An Age of Decadence

An Age of Decadence

Benjamin Franklin once said: "A penny saved is a penny earned." When America was founded, mostly by Puritanical Christians, its people valued frugality, morality, and hard work. However, that was a long time ago and things are different now. In the last few decades, let alone the last few centuries, our way of life has drastically changed. We now live in a world of technology and excess. American consumerism is becoming pandemic. Humans have always had a need for ownership, for possessing things, but it has reached the next level. David Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times, says that "the most rampant decadence today is financial decadence" (1 par. 3). This consumption of decadence has the economy faltering and debts constantly rising. There was a reason our founding fathers valued frugality, it worked. We need to follow the example left to us by our forefathers and start saving or else our economy is going to fail and we will enter the next great depression, one that may be worse than the first.

Savings rates since the 1980's have plummeted from 11 percent to below zero (Novotney, 1). One of the reasons for this is because of the easy access to credit and loans since that time. In 1978 the Supreme Court ruled to deregulate credit companies, which had before only catered to the most affluent population (Bakshi, 1). This deregulation allowed companies to expand their business to lower and middle income family. This produced an economic boom in the beginning but now we are reaping the real consequences. Credit cards are advertised and available to kids

Telo Yabtsang-Small Dr. Christina Pages English 110 Feb 27th, 2012 Revised: May 10th, 2012

not even eighteen years of age. 84 percent of the undergrad population has at least one credit card (Woosley, Schulz, 1) and 56 percent have four or more (Brooks, 1 par. 11). "They're conditioning people into building debt at a very young, very vulnerable state," says Stuart Vyse, author of Going Broke: Why Americans Can't Hold Onto Their Money (Novotney, 1).

Loans have also played their part. From the 1990's to 2006 banks and lenders loaned homeowners hundreds of thousands of dollars in home equity and mortgage loans, some without even a down-payment. When those homeowners could not pay, thousands of homes ended up in foreclosure causing the mortgage crisis of 2008. In her article "Recent Grads Struggling to Pay Student Loans", for ABC News, Maggie Patrick tells us that total student loan debt this year is expected to reach the one trillion dollar mark, which surpasses even credit card debt (1). To get a good job you need a good education and student loans are one of the only ways average americans can afford college. Sheldon Gordon, author of Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World saves, puts it quite concisely: "Why save when you could borrow so easily?" (Bakshi, 1 par. 8).

There is nothing like a good advertisement to make you want something you don't need. Commercialism and consumerism go hand in hand with advertising. The average person sees up to 3000 ads a day (Story, 1). It's not surprising that we can't control our spending when we are bombarded with advertisements every day. Ads are literally everywhere; you see them on the internet, television, radio, sides of buildings, sides of buses, taxis, benches, bathroom stalls, and even eggs! Corporations spend billions on advertisements every year and new technologies are increasing our exposure to advertisements in different ways, through interactive ad campaigns

(Story, 1). Every year we spend more money than we did the year before and we have to