But neither am I dishing out praise just because they are businesses and they should be immune from criticism. Like anything else, they have a good and bad side. I have no problem with using credit, as long as the amortized long term benefit of doing so is greater than the interest you pay, and because allowing the loan will finance productive activity. You also have to factor in the "hidden costs" as you point out.

So if I get a job as a traveling salesman, I need to borrow to get a first-class road car and a decent wardrobe for my work. That's good business. Borrowing a pile just to get a flashy car and threads to impress the girls is bad business. Likewise, a lending institution that loans money to local businesses is providing a valuable service to the community. Encouraging consumers to buy luxuries on credit, or speculating as a get-rich-quick scheme, is not.

I always rented because the nature of my job in high tech made me a gypsy, and because I needed the freedom to go mobile on a moment's notice. I cared little about "benefits" either in those days, being single, young, healthy and preferring to invest my own money for a potential rainy day. It's easy being "free" when you're immortal, indestructible and invincible

Once I decided I was going to settle down in one place for a while, then the benefits and the mortgage made plenty of financial sense, even though as a municipal employee I was getting paid much less than I would have been doing the same work for a private firm. Contrary to current mythology, municipal employees get relatively poor pay, although the benefits (at least in those days) were very good in comparison with private enterprise. Now they have low pay AND lousy benefits.

Finance and credit is good, like I said, it allows you to bootstrap, and everybody needs a place to live. But using finance as end in itself, or to think of it as a means of speculation, can be disastrous to both the individual investor and the national economy. Just look around at the wreckage. Financial profits should not be considered part of the GDP. They are as ephemeral as a fart in a hurricane.

I could care less if the value of my house went up or down during the real estate crash. I have to live somewhere. But if I had been leveraged to the max flipping condos I would have been screwed.

I may be poor, but I'm out of debt. The hippies were right.