David Brooks writes today that the main problem facing Americans is our collective issues with debt. And while Brooks is a crotchety old man, this time it seems he happens to be right. We have almost a trillion dollar of credit card debt in this country-many people have a crippling amount. The problem is that somehow we decided that it was ok to buy things you couldn't afford. Call us superior, but in non-emergency situations, we simply cannot understand why you would do this. If you don't have enough money to buy that new TV, then you can't have the TV. It seems easy to blame human nature, but this is a relatively new phenomenon on the scale that it now exists, so let's blame the credit card companies instead.
David Brooks writes today that the main problem facing Americans is our collective issues with debt. And while Brooks is a crotchety old man, this time it seems he happens to be right. We have almost a trillion dollar of credit card debt in this country-many people have a crippling amount. The problem is that somehow we decided that it was ok to buy things you couldn't afford. Call us superior, but in non-emergency situations, we simply cannot understand why you would do this. If you don't have enough money to buy that new TV, then you can't have the TV. It seems easy to blame human nature, but this is a relatively new phenomenon on the scale that it now exists, so let's blame the credit card companies instead.