Never never land

When I was a kid, and it doesn't seem that long ago, if you wanted something, you paid for it with cash. If you hadn't enough cash, you couldn't have it and so you saved your pennies and halfpennies, your threepences and tanners, your bobs and two bobs, half crowns and so on until you could afford to pay. That way you knew the value of something and were more likely to take care of it. Of course there was hire purchase available, where you borrowed and paid off your debt week by week, but we were encouraged not to do that. Hire purchase was called the "Never never" for a good reason, and its use was a step on the road to financial disaster.
How the world has changed. Now we all have credit cards and many people are up to their necks in debts that they may never pay off. I know some whose credit cards are tiered so that each one is used to pay off the debt on the previous one. We borrow money for mortgages, the country borrows money for everything it seems, and at the neck of all this lies the poison that is our system. The real parasites of this world are not those claiming benefits, or making a few pounds on the side that the tax man does not see, but those who sit in plush offices, manipulating the markets, buying and selling debts, trading in things that do not even exist, gambling with money that belongs to someone else, secure in the knowledge that their six figure bonuses and huge profits on the side will be protected, however much they lose.
The wealthiest group in the world are those who make nothing. It is the greed of the hedge fund managers and their like, that allowed people with no income to borrow ludicrous amounts of money and thus produced the avalanche of financial crises that we are all now experiencing. The present government of course blame the previous one, but they know deep down that in such a poorly regulated system, no government can keep check on the criminal activity of the bankers that bleed us dry every moment of every day.
I have savings and no debts, but of course that is a disadvantage. My savings decrease in value and the fact that I own my house means that I will probably have to use that to fund any care that I need in my old age. Those who reach their dotage in debt, will of course have everything paid for them, and i suspect that in not many years to come, they will be the vast majority.