Up to our necks

Sam Thompson is a researcher and a consultant at nef‘s centre for well-being.

From the Washington Monthly (hat tip Matt Yglesias), comes this rather alarming chart:

Growth in credit card debt vs growth in real wages

Now, this is the country that brought the world the Hooters Mastercard (“It says Hooters on the card!” No kidding.) so perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised. But who would bet against there being a similar trend in the UK?

There are several reasons we might want to worry about excessive and unsustainable borrowing, but one we should be talking about a lot more is mental health. As the new Foresight report makes clear, much of the latest research implicates debt as a major causal factor in clinical mental illness.

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