Oprah's American Debt Diet series

International news that a lot of Americans are in debt? Should anyone else care? Well, yes and no. Sure, what do you, who doesn't live in North America care about another countries' spending? Well, if this were a question raised by participating bloggers from the round table (and rest assured, I will re-visit this topic once I have them all rounded up), I would challenge them to look into potential connections between their country and the U.S. Or to say it in a more important sounding fashion; the ramifications... .

You see, when I grew up in the Netherlands, it was for the most part a cash system only. Sure, people did have mortgages and must have had a way to pay monthly for cars..but... at the grocery store, clothing store , whatever store..it was cash. In fact, when I visited in 1992, not many stores accepted Master card because, as the merchants reasoned, "why should we pay for your convenience in buying from us". My uncle used to say that he rather used cash so he knew what money he did or did not have. Basically, you can only buy what you can afford.

Back to this debt diet Oprah is trying to address. Make no mistake, it is a laudable attempt to enable people to live and stay debt-free. My only disagreement with this is that the focus is only healing the wound, but does not address the underlying cause. The way I see it is this;

# This is a consumer driven society. Almost everything is "brought to you by..". Sports casts, sports events, school fundraisers, donations to schools, television broadcasts (as some would say, commercials interrupted by shows), you get the picture.

# The "Don't pay now but pay later" facilitation of getting people to buy furniture or what have you that they can have for a year before starting to pay money on it.

# Credit cards. 0% percent interest for how ever long but naturally, there is always the fine print...fine print people! Credit cards target college students with little money and encourage spending by giving them a cash back limit of however much that they don't have in their account. That amount increases the longer they have the card and as long as they pay back a certain amount regularly.

# Credit ratings are considered all important because it shows your purchasing history and if you would have only been buying with cash, you'd have no history and literally, no credibility if you wanted to purchase say, a car with a large down payment.

# TV commercials abound on even kids channels starting them off to want everything they see because it looks so cool! Kid targeted advertising is the worst to me as it just puts them in line to become good little consumer droids.

# Many products to buy and compare from. A lot of products competing means driving down prices. Products hence end up being made abroad (yes, I am getting there) where clothes, plastic wares..you name it, is made for pittance and sometimes under bad conditions.

You get the picture.

Well, after you are done reading, just ponder these issues;
if people in the US would stop buying so (too) much, how would it affect the economies of those countries where the products are made?
What kind of sustainable economy could take its place instead?
If the reliance on consumer driven economy is lessened, what kind of global impact could you see coming from that? (I mean, what kind of global ramifications could it have??)
Did I mention the so-called corporate imperialism? Jobs at home and overseas?

Just think.