Two interesting articles

First, here's an interesting one about household debt in the United States. If we assume these are truly means (averages) and not medians (reporters are notorious for abuse of statistics), we would assume that the average household is paying about $5000 in mortgage interest, $1500 in credit card interest, $1000 in vehicle loan interest, and an additional amount for home equity loans. Multiply that by about 100 million households, and you're talking about 750 billion dollars being paid in interest annually.

What could your family do with an extra $7500 or so?

Here's another one linked by World Magazine's weblog. The author effectively argues that it is a tragedy for women to raise their children at home when they could be climbing the corporate ladder and succeeding in politics, and even makes a case that women ought to avoid the liberal arts because they're not the fast track to high paying professions.

It's all described, tragically, in terms of power, and the author doesn't even seem to have any idea of that fact. For her, power is fulfillment, and that power comes from a corner office and a business suit. In other words, forget about being Lemuel's wife (Proverbs 31) and become C.S. Lewis' (Abolition of Man) "trousered ape." Never mind, of course, that very few people ever get that corner office. We need the trousered (or skirted) apes to apply for the job.

Never mind, of course, little things like love, music, art, children, family, and faith. Gotta get a few women in corner offices, even if it kills them. How sad.

And I wonder how many of those corner offices are filled by women who have debts they need to pay off, and are working to get more of their friends into debt. It'll eat you up if you let it.