, a little furniture. But the idea of putting a burger on the tab would have struck them as strange; the idea that they would be paying next year for a shirt they threw away yesterday would have struck them as bizarre.

In order to become a nation of debtors, we had to change our moral views; we had to acquire a sense of entitlement, and one that operated immediately: we cannot wait for what we want; all our desires must be filled this moment. But when we do this, we lose some degree of freedom. We work now not merely to get the things we need, but to pay for things we probably didn't need; in other words, we work for Mastercard; we labor for Visa. And Mastercard and Visa can never have enough of our work. If a man is working to get what he needs, the things he needs send him a signal as to when to stop working; but a man of unlimited desires, desires he largely gets from advertising, doesn't know when to stop working. Soon he does not own the things he bought with borrowed money; they own him.

Individuals and families go bankrupt for a variety of reasons; sometimes because they are spendthrifts, but other times there is illness, job loss, tragedy of some kind. But with nations, it is otherwise; before they lose their freedom they lose their character. Moral bankruptcy is the prelude to, and cause of, financial bankruptcy.