The credit card problem is not the monster that keeps the US economy awake at night, debt is.

“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

-The Red Queen from Through the Looking Glass

Time has a habit of speeding up when you borrow from the future. Like in Through the Looking Glass, this acceleration makes it difficult to keep up, let alone make any sort of progress.

Imagine that you find 1 million dollars worth of oil on your property and it costs $100,000 to access it. Borrowing that money on interest turns the 5 years it would take to accumulate that money into a year. Credit is an incredible time machine that delivers your dream of prospecting for oil closer to the present.

Here is what your dream of oil prospecting looks like without credit. It is a long uphill battle: