Credit Card Culture
Eric at Daily Eudemon had a few comments about the latest report concerning Americans no longer saving while spending everything they earn. He cited the baby-boomers - but I’m here to tell you this spending thing spans every generation.
I work in retail, 85% of all transactions are credit purchases. Sales are slow this time of year because people are trying to pay off their exorbitant Christmas purchases, or many probably have charged a vacation to someplace warm.
Working in a Catholic religious goods store, one wouldn’t think people would come in charging up a storm, but they do.
Strangely enough, many consumers do not realize that their credit card purchases are actually loans from a bank. If they do understand this, not a few delude themselves they will pay off their bill, and avoid paying the interest on their ‘loan’. Sadly, few consumers do this however. Many have multiple credit cards, and use them liberally. A significant majority tend to max them out. These are bank loans people! And the interest rates are at usury levels.
People have car loans, home loans, student loans - unending loans - and if they save anything at all, well it’s not theirs to keep if they go into default. Being in a mass state of denial, everyone buys what ever they want with their credit cards. I work with people who go on a trip, paying for it by cashing in retirement savings, or borrowing from their 401K. Are they nuts?
If a major collapse in the Middle East oil reserves occurs, for whatever reason - if we couldn’t get the oil that lubricates our economy - the entire infrastructure would collapse. Oil prices would escalate to such an extent it would effect everything we buy - because you can’t transport product from one point to another. It would be a global catastrophe, with no one able to care about that ”global warming” thing. (Maybe our Archbishop, and the Bishop’s conference should be concerned with this dilemma, instead of the “global warming” thing. Although, I think you can charge ‘donations’ on your credit card - no one wants to stop that cash flow.)
The impact upon the economy would be devastating; retail would collapse - because the consumer couldn’t afford to consume. And the debtors, with all of their loans would default, unable to make their minimum credit card payments - as they were accustomed to do in the past. Naturally, the banks, who perpetrated this debtor society, would likewise inevitably fail.
Perhaps this scenario is not what will happen, nevertheless, our country is on the precipice of disaster - homelessness is just one paycheck away, or more likely, one disaster away.
The truth is, the majority of American people are over-extended with credit. Yet they continue to consume; to buy, buy, buy.
Customers who shop for religious goods often reason, “I might be over extended on credit, but the Lord will take care of me if I buy this statue or that book.” Nah! - I don’t think so.
A large segment of the population are all Paris Hilton wannabes economically speaking. We are a spendthrift society.
At Fatima, Our Lady told Jacinta that people ought to avoid luxury. Blessed Jacinta could not possibly have imagined the luxury Americans live in today - even some of the poor, or lower middle class. And it’s all on loan from a bank.
We are such a deluded culture.
“The economy stupid” - yeah, it’s synthetic.