Th e second link between war and debt is really just the obverse of the first: alongside debts imposed in order to make war, there are debts imposed in order to keep the peace.
This lesson seems especially apt for the good citizens of the West, many of whom tend to mistake their own moments of private repose for the final realization of peace on earth. Against those who assume that the planet has been working its way toward an eventual state of tranquil prosperity—except …
Through its operations the scission between wealth and poverty turns into a self-reinforcing pincer.
—In the US, the UK, and the EU, the ratio of household debt to GDP has been rising alarmingly since the 1980s. Even so, these broad measures conceal the very differences that the wealth and inequality figures revealed: debt means rather different things for households at different ends of the scale…
