How Americans are selling their souls into debt slavery at ever-younger ages, and what you need to learn about how to avoid it wherever you live on earth.
by Howard Davis
"I owe, I owe, so off to work I go."
If you are under 35 years old in the English-speaking world, the cynical lyrics set to the Disney tune from the fairy tale Snow White are now more reality than fantasy. The majority of young adults in America, Britain, Canada and Australia have enmeshed themselves in a dependency to debt so vast their futures will likely be more defined by bondage than freedom.
The story of the financial debt of Americans in general, and its young adults in particular, is so vast, it is like the beginning of the biblical epic of Israelite slaves in Egypt. And its workings are characterized by the language of the book of Revelation--a global economic bondage to a developing "Babylon the great."
Let's start the story at the top of the world's economic pyramid.
America's colleges and universities are considered the world's higher education gold standard, but its graduates are being reduced to serfs of debt. The process decimates the economic logic behind the "get ahead" goals of the nation's financially best and brightest youth.
Between 1995 and 2005, total college student debt tripled. Two thirds of four-year college students graduate with loan debt. The Collegiate Funding Services 2004 survey of 668 recent graduates says the average college loan debt is $23,735. In addition, the typical student carries thousands in unsecured credit card debt.
Nellie Mae, the U.S. government's lender for student loans, reported the results of a May 2005 survey that showed 76 percent of all undergraduate students carry credit cards, 72 percent reported using credit cards for food, 72 percent for textbooks, 68 percent for clothing and 24 percent for some tuition.
