Mal Fletcher comments

Most of us find the rapid, seemingly unstoppable increase in national debt disturbing. What kind of inheritance are we leaving to future generations?

Yet this tendency to run up debt while living on the never-never starts at a much more personal level. People get the governments they deserve, it's said. That's true: democratically elected governments tend to reflect the priorities of those who placed them in power to begin with.

If we can't see beyond a consumption lifestyle, if we can't recognize the benefits of frugality, we'll never vote for politicians who have the willpower needed to keep consumption or debt in check on a national scale.

There are two factors at work in our fondness for spending, and especially spending on credit. The first is the digital revolution, which affects everything from music and video files to money.

Digital money has many advantages, but it has two major downsides: it is an easier target for fraudsters and it has no weight, no substance; you can't tell when you've exhausted it.

Oh for the days when people would spend only as long as they had cash in their pockets. Back then - and it wasn't long ago - you could tell when the money was running out because your wallet was getting lighter by the minute.

Money that's reduced to the ones and zeros of binary code is ethereal and much easier to lose track of.

Our second problem is the strong existentialist streak running through our postmodern culture. The highest good we can achieve in life, says existentialism, is to enjoy as many good experiences as we can before we die.

Now whatever you think of Jean Paul Sartre and his friends, this is not a philosophy well known for producing long-term thinkers, or people who strategically plan for the future.

Entranced by this live-for-the-now thinking, many of us seem to believe there may be a kind of fairy godmother solution to problems with personal debt. If we can just put off the day of reckoning long enough, and stretch our moment of pleasure to the max, someone else will come to our rescue.

I can't help feeling that this was one of the factors behind the remarkable rise of Barack Obama, who rode to his presidency not on the back of his experience as a legislator as much as his ability to embody a promise; a pledge to solve big problems with a minimum of turmoil or fuss.

Time will tell how well he's able to deliver, but I doubt he'll ever live up to the hype that surrounded his election - nobody could.

There are no fairy godmothers. Good fortune alone will not turn things around no matter how positive our attitude or how much we 'keep believing.' Whether on a national or a personal level we all have to pay the piper sooner or later. There really is no such thing as a free lunch.

It's time we learned how to say 'no' a little more often, to delay gratification knowing that monetary value is often only momentary value, that there's more to our personal value than our ability to spend money.