debt peons
Yes, it's all over the blogosphere. Krugman tells it like it is again. The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: The Debt-Peonage Society
Here is an economist who can identify a systemic problem and show at the time how the Republicans will frame economic issues in terms of morality (those bad debtors, charging their way to the Bahamas every year, exploiting those good credit card companies) while demonstrating the political significance of such strategies in the long run: a new society of sharecroppers...
Look at Crooked Timber for more discussion and notice their creeping crypto-Protestant attitudes as well -- something that Krugman rigorously avoids. Of course, I'm not saying all of the discussants are tsk tsking the debtors, I'm just particular sensitive to that problem myself since I count myself among the peons of this age, and not among its masters (except in matters of rhetoric, rant and rave).
Here is an economist who can identify a systemic problem and show at the time how the Republicans will frame economic issues in terms of morality (those bad debtors, charging their way to the Bahamas every year, exploiting those good credit card companies) while demonstrating the political significance of such strategies in the long run: a new society of sharecroppers...
Look at Crooked Timber for more discussion and notice their creeping crypto-Protestant attitudes as well -- something that Krugman rigorously avoids. Of course, I'm not saying all of the discussants are tsk tsking the debtors, I'm just particular sensitive to that problem myself since I count myself among the peons of this age, and not among its masters (except in matters of rhetoric, rant and rave).
2 Comments:
Just to clarify, I think you are referring to the commenters here - neither I nor other CT posters take a crypto-Protestant line on this, and I agreed entirely with Krugman in my post.
JQ
I am referring to the commenters here and not to the post itself. I suppose it's "trolling," but it does not help us think this issue through.
The culture values autonomy, self sufficiency, etc., and then it offers those of us who are not wealthy all these different forms of debt...and economists, not you, are always going on about how consumer spending is the pillar of the American economy...it's hardly rational, but it benefits the creditors...I think you and some other commenters tried to make this point, but it got drowned out in the din.
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