Point two: You will never succesfully cast a progressive frame on this issue when you lead your argument with a reference to debt due to "shopping sprees". That's a right-wing frame you are employing, best to not even go there. (It's an inaccurate one to boot.) "C'est un scandale !"
I agree with your analysis of reasons for cc debt and can confirm it from my own personal history. Dental problems and car trouble were the biggest sources of increases, but vacations added their share when my son was 8-13. I only finally got rid of cc debt with a 2003 re-fi. Fortunately I sold the house in L.A. in Nov. 2005 and moved to Arkansas, free of cc debt.
However unfortunate the "spending spree" remark may seem the bulk of the diary is useful advise. If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.
But now, I think we're going to start and see more bankruptcies rooted in overconsumption in the run-of-the-mill middle class. It's gonna be ugly. Facts, selfish little bastards. They don't even care about your feelings.
Given current trends in health insurance in America today, in addition to the coming wave of unemployment and the impact this will have on family stability, I find it hard to believe, though, that middle-class profiligacy will be anything more than the seriously minoritarian exception to the rule it always has been viz. financial distress in America.
My larger point is that playing into this rightwing rhetorical frame is severely counterproductive. Unless, of course, you're not playing on the same side. "C'est un scandale !"
What's going to happen is that the unusual hardship - loss of jobs, specifically - is going to become very usual and that's where widespread pre-existing over-leveraging is going to hurt. And that's where the newspeakly named "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005" is going to hurt double-plus good with its special favors to the CC sharks.
You are going to see a big change in bankruptcy typology. Not just the big accidents anymore - hospital bills and no coverage - but the average Joe who got sucked up in the wealth on credit con. The focus is going to shift from the "hapless victim" to the neighbor or the friend "being denied the American Dream". It's new and it's going to have important political and social implications.
I don't think pointing that out is playing in the rightwing rhetorical frame. I my mind, it's very clear. It takes two to play the idiot debt game : the debtor and the lender, and if the debtor can't pay, fuck the lender. It shouldn't have loaned the money in the first place.
Oh I have no doubt we will be hearing about these middle-class big spender exceptions to the general rule about financial hardship in America.
No and that's the point. These "middle-class big spenders" won't be some other guy, unknown, everyone can scorn safely from a distance, or some victim of life you can pity but no, it's never going to happen to me. The "middle-class big spender" will be the rule and it's going to be you, whoever is sitting in front of the TV being served that discourse*, your sister, your father, your colleague at the office, your friend. It won't fly. People don't like to get the finger wagged at them.
(* Assuming that discourse is served for very long. I'm dubious. I don't think the lenders will be so stupid as to continue to openly confront and piss-off 2/3 of the country. They'll rather concentrate on restructuring and "helping" and do all they can to bleed a little more fluid from the stone for a few more years. Being aloof is not doing any good to the mortgage industry right now. I think the rest will learn.) Facts, selfish little bastards. They don't even care about your feelings.
If the pain hits the white middle class, then maybe we will see some movement. But, this being America we are talking about, we may not like the result. "C'est un scandale !"
