Debt is a Prison

From the day I was born, I was destined to go into debt. Part of America's middle class, I was born into a mortgaged home, a bank-loaned car, and a household with student debt. The debt system made my American existence possible. As I come of age and graduate from my student  years into what is supposed to be adulthood, I look back and realize that my current state in life was made possible by debt, and that I never had a chance or a choice to escape debt.

Debt has allowed me to buy things I didn't have the money for yet. It has acted as a guarantee that I would remain productive to repay the resources that I received ahead of actually earning them. Debt allowed me to buy an education, a house, and my vehicles. The vehicles were small peanuts and quickly repayable. The house and education, on the other hand, have sealed the fate of my existence.

The concept of debt is pretty novel. Buy something you haven't yet earned the resources to trade for, then continue working to pay it off, bit by bit. Live now, pay later. Pretty trusting, really -- how in the world do we know that the resources will be continually available for the duration of our debts and in the amount of our debts?

Borrowed money makes my skin crawl. And I know exactly why. Growing up, I never had money like many of my peers did. Where I would mow the house lawn for $3, my friends would often mow much smaller lawns for $10 or $20. My sense of money was shaped by this disparity. I had to pinch more pennies to try to keep up with my peers. As a 10 year old, I was an unwitting participant and victim of capitalism (ok, and beneficiary; I also happened to have a roof over my head and food in my belly by the very same system).

When I think of things that bother me and make my entire existence hurt, debt is pretty much number one. Debt is a deal with the devil where you sign away your soul for the following weeks, months, years, or even decades, in exchange for something. This deal, which allows you to live now, chains you to that desk, that cash register, and that office life.

Upon signing the papers or sliding the plastic card, you are now saying that you're pretty darn sure that you will earn x-dollars over x-time period and will be able to pay x-amount back. And to do so, the lender will only charge you a small percentage in the form of interest. How simple? How novel?

Well, that decision is a dangerous one. You can lose a job, you can accidentally procreate, or you can need to buy a car. Or hell, an economic recession could hit, gasoline could go up to $4 per gallon, and you could decide to go to grad school and be simultaneously poor as shit -and- go into debt, simultaneously.

When I was born, I was born into a system where education would cost more than I would be able to save by the time I started taking on student debt, I would need objects to survive in our socioeconomic system that were unreachable without money, and I would be part of a class that cannot afford the roofs over our heads until a lifetime of work was complete to pay back the debt of a home.

The debts we take on have many names: credit card, student loan, mortgage, car loan, and so on. But all of these are the same thing; borrowed money to buy something that we do not yet have the money for. As a person born into the class that has no money, no right to money, and an acculturated need to participate in the American economic machine, I was born into the debt class.

When I turned 18, I had no option to take on student debt or not. Not with living expenses, vehicles, and the ever-present-and-ominous demand to be interesting and fun to entertain the opposite sex. These things are expensive, so debt was essential. College is essential in my caste. And because college is essential, it is both expensive, and a source of debt.

The debt machine that grabs us before we are old enough to make rational economic decisions is troubling. When I took on my student loans, starting at 18 years old, I was taking on a debt that would take ten years to pay off upon graduation. For someone to make such a decision to take on such a burden is interesting; at the age of 18, a ten-year loan duration is over 50% of one's entire lifespan. A ten year debt to an 18 year old is basically an eternity.

Student debt is particularly troubling to me today. It wears like a ball and chain that weighs down time and potential. It is a burden that feels as though it has damaged my entire future, even though I have less than the average student with my level of education. Ten years from now, I will be 42 years old.

The reason for my obsession with debt is that it bothers me, and it was destined to bother me. As a kid who never had money or the money of my peers, I quickly learned the pain of debts -- the damage it can cause, and the pain of working to pay something back that you already have. I also do not do well with imaginary commitments that extend into a future that doesn't exist.

Debt is a novel system, but it is a shackle that dictates what the next x-years of your life will look like. You will work. You will earn a certain amount of money. You will pay this money back. And you will be punished if you do not. Fair enough. But this sounds an awful lot like a sentenced term in prison.

The process of imprisonment and debt are one in the same. In both cases, one makes a decision that involves risk, desire, passion, necessity, or impulse, which results in a consequence that requires a term served to someone else to pay off. The choice to steal that stereo out of that car might provide you with the utility of that new stereo, but you will serve a term in jail, where your punishment is equivalent to repaying society for a debt that you created. When you decide to go to college, because you have to, you basically decide to steal it and serve a term to pay it back.

Of course I can make this argument better. I can beef it up, and not take a single stab at it without edits, but the central point here is that debt is a prison for some of us. And, like any prisoner, some of us will go to extreme lengths to escape our terms and find our freedom again.