Creditworthy

We are all taught to live within our means. While this means different things to different people it can be more simply put as not spending more than you have.

Which, as most are aware, is far easier said than done.

It’s commonplace these days to see people using credit cards to buy groceries or people obtaining interest only mortgages to stretch their buying power…what can you say?

Spending more than you have is asking for trouble, especially in a job market where job security is a thing of the past.

Bankruptcy, everybody’s doing it and why not? The system paints you into a corner with easy credit and loads of instant equity must surely know it’s creating a huge black hole of debt from which few will escape.

When anyone, a person or a business, goes bankrupt the creditors take a beating, collecting pennies on the dollar or nothing at all on what they are owed.

To ‘recover’ from these losses, they simply increase their prices. So when anyone goes ‘insolvent’, everyone pays.

A large percentage of consumers are stretched to the limit. Any small bump in the road such as taking ill or losing their job will put them into a tailspin from which few recover.

This is the ‘source’ of our indigenous homeless population. Once their credit rating is destroyed no one will rent to them.

Everyone needs someplace to be. With this as a given, how can we as a society deny anyone a place among us?

The game we call laissez-faire capitalism says the rules are the same for everyone. Fail to play by the rules and pay the price.

Unfortunately, the rules aren’t fair…not that there’s anything about capitalism that is.

The rules are made to protect the lenders. Anyone that needs to borrow in order to establish themselves becomes the lender’s willing victim.

There’s no more ‘new’ land over the horizon. Even the most inhospitable places on the planet are owned by someone if only to force the issue that you must pay to play, whether you want to or not.

I hope I’m making the point that these rules are made by humans. They are not natural rules but artificial ones designed to protect the interests of those who got here first.

Rules that are subject to change.

Usually for worse rather than better.

The capitalist experiment, which might better be called ‘let every man be king’ system is a miserable failure.

I’m not being sexist here. The system was set up and is still run by men.

The democratic republic that props up this enclave of wealthy tyrants is also a miserable failure.

Representative it is not.

It’s a bit perplexing to think that our society will be run off a cliff by the poorly thought out rules instituted by and for the protection of the greedy.

But there it is.

Using the twisted logic of capitalism, if a creditor gets stiffed due to their own mercenary lending practices, aren’t they getting what they asked for?

We must all learn to live not only within our means but with one another. Making laws that give one group near absolute economic control over the rest of us is not to be tolerated.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner