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Yet the average credit card debt per household is over $15,000 in the USA (and it grows all the time, of course). Does anyone believe that these $15,000 are inv
by CWuestefeld 15y ago
Yet the average credit card debt per household is over $15,000 in the USA (and it grows all the time, of course). Does anyone believe that these $15,000 are invested in highly profitable ventures?
Who is the author to ignore the values and priorities of the rest of the public? It seems that he wants everyone to live by his own standards.
If the people borrowing this money believe that they're getting greater value than they are costing themselves, then they are in fact making themselves better off.
The author doesn't see that they're better off, either because he doesn't understand their values, or he's simply not looking at them as individual people but a monolothic heap of people. But either way, he's ignoring the evidence of their own actions.
- raganwald 15y agoWhile there may be merit in the idea that consumer debt makes people happier or even is in their best interests, I’m not sure that “the evidence of their own actions” is sufficient to persuade me. Not far from where I live I can find people selling themselves to starngers for crack money. I observe people smoking cigarettes. People do things that are I believe are harmful to their own interests, and I stop short of embarcing an amorality where aiding and abetting them for my own gain is right since they have free will and make their own choices. The do believe they are better off. I think I understand their values. I do not ignore their priorities. But that doesn’t mean I always agree with them. Crack addicts and smokers, that is. I don’t have as rigid a belief about credit card debt, I’m just pointing out that “Evidence of their own actions, values, and priorities” does not persuade me in and of itself.