Don't you just love that debt?

Trading and man have gone together as long as there have been two people with one having something the other wanted. In fact, you can find records of trade stamped into clay tablets going back for thousands of years. So has been the history of man, gather, hunt and create, but use the excess to trade for the things that you just couldn’t get yourself. Unfortunately, debt has probably been around almost as long as trade has. Being somewhat cynical, I would suggest that debt probably came into existence about 5 minutes after the first traders got together and discovered that one had more to trade than the other. Then again, when it comes to evil in this world, I tend to lean towards the pessimistic side of things. Never the less, though debt has been with us a long time, the fight to eliminate debt has been going on almost as long. We can find arguments against debt in the Bible and in most of the major religions of the world. Yet, we are a nation of debtors who seem to not only enjoy debt, but now view it as such an incremental part of society that anyone who lacks debt is viewed as being weird or abnormal.

How did this happen to a nation of hardworking industrious people? Though there was a time where personal debt was considered something to avoid, that really changed after the 2^nd World War. At that time, our troops were returning home after several years of war and were looking to get married, start families, and begin the life they put on hold to serve our nation. Yet, most didn’t have a dime to their name and no job on top of that. Then comes our good Uncle who offers us low down or no down loans on housing, school loans so that we could continue our education, etc. It was the beginning of our addiction. Since then, we have been bombarded with messages of how easy it was to acquire the goods and services of our dreams, all we needed was to be able to afford the payments. How many of us remember the easy lay-a-way programs that all of the major departments stores once had? Under the lay-a-way terms, you put small cash down payment and paid the rest over a 30-90 day period. Then the item was yours to take home, but things changed and money became easier to borrow. The credit card became a real moneymaker for the banks. (read more here)

Redgage picture of the day-----purple flowers

Enjoy!