Credit Card Culture

Economists will tell you that credit cards are bad for your fiscal health. They allow you to buy now and pay later meaning that they lead to debt. Debt is bad. Ask the tea party. And yet, despite the fact that everyone knows that credit cards are bad, we use them anyway. Many people own multiple credit cards, some of those people using one card to pay off another. Easy money, lots of things, and debt. Those are the things credit cards get you.

What lessons can credit cards teach us about our society and our politics? Unfortunately, it seems that too many Americans have, perhaps unconsciously, applied credit card mentality to our nation's problems.

With a credit card, you can buy now and pay later. We know the downside to this, but what is the appeal? Well for one thing, you can get more stuff. Why pay for that TV now when I can have it and something else? I'm going to pay for both of course, I'll just do it later. No need to worry now, I'll worry later. One can begin to see how this mindset, while appealing, could be troublesome. Delayed responsibility...debt...

Somehow or another, our society has started to fall into this trap. Delaying responsibility has led our government's debt to pile up, while in the meantime we've been refusing to fix our nation's problems, leaving them for future generations to handle.

Credit card culture led the Bush administration into carrying out two foreign wars while simultaneously cutting taxes, an unheard of and unprecedented mistake. Credit card culture is responsible for decades worth of inaction on important issues like climate change, and credit card culture is the reason that many Americans are furious about the new health care law, which does exactly what you can't do with a credit card, spend now in order to save later.

If debt is bad then America needs to evaluate not only its spending practices - I'm not talking about good spending like the stimulus package or health care, I'm talking about the asinine decision to lower takes during TWO wars - but also our accountability practices. People consumed with the idea of government spending often point out that later generations will have to pay for our fiscal irresponsibility. They have a point, but as a 24 year old who will be paying taxes for years to come, I'd rather have to pay taxes because problems were solved than owe nothing but find myself facing a host of huge issues. Perhaps, because of the actions of the Obama administration I'll have fewer things to worry about in the future. I certainly hope that's the case, but the absence of accountability and the prevailing credit card culture that has led to it make me nervous.

Let's make America better today, and tomorrow, and in the future by taking some responsibility. Let's solve today's problems today instead of posturing, delaying and refusing to acknowledge the truth. Let's put our credit cards away and stop putting off the inevitable.