Collins and Yeskel
Rising personal debt is one of the consequences of growing inequality. Over 60 percent of americans carry a personal debt every month and the average family is said to cary a nine thousand dollar debt. The reading talked about how people are now using credit cards to pay for things like groceries and gas, something we would of paid for in cash on the regular in the past. I find this very dangerous. The main reason i find this dangerous is because having to buy groceries and gas on credit probably means you don’t feel you have the money at the given time to actually pay for it.
This means a person is living pay check to pay check and has little to no money to put in savings which could hurt in the future. I feel this is primarily dangerous for middle to low income households. If one of these households are buying food and gas on credit and cant afford to put money in savings and they happen to fall on a hard time they will put themselves into further debt and cause family issues.
Suburbanization of america was driven by the government and contributed disparities of wealth between whites and blacks by creating areas between the 1930’s-1960’s that were categorized by zones where certain people could live. On maps areas were broken down by color to determine the most desirable places to live. Green was a desirable area where it was predominately white and red was an undesirable place to live where it was mostly black, mixed race, or other races.
The FHA would give loans based off of this data based off of who applied for them and also loans interest rates would be adjusted accordingly in the same fashion. Today we see that older generations properties in these suburban areas are starting to mix racially since this older style of suburbanization has been outlawed. Over time the larger interest rates and zoning has created problems between different ethnic groups and not areas are becoming more diverse.
