Apologies if this dampens anyone's Christmas spirit - but Bob Herbert's column in this morning's New York Times sure sounds al ot like the suburban world I'm living in:
What seems to be happening now is that working Americans, and that includes the middle class, have exhausted much of their capacity to tread water. Wives and mothers are already working. Mortgages have been refinanced and tremendous amounts of home equity drained. And families have taken on debt loads — for cars, for college tuition, for medical treatment — that would buckle the knees of the strongest pack animals.
According to Demos, a policy research group in New York, “American families are using credit cards to bridge the gaps created by stagnant wages and higher costs of living.” Americans owe nearly $900 billion on their credit cards.
We’re running out of smoke and mirrors.
Now debate will rage on about what to do about all of this. But one wonders if all of our economic ingenuity isn't merely an attempt to put a band-aid on a bad case of hemorrhoids - those of us in debt aren't there only because of economic forces gathered against us. The contents of the ever-elusive American Dream get more lavish by the year and we've done little to question the madness that surrounds how we handle money.
This issue of functional poverty is one of, if not the biggest mercy and justice issues in the suburbs. Any ideas on what the Church should be doing about it?
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