Sex used to be the most difficult topic for people to speak candidly about.
But ask any analyst working today, and they'll tell you that, nope, talking about sex comes easy these days. Now, the most difficult topic for people to be perfectly candid about is money. Personal finances. Whether you can actully afford your boat, or whether you're slowly sinking under the weight of the debt required to keep your boat afloat.
It's not a new flaw. What was Vanity Fair about? Or Oblonsky's character in Anna Karenina? Or The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton? Plenty of the classics deal with those who simply cannot imagine living without a great deal of wealth at their disposal.
"Lydgate was now experiencing something worse than a simple deficit: he was assailed by the vulgar hateful trials of a man who has bought and used a great many things which might have been done without, and which he is unable to pay for, though the demand for payment has become pressing… Rosamond, accustomed from her childhood to an extravagant household, thought that good housekeeping consisted simply in ordering the best of everything — nothing else 'answered'; and Lydgate supposed that 'if things were done at all, they must be done properly' — he did not see how they were to live otherwise." –from Middlemarch, by George Eliot
And these folks did not have access to credit cards, poor dears. Just imagine how much trouble Rosamond and Tertius could have gotten into with 8 or 9 credit cards at 13.99% interest!
The shadow of the USA's vast wealth can be seen most clearly in how broke and strapped and overextended its citizens feel about money. Because most of what we "have" isn't paid for. We call it "ours," as in "our house," but it really belongs to a bank that would not hesitate to take it away from us should we miss a few payments. Which ties our homes and possessions and the very stability of our families to jobs we probably don't like, but don't feel we can afford to lose — even when those jobs are soul-killing. (No wonder zombie movies are so popular. I love that scene in Shaun of the Dead where it takes him awhile to notice the zombie invasion because that's how people usually look in the mornings.) How has it happened in the country which thinks of itself as the richest in the world, that 2 adults have to work for someone else 5 days a week in order to support 1 infant? Are things that much more expensive these days? Yes they are. And do we think we need more of them? Yes we do.
Even our politicians obsess about debt. Especially our politicians obsess about debt. Deficits. With the party that spends the most when in office always calling the other party to task for poor management, naturally. And neither party making much headway against it.
Debt: it's the shadow of wealth.
