h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You lost the land years ago so whatever you need you got to buy. You can't just grow it the back 40 or whatever, and it doesn't matter if it's a good year or a bad one.

So after you pay for food and shelter and clothing, what's leftover from that huge payroll check you got avoiding the backbreaking labor of your ancestors by doing spirit breaking labor in somebody else's cube farm?

Short answer... not much. Long answer... not nearly enough if you want to enjoy all the leisure time you accumulated by not being a farmer.

But we have an answer... easy credit aka plastic money, by now and pay later and later and later and forever.

Good... and they said slavery was dead... unless you're a CEO then you got other people to do all this stuff for you and all you have to do is smile and lie convincingly to shareholders and stock analysts or pay them off and other people who don't have real jobs.

Now I read somewheres that one CEO amassed like 11 or 12 million dollars in personal debt and somehow managed to convince the company board of directors to pay it off as part of his severence package. That would be a good thing to use for solving your own personal debt problems wouldn't it?

So how do they do it huh? Well you just make your personal debt problems the company's debt problems right? So just get all the dirt you can on a majority of the board and then when they downsize you just start dropping helpful hints about how much easier life will be for them if they clear up your credit cards for you.

And then if you don't end up in the harbor wearing some cement shoes, you're home free until you run your limts up again.