The political advantage to making it easier to go into debt than to save (edited) at Mark Horne.

One more thought on this.

Consider the authority structure of feudalism. The most pressing relationship of political authority was that of serf and landholder. The term “landlord” is a vestige of that kind of authority. The majority of people were serfs because they were tenants.

And now we have left all that behind, right? We own houses. We are propertied freemen.

Or have we just gone back to serfdom?

We don’t think of renting land and homes as common or desirable. But what difference does it make if we are renting all the money we use for our houses and cars and myriads of consumable goods and services?

Powerful combines have convinced us that we should be tenants forever in order to have the life we want. And thus we are continually vulnerable (since debt involves risk that we are told not to take seriously) and continually anxious about the general economy–looking to the government for a safety net since we have no savings to help ourselves or others.