a very nice article on debt, and how society deal with it. it makes a nice link to oprahs debt diet efforts, which i find somewhat hypocritical. on one side she is so concerned about debt, on the other she is a gazillionaire. and on the other shows during the week, there is product placement, haute couture and other very expensive items. she tries to pass herself off as caring about debt, while on the on the other hand, she gets people more in debt.
debt is a very bad thing if its bad debt. good debt is nifty, since you get tax refunds for it. in canada, when you take a loan to invest, for a business, an investment, a real estate property that is not your principal residence, you get a income tax refund from the cra, canadian equivalent of the irs. bad debt is generated by credit cards, car loans, mortgages and any other debt that you can not write off.
our society is one of consumption. more and more, people are enticed to buy, plasma screens, new cars, new games, new houses. we are bombarded by marketing. its no wonder that we are so much in debt. from student loans, to personal loans, we incur so much debt its scary.
The children of baby boomers are the new debtor class. Buckling under a heavy weight of debt, new workers step into an economy of low-wage and contingent work, a combination that makes the basics of adulthood increasingly unattainable.
"We grew up in the Regan era where everything was fake, voodoo economics, and we're not seeing the connections," says Anya Kamenetz, author of Generation Debt: Why Now Is a Terrible Time to be Young. "I don't think we can continue treating people as disposable, not providing them with health care or the means to save."
I'm 
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