I’m not a fan of numbers or math.  Although, I do like the digits 3 and 13 – they go with my personality – not evenly divided.  Anyway, on a daily, droning basis, it’s reported that college loan debt is over $800 billion.  There’s about $800 billion in credit card debt.  And total mortgage debt hovers in the $13.4 trillion range.  That’s truly one unruly slab of debt – worse than the slag from Big Coal’s mountaintop removal system.  On top of all that, personal bankruptcies and foreclosures are reaching new zeniths by the second.  That along with the lack of good jobs and underemployment – well, the picture is not pretty – and no amount of airbrushing is going to make it presentable for the cover of Vogue.

I’ve been thinking about debt for a long, long time now.  Mostly because for the past couple of decades, I’ve had a god-awful share of it.  There was a time though when I didn’t.  When I was twenty-one, I didn’t have student loan debt – I received grants and VA benefits from the government to go to college – and even acting school.  And back in those days, there really wasn’t any dire need for – or acute awareness of – credit cards.  I made enough at my job to make ends meet, and then some.  I had dozens of friends in the same situation – spread out all over Manhattan, from uptown to the Village – and we were all paying our rent and utilities with no problem.  We weren’t rich, but we had extra money for headshots or art supplies, guitars and amps.  No big deal.  A few people even got married and bought houses in the suburbs without getting swindled or spiraling into massive debt.

All that changed somewhere down the line.  It was probably gradual, but during those years I was too busy living my life to pay attention.  However in the last ten years or so, it’s felt as if some gate of financial hell was opened and in rushed the waters of economic devastation.  It was like an unending scene in Titanic and the deluge was coming from every corner of the hull.

We’ve had bubbles and they’ve popped – especially in housing and the easy credit bonanza.  Wall Street and corporate America made a lot of money on all of that.  Bankruptcy laws were also changed.  Now you couldn’t cram down the cost of your mortgage to reflect its true worth.  You couldn’t get out from under college loan debt.  And it became much harder to rid yourself of credit card debt as well.  And all of those new laws were brought to us via our representatives in government – from both parties.  Of course these laws didn’t apply to the corporate – just us wee, financially irresponsible folk.   And as these things went hand-in-hand - the financial industries plying people with credit, mortgages, refinancing of mortgages and college loans that no one could really afford – our government was making it next to impossible for people to get back on their feet or get a second chance.  This, after years of deregulation and lack of accountability in the corporate sector, made it all the more likely that a hell of a lot of people would be caught in the snare – indebted for life. 

And along with all of this, they want people to feel shameful about their situation.  They want them to feel guilty that they spent money they didn’t really have on things they couldn’t really afford.  Politicians, media millionaires and economists continue to make statements about how people have to learn to live within their means, cut back, make tough choices – blah, blah, blah.  I say – nuts to most of that.  And not because I’m a big fan of consumerism, because I’m not.  But my point isn’t about minimalist living – it’s about the twisted system and the disgrace those in charge want people to feel. 

They want us to be apologetic and vilified for owning a big-screen television set or indulging in some recreation – for instance, if you own a jet ski or something.  Or, you spendthrift, you – going on a vacation.  Or maybe giving our kids a few nice things.  You’re supposed to hang your head in shame if you put something on a credit card or bought some clothes.  “Mother Teresa didn’t buy new clothes – you soulless buying-machine!” 

But the clear and indisputable fact of life for most people (not all – but most) is that a working persons paycheck simply won’t cover expenses, let alone anything else – not like it used to.  And this “little” income irregularity has been going on for a long time now, so the effects have been accruing year after year in a steady drumbeat - like the kid with the rap music blasting from his car as he drives past your house.  Anyway, that’s why people get credit cards and other loans.  It’s desperation, and maybe hoping things will turn out better next year or next month.  Sure, maybe we can all consume less materially, but with shipping jobs offshore, lowering wages and benefits – it’s not anyone’s fault if they can’t make ends meet.  Well, actually it is, it’s corporate America and politicians who are to blame.

I’m not talking about depraved over-indulgence – but then again, that’s such a teensy-weensy minority like the fictional “welfare queen” or “insurance fraud.”  They want us to believe that abuse of the system by regular people is widespread because it increases our sense of collective humiliation.  Who I’m talking about is – The college student who went to a private university instead of a public college because they trusted the system that hard-sold them on the merits of going that route and believed that it would pay off after graduation.  But now the poor kid regrets the whole thing and is struggling with student loan debt (or the parents are) and worrying they’ll never be able to pay it off.  I’m talking about the family who took their kids to Disney World (much as I detest Disney and all it stands for – with the possible exception of the movie Beauty and the Beast) and are now kicking themselves because the cost is still sitting on their VISA card five years after the fact.  Or the person who took out a mortgage believing the vigorously sold notion that it was a terrific investment – and trusted the banks to behave ethically and legally.  None of these people has anything to feel guilty about.

The bottom line is, it’s not anyone’s fault.  For most of us, I dare insist, that we were all just trying to do the best we could.  To somehow get over the next rise in the road.  To swim to the opposite shore before we drowned.  Or, as Dory says in Finding Nemo – “Just keep swimming.  Just keep swimming.  Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.  What do we do?  We swim, swim.” 

Sure, it did no good ultimately to take on more debt - to charge one more thing on a card – or get another Sallie Mae loan or refinance a mortgage – but people for the most part were simply trying to hang in there, trying to do the right thing, and maybe also just have a little fun – during their life – before it’s over.  But whatever it was – going out to dinner or a concert, buying some weed, having a few beers or jet-skiing on the lake – doesn’t matter.  And, of course now we’re told that the spot we’re in is our own damn fault and we should be contrite.  But I say, when the system is so stacked against you – then who cares about contrition.  So, for anyone who feels guilty over their financial “indiscretions” – I say, stick them in a sack and toss them overboard.

The businesses that were supposed to serve us – with their customer service and brand-name recognition, were actually happily enslaving us, in a variety of ways.  And it’s up to each person to determine where they go from here and how they’ll handle or rid themselves of the debt they shoulder.  But the most important thing anyone can do first is to get rid of the guilt and the shame.  We would have lived within our means if we could have.  But our means required us to eat gruel, wear ratty clothes and huddle around a TV without cable while we grow old and die.  No thanks to that.  Our means don’t span a gnat’s moat because state and federal government, along with corporate America, keep on squeezing one dollar after another out of our paychecks – in miscellaneous taxes, in the cost of living, in fees, in interest, in co-pays and deductibles and in loss of income.  There was a time when the difference between what we earned and what things cost was not the chasm that it has become.  And we didn’t create the chasm – it was built to entrap us.

And if you’ve managed to get rid of the credit cards and other debt that may be hounding you (or if you never had any to begin with) – then good for you.  Don’t give them the satisfaction if you can manage it, that’s what I say.  If you still have to use credit – but feel saddled with guilt – I say, skip the guilt.  Be like Dory in Finding Nemo – and keep on swimming.  Maybe your ship will come in one of these days – but definitely don’t feel guilty.  In the U.S. of Debt and Bondage, that’s how they keep you down.