Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (The CBC Massey Lectures)

by Margaret Atwood

In 1955, the average Canadian household debt-to-income ratio was 55 percent; in 2003, it was 105.2 percent. The ratio has gone up since then. In the United States the ratio was 114 percent in 2004.

To begin with, they taught capuchin monkeys to trade pebbles for slices of cucumber. Then they gave one of the monkeys a grape — viewed by the monkeys as more valuable — for the very same pebble. “You can do it twenty-five times in a row, and they are perfectly happy getting cucumber slices,” said de Waal. But if a grape was substituted — thus unfairly giving one monkey a better pay packet for work of equal value — the cucumber-receivers got upset, began throwing pebbles out of the cage, and eventually refused to co-operate. And the majority of the monkeys got so angry if one of them was given a grape for no reason that some of them stopped eating.