Credit Card

I wrote a story once, about a credit card.

A credit card parents took out on their child’s behalf, in their child’s name. The notion being that, since raising a child was an undertaking as expensive as it was expansive, it made sense for the child to at some point contribute financially to it.

The balance on the card, often in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, was transferred to the child upon it’s reaching legal adulthood at the age of‘ eighteen, and until that age no payments needed be made.

Although a sixteen percent annual interest rate was compounded on it. Upon turning eighteen the child, now legally responsible for the debt accumulated by it’s parents, was expected to begin paying it back.

It was treated like any other credit card debt.

As long as certain minimum monthly payments were made, everything would function as normal. It was just another bill, albeit one that was unlikely ever to be paid back in it’s entirety. In this way, a generation of loyal workers was created that laboured without question, knowing that from the moment they became adults they were at best a month away from bankruptcy and destitution.

It was a trifle heavy-handed, I admit. Okay, it was extremely heavy-handed. But overall it was an amusing little tale…

…that is, until a major investment bank contacted me via my blog. They told me they were excited about my proposed new financial product, and that they wanted to send me a contract to peruse. They saw a “real opportunity for growth” and looked forward to a lucrative partnership with me developing this opportunity.

So yeah. That one’s my bad too...