State retreat forced all economic classes into direct financial participation
Evidence
As the state has retreated from public life under neoliberal barrage, individuals from all tax brackets have been compelled to participate in finance as never before. Mortgages are a key and widespread example, but so too are student loans, car loans, medical debt (in the United States) and even the predations of market-integrated pay-day loans and pawnshops … Over the past 50 years, debt has been culturally transformed from an emasculating dependency to be avoided into the marker of full adult subjectivity, evidence of prudent economic maturity and “financial literacy” (see Arthur 2014; Hyman 2011). — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 160
Categorization
- ADDENDUM: The claim that debt went from emasculating dependency to marker of adult subjectivity parallels the identity/political-signaling lens of ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ — moral categories (shame, maturity) get repurposed to enforce economic norms.
- XREF: The cultural revaluation of debt from shame to maturity connects directly to deWaard’s argument about financialization colonizing culture and everyday imagination. — connects to: Neoliberal welfare-state retreat expects everyone to act as financial self-managers — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 35; State withdrawal from economics was itself a drastic political act disguised as technical reason — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 747
- DEFINE: Key definitional move: debt is not merely an economic instrument but a marker of adult subjectivity — a definition of how finance shapes identity.
Broader Connections
- State withdrawal from economics was itself a drastic political act disguised as technical reason
#expands(0.88) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 747