I Steal From the Poor, and You Can Too!

My wife and I have one credit card between the two of us. We have one other fallback card in the event something goes wrong with the first one, but 95% of our day to day expenses get slapped onto plastic. I use it for gas. For getting a soda at Sebbin Lebbin. For groceries. For pretty much everything.

Then, at the end of the month, we pay it off. Every last dime. In the nearly 20 years we've been a joint socioeconomic unit, we've paid credit card interest precisely twice, and that was just because we'd flaked out on paying the bill on time. We don't use our "credit." We just use it to make life a little easier. That's largely because incurring debt at obscene, usurious interest rates for day-to-day expenses is worth steering away from. And yeah, it is usurious. When bank CDs are paying out 2%, mortgage rates stand at around 5%, and interest rates for credit card debt are between 10 and 20%, that's taking advantage.

Here's the thing that gnawed at me this week. Our primary credit card is a "benefits" card, meaning we get a small percentage of our costs returned to us in the form of gift cards at a range of different retailers. Because all of our household expenses are channelled through this one card, that starts to add up, to the tune of several hundred dollars a year of free stuff.

Only, like most things in life, it isn't really free. Those benefits are, for most human beings, the thing that makes them look at a credit card bill that significantly exceeds their monthly income and say, "Awesome! Now I can get a $50 gift certificate to buy even more crap I don't need!" Those people ultimately get punished economically. They tend to be less educated, or young, or struggling.

So as I looked at the nice little benefits balance that's build up for us over the last few months, my reveries about new speakers or a nav system for our van were interrupted by the pesky voice of the Spirit. Where does the money that makes those benefits possible come from?

It comes from the single mom who maxed out her cards a year ago when her son broke his arm. It comes from the twenty something who dug himself into hock trying to live the lifestyle the world told him was his birthright, and now lives in mom and dad's basement while climbing a Sisyphian mountain of credit card debt, school loans, and a loan for that Camaro he thought might get girls to notice him. It comes from that family that two years ago went from two incomes to one, saddled with a mortgage they could no longer afford, with their savings burned through and plastic the last, razor wire rope slipping through their hands to as their hopes for the "good life" sail away into the darkness.

Those benefits aren't just given because I'm such a great customer. They're a tiny shaving off the top of a giant mountain of profit, repackaged as a little taster offered up by your local pusher. Enjoying them without falling into debt may well be my cut for being wise as a serpent. But for some reason, I no longer feel as innocent as a dove.

I'm Rather Fond of Trebuchets, Actually

There was a fascinating editorial in the WaPo this last week written by Robert J. Samuelson, a conservative economic commentator whose writings are always thought provoking. It was a description of what he perceives as an assault on the foundation of American capitalism, entitled "Capitalism Under Siege."

Most of the article referred back to the work of eminent economist Joseph Schumpeter, who felt that capitalism contained within itself the seeds of it's own destruction. In addition to it's dynamism, which we enjoy during the boom times but that seriously bugs us during the busts, capitalism's creation of excess resources establishes:

...an oppositional class of "intellectuals" who would nurture popular discontents and disparage values (self-enrichment, risk-taking) necessary for economic success.

As I read this, I found myself agreeing, but thinking that perhaps it isn't just "intellectuals" who are the problem for capitalism. The threat to the core values of capitalism does not just come from leftist professors on campus and busybodies who need to get out there and have a real job.

It comes, I think, from Christianity as well. Working diligently is a Christian virtue, sure. So is being willing to take risks and not cling to the things that this world values. Complacence and indolence wouldn't have gotten the apostles very far.

But self-enrichment? Not really. Christian faith has very little use for self enrichment. If it happens to us as a collateral result of our hard work, then...well...you have more responsibilities in terms of how those resources are used. As a goal towards which we orient ourselves, though, it is rather explicitly and repeatedly rejected by our Lord and Savior.

It's why folks like Ayn Rand despised Jesus people...because within His life and teachings, there lies something very very incompatible with the competitive culture of self that is at the beating heart of the free market.