I have written for years about the poisonous effects of debt on the economy and how it is destroying families and society, how it is directly related to the inflation of the monetary supply and the increase in enforced standardization ushered in post World War II for the purpose of consolidating power into the hands of a few major business interests. As a result, people work harder now for less money than before, and are forced largely to assume toxic loads of debt just to be able to partake of society in even a slightly “normal” way.
The Wall Street Journal recently put out a piece referring to this, and how as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, people are having to shoulder even more debt as they try to prepare.
Some 15% of Americans have used, or plan to use, either short-term loans or credit cards that they don’t know they can repay in order to buy emergency goods to deal with the outbreak, a survey by NORC at the University of Chicago found.
An additional 17% in the survey said they had or planned to dip into savings intended for another purchase, such as a car, and 16% said they would divert money intended for other purposes, such as household bills.
In all, 55% said they had bought emergency goods or planned to, according to the survey, which was conducted March 12 to 16. (source)
It is very easy to criticize when one does not understand or has (been forced to) experience(d) the effects of unwilling poverty.
At some point I will need to give a longer analysis of this, but the fact is that 44% of jobs today pay less than $20,000 per year. This equals approximately less than $10 per hour. These people are also not “illegals” counted in these numbers, nor are they people who do not work hard, but are forced into undignified rates of pay amid a continually declining dollar and cannot survive no matter how hard they work.
It is open “legal” robbery by way of financial manipulation. It is evil and wrong no differently than a man holding a gun to another’s head and forcing him to hand over his wages, except this is done with paper and pen.
The average American can barely afford to live, trying to strive for a life he has been promised but finds himself drowning in a cesspool of debt as he cannot keep up. The worst is the Millennials and Zoomers, who have been completely stripped of their wealth and have chosen to indulge in sensual passions and accumulate debt without saving for a future, both because they cannot as well as knowning that their dollar is going to lose value, what is the point of saving something that is going to decline in value when one can spend it now and at least get something to enjoy, as it will help them on their miserable way?
There are ways out of this. The biggest way is going to be through teamwork, but this usually starts in families, and until families work together as one unit, people will continue to suffer in debt as others viciously attempt to climb to the top of the bucket as other crabs try to pull them down. It can be done, but it is a long, painful, and unnaturally uncomfortable process, and is something that the Boomer generation would never have accepted and understandably so.
As the virus spreads, maybe we know somebody who needs help or that we can work with. If so, please help that person as one can, because while one does not want to promote “irresponsibility,” the fact is that people were inculcated for generations into patterns of irresponsible spending, and then were forced to pay back bills amid manipulation to their currency that has prevented them from doing so and trapped them into a cycle of wage slavery, and with that many who know about the problems and do not want to be a part of this system have been forced into it for survival because of the way social systems have been designed to trap and enslave people in the US.
This is another reason why the US is turning socialist, for just as during the years leading up to the French Revolution, the legitimate pain of impoverished people, stripped of their possessions and dignity, is being channeled into a social rage meant to cause a rebellion and war, which ultimately will not help them, but rather to depose one class of leaders and put a new- and likely more awful -class of them into power.