One of the most remarkable numbers to catch my attention in the past few years is the dollar figure for the credit card debt carried by the average American– remember, this is “average”: $8,500.
I’ve heard differing sets of numbers. All of them consistently end up between $7,000 and $12,000. That’s the monthly credit card balances of the average American.
To make this number really meaningful, you have to combine it with other information. Take the information that the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress, a few years ago, changed the rules on personal bankruptcy to make it much more difficult for individuals to crawl out from under a massive personal debt. In exchange for this sloppy kiss of a favor to the credit industry, consumers received…. nothing. No reduction in credit rates. No changes in the way interest is calculated on unpaid balances. No additional protection against ruthless or unscrupulous lenders. The attitude is: if you’re stupid enough to borrow money at those interest rates when you can’t pay it off, that’s your tough luck.
Nobody would dare mention the race issue on this question. Uh huh. Not me.
Another piece of information: for the past four months, for the first time in history, the average spending by an American exceeded his average income.
Do you think that George Bush is smart enough to understand that there might be a problem with this state of affairs? I don’t think so. I doubt he has even heard of this state of affairs. I’ll bet it hasn’t even been reported to him, because he is so focused on fixing Iraq that he doesn’t have time to mess with trivial economic issues, no sir.
Update 2022-05: if you thought the Democrats would do any better, remember that Joe Biden was the Senator from Delaware– the state that is home to the credit industry because it alone had no restriction on the “usurious” interest rates permitted on credit accounts. Throughout his political career, Biden has defended this state of affairs.