Keeping Up With The (Debt Ridden) Joneses

Rob Horning has a thoughtful post on credit cards:

Some rely on credit in emergencies, but many choose to revolve credit to keep spending more than they make...the rest of us need to spend more (and go into debt) to feel like we are keeping up, or we need to make the difficult and somewhat isolating choice to fly in the face of new social normsforgoing the stuff that seems to have become de rigeur for our social class. We experience a kind of declassing even if we are content with what we have. Credit being extended to traditionally poor credit risks exacerbates that tendency furtherthose we considered beneath us suddenly seem to have more of life’s good things than we do. All of which is to say that accessibility to credit accelerates the cycling through of class signifiers and inflates the value of all of the ones in play. This seems highly unstablefinancially and emotionally.