Having a $400,000 debt makes you a real, productive person with a real job? Really?

The other day someone made the comment "having a $400,000 mortgage and college debt makes me a real, productive person with a real job." This comment really did leave me a little confused, as by not having any debt I am free to lead a much more productive life than most. Instead of spending 40+ hours a week working to earn money to pay off debt, I can work less hours and dedicate more of my time to volenteer work helping those in my local and wider community.

For those that decided to go down the mortgage route they have signed themselves up for 25+ years of earning money to hand straight over to someone else, with the ever present threat that they could lose their home with just a few payments missed. This results in people doing often pointless and unrewarding jobs for their entire lives to pay for a house that they will only get to actually enjoy for a short time before shuffling off the mortal coil. Fathers who only see their children for an hour each evening after they come back from work and before their children go to bed. Mothers being forced to spend less time with their children so that they too can work to help pay the mortgage. Some people will be lucky and have jobs that mean they can easily pay their debts, but what are they giving up to do this?

Being someone who was taught from a young age to avoid debt at all costs I can't help but see debt as nothing more than shackles. Many of the people I grew up with went down the conventional route and got mortgages and jobs that were not what they really wanted to be doing, I on the other hand took a different route. I have never been someone who is overly concerned with wealth and the shiny trappings that come with it, so whilst my friends joined corporate lawfirms and threw all the morals they held so dear out the window just so they could pay the mortgage, I used my skills to actually help people.

I volenteered my time to work on cases that meant something to me, and made huge differences to people who otherwise would not have had anyone to speak up for them. I had time to travel and help some of the poorest and most exploited people in the world. I saw first hand how western business practice was exploiting both manpower and resources all around the world. I realised very quickly that people did not die of starvation because they were lazy and had nothing to offer, or beacause there was a shortage of resources, but because they did not have the right bits of paper to obtain what they needed. In many of the poorest areas of the world, where the average person has less that you can imagine, western corporations have exploited the valuable natural resources, paying a very few corrupt people for the privaledge, and left the general population destitute. The local people are then exploited themselves, being offered work in desperate conditions for very little reward, but have no choice to do so or they and their families starve. They work hard just to survive each day and contrary to popular belief, do not just sit around waiting for the aid truck to appear and feed them.

Many countries have been plunged into war becasue of western capitalisms need to constantly expand, and this expansion requires more and more resources. No matter what the official cause of many of the recent wars, the reality is that they were fought for control of resources, and to secure another market to expand into. If western powers were really staging these invasions for moral reasons then they would be picking very different targets, as there are many countries around the world where innocent civillians are killed and tortured on a daily basis that need help, but these countries do not posess the natural resources western capitalism currently requires so they are quietly ignored.

The person who made the comment about his debt making him a real person with a real job would label me as a "waster" beacause I don't have a real job and don't contribute to the economy. I may not contribute much to the economy, but I feel that what I contribute to the world at large is much more valuable. Is being a good consumer and capitalist really better than being a decent human being?

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http://www.eeweb.com/blog/bob_stowe/perspective-on-specifying-electronic-power-supplies-source-characterization

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-31/fukushima-plant-released-record-amount-of-radiation-into-ocean.html

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http://www.livescience.com/16647-microbes-nuclear-waste-reuguera-nsf-sl.html

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http://www.rnw.nl/english/video/occupy-movement-still-going-strong-amsterdam

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http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/31/anonymous-threatens-drug-lords