What Do Slavery and Debt Mean To You?

You said it!

My husband and I have been living a very simple life for some years, now. We don’t have a lot, but what we have is ours. We don’t have any credit card debt, although we wouldn’t mind getting a mortgage one day…

My mother says she is glad to see us happy with our “simple life”. Indeed we are. Happy, that is. Because we don’t have any debt, I am free to pursue my dream. And my dream is becoming reality.

So, I would say that happiness is being able to pursue those dreams. And you are not free to do that when you have a lot of debt.

The problem I am seeing at this point in time is the college/university. Today, one practically needs to go to college and earn a degree in order to have a job making an income that is seen as standard in today’s time. But the problem is that many, if not most students, cannot afford the excessive tuition fees, causing them to search for some form of financial aid. This can cause a student to rack up an obscene amount of debt before they’ve even really started their lives. In my opinion, something needs to be done on a state/federal level to lower the inflated costs of attending college these days. Until that issue is addressed, one is going to see a continuation in this nasty trend of high debt in society.

Well said brother. Another site of interest and along the same thought process is www.beatingdebt.org. This is run by a Marine who served in Iraq twice and is now come back to try and educate people about the tragedy of debt and the ’slavery’ it puts people into. He has seen and knows too many people who have nearly ruined their marriages, their families, etc with debt. The site is built around the idea of beating debt as running a race It’s not a sprint, but a marathon. A Bible Study that goes along with the principles that BeatingDebt.org promotes is currently being held at the Enon Baptist Chapel in Raleigh, NC.

correction: the beatingdebt.org Bible Study called Keeping Pace is in Jacksonville, NC, not Raleigh. Sorry about that.

I wanted to add this comment about slavery. Yes, debt makes us slaves to the institutions we borrow money from, whether it is credit cards, banks, quick cash places or loan companies, including student aid loan companies. This includes our beloved government who makes us dependent on them for social services and handouts. The more we expect them to ‘feed us’, the more they will take from us (taxing us to death)and the more we will depend on them to take care of us, like a slave. It’s a vicious cycle. We need to take care of our own, live frugally as possible, do without some luxuries in life, and recyle/reuse/reduce and learn to live without debt. A home mortgages should be the only debt we could tolerate on a short term basis. Well, I said what I wanted to say. Please visit www.beatingdebt.org and help the organization spread the word.

I never bought anything I would have to get a loan for. And there were times -when I was in my early twenties - where I had to survive on a few hundred dollars a month. If I could not afford it, I did not buy it.

And I have always enjoyed the freedom it gave me.

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Bravo! I think the current economic meltdown will actually turn out to be a good thing. Hopefully, credit will be much more difficult to obtain now. It’s going to take some adjusting, but perhaps now people and businesses will learn to work within their real budgets.

Susan, you are absolutely right. Good point. It may go back to when only the credit worthy could get credit.

Thanks for all the great comments everyone. Was reading National Post on a flight recently and it said the US is ready for the BIGGEST YARD SALE EVER. Many americans have been tapping their home equity to fuel their over capacity consumerism lifestyle. Since the housing market is plummeting many of these people are going to be in for a real shock and extremely hard times.

Want a happy life? LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS!?! Want more!? EXPAND YOUR MEANS!!

You have displayed the harsh reality in front of us in an excellent manner. Great article.

Well, I agree. Slavery is not compulsory but it is hard to resist! I always have done by working for myself and earning income from a wide variety of sources in different locations to minimise my potential loss in hard times.

But every business owner kniows that becoming the BOSS only means you now have a greater number of bosses in the customers you are trying to please! So where does it all end?

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Great post. I wish more people would understand how they are a slave not only to their debt, but to their things.

I have a modest house, an older car, and nobody would be impressed by my clothes. But I only work 3 or 4 months a year, part time. The rest of the time I can blog, or travel, or whatever.

I am only able to do this because I have no debt, and not a lot of things that need to be taken care of. It took a very long time to pay off all the debt, but it was well worth it!

Your comment about “debt education classes” got me to thinking. In my youth, that education came from the parents. I was taught that to be in debt was an embarrassment. We were taught (by parents) that we had to ’save up’ if we wanted to have something.

These days many parents aren’t involved in education and schools have become almost a babysitting institution. We can’t have a child lose self-esteem by not being promoted to the next class and that has seemed to extend to not losing self-esteem by not having the latest branded fashion or tech toy or texting phone. So parents go into debt to make all this available thereby teaching the kids that debt is normal.

I can’t believe anyone needs to max out their credit cards with consumer debt. Thanks to my parents’ teaching, I always paid all credit cards in full at the end of the month and never accrued interest debt. That was probably the most important factor in avoiding excessive debt.

I had a mortgage on houses, but always paid cash for cars. A home mortgage was acceptable debt, according to my parents. I’ve tried to pass this on to my kids, but peer pressure has occasionally overcome common sense. They learned the hard way and now are debt-free.

Today’s society has taught people to consume, but not earn. It is a new kind of slavery, but well named. I don’t have a solution, but your blog is so very timely.

I simply cannot understand how people allow themselves to thrive on credit.

Good post. Slavery is a strong (and accurate) term to describe the state of many people today. People who USED to be “middle-class”. I have a goal of not only getting out of debt, but becoming a millionaire. Why? Not so I can live a life of opulence. No, my reason is very simple: I want freedom. And in today’s world we are quickly heading to a society where wage-earners are very simply slaves, while profit-earners are the ones who will remain free. I want to remain free.

great post, i feel the same way but, we all have a choice. we are presented with certain choices in life and how we make those choices affect us. we can either accept the life we are living and settle for less or we can move above and beyond and sacrifice a little to break free from the shackles of debt. the world is filled with two kinds of people those who dream and make it a reality and those who dream and keep dreaming.i know i am the one who makes it a reality. which one are you? make the right choices that will change your life for the better.

Wow! It is so refreshing to see this wage-slave concept in print and being discussed. I have been thinking this for a long time .. how we are slaves to debt and to the way the system wants us to behave in order to be “acceptable” citizens. I pray that I live to see the day that there is more true freedom among all human beings - more connection to the earth - more healthy interdependency among people in neighborhoods - more self-sufficient communities.

Thank you, Rob!

Debby