Why Americans Are Fat And Broke

If martians landed today and wanted a 2-minute synopsis of American culture, all they'd have to do is watch this commercial:



and familiarize themselves with the concept of Taco Bell's "Fourth Meal"--"the meal that's served between dinner and breakfast."

To sum it up: Americans are greedy and fat....and apparently stupid because we aren't particularly alarmed about either of those facts.

According to this website, the average American household carries almost $8,500 in credit card debt. We need big houses, big cars, big everything--and have discovered that we can have these things even if we don't earn enough to pay for them. As long as we can have them we don't care what it costs--witness the whole sub-prime mortgage crisis and the fact that during the twelve month period ending June 2006, there were 1.5 million consumer bankruptcy filings.

Alarming, right? One would think so, but Visa knows better--they know that people are in debt specifically because they buy into the message that credit is good and cash is bad. You pay with a credit card and everything is a breeze--no thought to the bill that will arrive at the end of the month. As for the moron who insists on paying cash--he's holding up the line and keeping the next guy from his immediate gratification--what the hell is he thinking? He better get with the program.

And why stop at material goods when it comes to excess? We don't, which is why, according to the American National Center for Health statistics, about 63% of Americans are overweight and that number continues to rise every year. We constantly hear about the "Obesity epidemic" in the US and what we need to do to combat it--then we head over to Taco Bell for fourth meal. Same concept as the money thing--why stop at 3 meals when you can have a fourth?

Once you get to Taco Bell you get to merge the best of these two worlds: you get to pay for your $3 fourth meal with a credit card--no cash necessary!

That's what I call American ingenuity.