[...] Those aspiring to find work are now forced to borrow in order to cultivate knowledges, skills and competencies that save their future employers time and money: where an electrician, a fashion model or a security guard might have once been trained on the job at their employer’s expense, today they must purchase credentials and qualifications. Further, the experience of entering the workforce already in debt and fearing the grave economic consequences (not merely the higher interest rate) of failure to make payments makes for more compliant workers, fearful of losing their jobs. The so-called “developed” economies of the world are largely kept afloat by the willingness of populations to go further and further into personal debt in ways that allow retail sales, housing prices and other economic indicators to increase year over year. But, more profoundly, after 40 years of declining real wages in America, and with the rise of increasingly precarious and low-paying work, debt is a critical means by which people manage to continue to survive and participate in an increasingly consumer-driven society (McNally, 106–107). Where more and more aspects of life are commodified, debt becomes a means of survival (Ross 2014). At the very least, access to credit helps cover the (increasingly frequent) times between jobs; at worst, it supplements insufficient incomes. Soederberg (2014) has called this a system of “debtfare,” where access to sub-prime credit has largely replaced the now diminished welfare state.