Hello… Geppetto…
“Remember when you first went out to eat with your parents? Remember, it was such a treat to go and they serve you this different food that you never saw before, and they put it in front of you, and it is such a delicious and exciting adventure? And now I just feel like a big sweaty hog waiting for them to fill up the trough.” - Elaine Benes
Who can say it better than Elaine Benes, yes she was super hungry, and yes she was borderline delirious but the truth is still true. In this case, it is also applicable to life in general especially when you compare this present life to what it used to be! Remember when you were a kid and everything was brand new, your parents bought you play dough or a cabbage patch doll; it was just the best. Remember the first time you saw Nickelodeon or watched the animated version of Aladdin? I definitely have a lot to say about Disney… I will mention one thing now and reserve my other comments for a later conversation. Will Smith taking on a role whose previous owner was Robin Williams… Disney that is foul play! Smith is not now nor has he ever been on a level anywhere near Williams and that’s saying something because he’s dead. Really the Fresh Prince as the Genie in Aladdin. Whoever came up with that idea for casting should be slapped in the face and then fired; just saying.
Remember the first movie you watched that wasn’t a cartoon, I’m talking Die Hard, or Terminator, Ninja Turtles, or Hook? Remember high school and how you had the time of your life, and how about the first time you voted in a Presidential election? There was the feeling that you were doing something truly adult-like, the 1st foray into becoming a legal adult citizen. Your parents bought you a car a beater, but it meant everything because it gave your the ability to be independent and lots of freedom. This naturally leads to your first job which leads to the first paycheck which was awesome when all you were buying were movie tickets and fast food. But in 2001 you saw that iPod Classic retailing at a steep $399 and the Xbox which was right behind at a slightly more agreeable price of $299. It took about 18 years but you realized you didn’t have the money you needed to get the things you wanted and no one was gonna just give you the cash to blow.
Then one providential day you are eating on the lawn at your “government-sponsored education center” aka college, and you spot a line of people near a table. It looks like they are giving away t-shirts, and you think to yourself, “I could use a t-shirt… it is either that or do laundry.” You jump in line and realize that all you have to do to get the t-shirt is fill out an application for a credit card. 1 Which honestly seems like a good trade! If you don’t get approved you get a t-shirt and if you get approved you get roughly $2,000 - $3,000, plus a t-shirt. Before you know it you have a t-shirt and 2 weeks later, in the mail arrives a fancy new plastic magical credit card. With your name embossed on it; a MasterCard or Visa, or a DiscoverCard, and low and behold you are 19 years old with a $2,500 credit limit, and it’s a Friday. You don’t have a care in the world and you don’t have a job either but somehow you got that credit card approval, and life has never been better.
Now you and I, live in a different world where what I’m talking about doesn’t seem realistic but this happened all the time. Today it is a way less common thing, mostly because parents were in an uproar and the 1st and 2nd waves of students who fell for the deception fought back. You have to imagine being born into a pre-internet existence; there was no proliferation of information. Honestly, people were much more upfront about their malevolence, don’t believe here is some proof? Big tobacco aka “The Cigaret Industry” used cartoons to sell cigarettes to children; that’s right they intentionally marketed smoking to kids. Do you remember Joe Camel on camel cigarette packages and billboards and Mickey Mouse smoking in the old-school cartoons? [This was a Freudian slip, this is not my promised more on the house of mouse…seriously I have much to say, but you can not bear it right now…. honestly… neither can I.] 2
More proof text from Google Scholar, ah the necessary evils of Google…but for real, this is peer-reviewed content about this college credit crisis, written just slightly after it had already become an epidemic.
Current postsecondary students have far greater access to credit cards than have those of any previous generation. Credit card spending and its resulting debt pose some very real threats to members of Generation Y (people who are 21 years of age or younger). Approximately two-thirds of all college students possess credit cards (Institute for Higher Education Policy 1998), and 80% received their cards in their freshman year (Schnurman 1999). Furthermore, reports indicate that as access to credit cards has expanded, student indebtedness has increased accordingly. A recent study by the Nellie Mae Corporation, a national student loan financing organization, reported that the average undergraduate college student had a credit card debt of $2,226, 14% had balances between $3,000 and $7,000, and 10% had balances exceeding $7,000 (Blair 1997). 3 4 5
Post the American learning experience that is a college education we have bills, we have debt, and we have student loans… the trifecta! There you have it folks somehow we willing walked ourselves right into a lifetime of indentured servitude, and now we’re trapped! We go to work for money because we bought things we couldn’t afford and bound ourselves contractually to pay for those things at interest. What’s worst is we feel like some of these things are normal and in fact, we are somewhat ostracized by society for not buying into the American economic system. Does this path sound familiar? Go to school and get good grades so that you can get into a good college and get a degree. [And if you’re smart you’ll repeat that “get into a good college” bit several times, so you have one of these titles added to your last name…BA, BS, MA, MSc, Ph.D.] You will need a degree so you can get a good job, and you need a good job so you can make lots and lots of money; you need lots of money because you want to have a family. Once you have a family, you’ll need to buy the latest cars for you and the Mrs. [That’s all you gonna get with me…Mr. & Mrs. I’m not playing games with that nonsense.] and you’ll definitely need a house, maybe another house after you have some children, that way each of your kids can have their own room, right? After that you’ll need enough money to make sure that they have the finest clothes and social lives that your money or credit can afford; plus you have to buy each one of your children a car.
This is actually a good thing because even though you have to add them to your insurance and that will raise your premium a bit, at this point you can rack up that new car tax deduction at the end of the year. Lastly, they will need you to take out student loans for them to go to college because you want your kids to have a degree so they can get a good job - Don’t you? Plus if they are in college into their early 20s you can get a major tax deduction. We love our children and we want them to get a good start in life and be contributing members of society, so they need this degree so they can get that job and make lots and lots of money. Maybe when you’re old they’ll have enough money to take care of you just in case you forgot to save for retirement, or because you spent all the money you made because you were locked into an economic system that was intrinsically against you. And that reminds me… Have you started funding your 401k because you’re almost 40, which means you really only have like 20 more working years before you won’t be able to command to money you do right now? Better jump on that! They wonder why most American millennial types have abandoned the “American Economic Trap” in favor of less stress and more joyful lives. 6
But I think the new people are predisposed to carry on with the trap because somehow the media has sunk its claws into the new people. When I say “New People” I mean the 2nd wave of Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha; wait you didn’t know that there are 2 kinds of Millennials? All of this makes me want to go back in time and warn the younger me and tell him the truth about the system and system’s consequences. Don’t get that credit card. You don’t need a laptop and a camcorder, and a whole new wardrobe…and to eat out everyday… it is a trap! It is a trap for new people, so don’t buy into it because, in the end, you’ll find yourself unhappy. Most people don’t even get out of the trap until a decade or two later if they ever get out. Basically, I can sum up what I’ve just spent a very short time explaining in one word: Consumerism. Oxford dictionary defines consumerism as a noun… ie “a person place or a thing.”
There are two forms of this definition:
1. The protection or promotion of the interests of consumers.
2. Often derogatory The preoccupation of society with acquiring consumer goods. 7
What becomes of a nation of rich people who have lived their entire lives waiting for things. Things that when purchased never seem to give us that internal satiety for which we crave. Therefore we end up wanting things for decades and we keep borrowing and buying at interest, further ensuring our forced labor. All the while remaining inept and deficient, and lacking the stuff that really matters, in our human experience. What do you say to that generation of people who spent their lives imagining they were free but only upon death learning the truth of their existence, they too like most before them are enslaved.
I submit to you that we are currently “enslaved” and are being marketed as if we are free though we have been given a sense of liberty. Maybe some of us are freer than others; I guess not every one of us works in the field. Some of us work in the kitchen, or the big house or are personal servants to the Master. This leads me to the place where I’ve longed to be this entire conversation; the Master. There is a mysterious and silent monster in the closet, there is a person pulling Pinnochio’s strings. There is a person at the top of our economy, there’s a group of persons perhaps, but they are being led by a singular man. World-Health this Global-Governance that; we seem to be speeding into some kind of global world power structure and it seems as if there is no way off the train now. We are trapped. Do you know who the conductor is? Do you want to know…Do you even care? Or are you more excited about the latest fad, fashion, or television show? I wonder if we were able to look into the darkness that seems to cloud our future what we would find. I wonder who we would find at the helm of this present darkness; tinkering in his workshop busy building his next distraction…hello Gepetto…and goodbye.
- A Real Concerned Citizen
Blair, Alan D. "A high wire act: Balancing student loan and credit card debt." Credit World 86 (1997): 15-17.
Education Resources Inst., Boston, Ma, 1998. Credit Risk Or Credit Worthy? College Students and Credit Cards. a National Survey. Education Resources Institute.
Schnurman, M., 1999. Credit card companies increasingly target students. Erie Daily Times D, 7.
