Debt and the Single Waif: Charles Dickens As American Debt Analog

Today the two hundredth Birthday of Charles Dickens. If you end up not reading the rest of this blog, that's the main thing I want you to here: Charles Dickens was not paid for his short stories. It's a vicious lie. Whoever carries this duck should immediately shut up, it is desirable to kick him in the Jimmy.

It is perceived as the author of an incredible social observation, and what we know about the horrible conditions of poor in London, because he was watching closely. Mainly, because he lived it.

When Charles Dickens was 12 years old, his father's debts finally caught up with him, and he was sent to the Marshalsea debtors' prison. (This was a baker, who sent him there, John Dickens, of course, had many duties,. It's not like all this is over black bread, but he was a baker, who made it in the trial, and it is the duty baker, that John Dickens was sent to debtors prison.)

His elder sister Fanny was in the Royal Academy of Music for piano. His younger brothers were unable to work. It was Charles Dickens, to be the main breadwinner for the family. So, at age 12, he was sent to Warren's blacking factory. He sat on a chair in a cold room with other boys insert labels on bottles of shoe polish. It was dark, there were rats, and that was childhood to earn money - but money that is the only real stable income for the family.

Debt is the primary motivation in his life of Dickens. It grew out of the money is not enough. And even if he was the most famous writer in the world, he always felt that he was thisclose to a financial collapse. Because it is Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield said: "If a person was 20 pounds a year on their income, and spent 19 pounds 19 shillings and sixpence, he would be happy, but what if he spent £ 20, which he will be unhappy. "

Because it's the 200th anniversary of the birth, but because we only remember the wonderful people at the round numbers, there is a lot written about this year's Dickens and the duty - for example, is the latest message from the National. Ominously titled "The fate of that childhood destroyed by Dickens is waiting for us all," he seeks to connect the debt, which dropped in the Marshalsea, John Dickens, a broader discussion of fiscal profligacy.

It's a fair comparison? Well, not according to the book nerd.

John Dickens was living beyond their means. He was a typical middle-class wages in the office to pay the Navy, but was never good in the harmonization of their income to expenditure. Some of them can be traced to his own upbringing, John Dickens: His parents were servants to the Lord Crewe, and Ian was brought up with children Crewe. It was difficult for John Dickens afford to lower the standards as soon as he was by himself, and he continued to hold such a way that reflects a way of life he was accustomed.

But Dickens is known and it has a duty to respect the background and the weak link is better than no connection at all right? Besides the fact that we did not really have a conversation that we should be with a debt. In America, at least, there is a particularly American sense of entitlement to own a house and owning a car, as well as having a whole. When it comes to debt as a result of living beyond their means - if it becomes about how Americans do not want to live without iCarly or Kindle or car - it's a different story, and the conversation we have never been good with this the country.

This, of course, rightly believe that American corporations have used this persistence, and that this operation has caused a lot of fiancial troubles that we are continuing to recover from the last seven years or so. But it could also be something to the argument presented at the end of the argument of the National: "The debt has sucked the life out of the global economy. Excessive dependence on the government was forced to his knees prosperous. "But it" calls are coming from home! "Situations. This over-reliance on debt is the American consumer has made it alone, and with such energy that it is no longer directed to the implementation.

"Fans of Dickens will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of" National tells us. "This is a great shame that all this time our attitude to debt has not changed at all." But while Americans are ready for honest convesation of class, money, debt, liability, it would be difficult to start a conversation that could change our attitude in the first place.