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debt
American Garbage
We consume far beyond our means because our military keeps enough of us feeling secure, and we have such a large military because we consume far beyond our means.
Feb 01, 2026
I learned one of my most valuable lessons about US power in my first year as a Brown University doctoral student. It was in anthropology professor Catherine Lutz’s seminar on empire and social movements. I’d sum up what I remember something like this: Americans consume one hell of a lot—cars, clothes, food, toys, expensive private colleges (ahem…), and that’s just to start. Since other countries like China, the United Kingdom, and Japan purchase substantial chunks of US consumer debt, they have a vested interest in our economic stability. So, even though you and I probably feel less than empowered as we scramble to make mortgage, car, or credit-card payments, the fact that we collectively owe a bunch of money globally makes it less likely that a country like China will want to rock the boat—and that includes literally rocking the boat (as with a torpedo).
In classes like that one at Brown, I came to understand that the military power we get from owing money is self-reinforcing. It helps keep our interest rates low and, in turn, our own military can buy more supplies (especially if President Donald Trump’s latest demand for a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget goes through!). Our own debt somewhat ironically allows this country to continue to expand its reach, if not around the globe these days, at least in this hemisphere (whether you’re thinking about Venezuela or Greenland). Often when I splurge on a fancy Starbucks latte or a new pair of shoes, I think about how even critics of US military hegemony like me help prop up our empire when we do what Americans do best—shop!
To put this crudely, we consume far beyond our means because our military keeps enough of us feeling secure, and we have such a large military because we consume far beyond our means.
American Trash and the Politics of Consumption
And boy, can we shop! As of August 2025, US consumer debt ballooned to nearly $18 trillion and then continued to rise through the end of last year.
Here’s one consequence of our consumptive habits: We Americans throw a lot of stuff out. Per capita, we each generate an average of close to two tons of solid waste annually, if you include industrial and construction waste (closer to one ton if you don’t). Mind you, on average, that’s roughly three times what most other countries consume and throw out—much more than people even in countries with comparable per capita wealth.
Reminders of our waste are everywhere. Even in my state, Maryland, which funnels significant tax dollars into environmental conservation, you can see plastic bags and bottles tangled in the grass at the roadside, while the air in my wealthy county’s capital city often smells like car exhaust or the dirty rainwater that collects at the bottom of your trash can. Schoolchildren like mine bring home weekly piles of one-sided worksheets, PTA event flyers, plastic prizes, and holiday party favors. Even the rich soil of our rural neighborhood contains layers of trash from centuries of agricultural, household, and military activity, all of which remind me of the ecological footprint we’re leaving to our children and grandchildren.
Not all of us create or live with garbage to the same degree.
To our credit, some of us try to be mindful of that. In recent years, three different public debates about how to fuel our consumptive habits (and where to put the byproducts) have taken place in my region. Residents continue to argue about where to dispose of the hundreds of thousands of tons of our county’s waste (much of it uneaten food) that’s currently incinerated near the scenic farmland where I live. Do we let it stay here, where it pollutes the land and water, not to mention the air, and disturbs our pastoral views? Or do we haul at least some of the residual ash to neighboring counties and states, to areas that tend to be poor majority-minority ones? While some local advocacy groups oppose the exporting (so to speak) of our trash, it continues to happen.
A related dispute has taken place in an adjacent county that’s somewhat less wealthy but also majority white. That debate centers on the appropriate restrictions on a data center to be built there that will store information we access on the internet and that’s expected to span thousands of acres. How far away need it be from residents’ homes and farms? Will people be forced to sell their land to build it?
While many of our concerns are understandable—I’m not ready to move so that we can have a data center nearby—it turns out that some worries animating such discussions are (to put it kindly) aesthetic in nature. Recently, a neighbor I’d never met called me to try to enlist our family in a debate about whether some newcomers, a rare Indian-American family around here, could construct a set of solar panels in a field along a main road, where feed crops like alfalfa can usually be seen blooming in the springtime.
My neighbor’s concern: that the new family wanted to use those fields for solar panels to supply clean energy to their community (stated with emphasis, which I presumed to denote the Asian-Americans who would assumedly visit them for celebrations and holidays). Heaven forbid! She worried that the panels would disrupt the views of passersby like us and injure a habitat for the bald eagle—ironic concerns given how much of a mess so many of us have already made renovating our outbuildings, raising our dogs and chicken flocks, and chopping down trees that get in the way of our homes or social gatherings.
Many such concerns are raised sincerely by people who care deeply about land and community. However, the fact that, to some, solar panels are less desirable than the kinds of crops that look nice or feed our desire for more red meat should reframe the debate about whose version of consumption (and garbage) should be acceptable at all.
Indeed, not all of us create or live with garbage to the same degree. Compared to white populations, Black populations are 100% more likely and communities of Asian descent 200% more likely to live within 6 miles of a US Superfund site (among America’s most polluted places). Such proximity is, in turn, linked to higher rates of cancer, asthma, and birth defects.
Nor do whites suffer such impacts in the same ways. According to an analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency—and let’s appreciate such an analysis while we still have access to it, since the Trump administration’s EPA just decided to stop tracking the human impact of pollution—Black Americans live with approximately 56% more pollution that they generate, Hispanic Americans experience 63% more than what they create, and—ready for this?—white Americans are exposed to 17% less than they make.
Military Contamination
Our military, far from being just another enabler of unequal consumption and suffering, contributes mightily to the waste we live with. In the US, hundreds of military bases are contaminated by so-called forever chemicals, such as PFAS, in the drinking water and the soil. We’re talking about chemicals associated with cancer, heart conditions, birth defects, and other chronic health problems. The civilian populations surrounding such bases are often low-income and disproportionately people of color. Of course, also disproportionately impacted are the military families and veterans who live and work around such bases, and tend to have inadequate healthcare to address such issues.
An example would be the Naval Submarine Base in New London, where my family spent a significant amount of time. Encompassing more than 700 acres along the Thames River, that base was designated a Superfund site in 1990 due to contamination from unsanctioned landfills, chemical storage, and waste burial, all of which put heavy metals, pesticides, and other toxic substances into the environment.
Rather than bore you with more statistics, let me share how it feels to stand on its grounds. Picture a wide, deep river, slate gray and flanked by deciduous trees. On the bank opposite the base, multifamily housing and the occasional restaurant have been wrought from what were once factories. After you pass the guard station, a museum to your left shows off all manner of missiles, torpedoes, and other weaponry, along with displays depicting the living spaces of sailors inside submarines, with bunks decorated with the occasional photo of scantily clad White women (presumably meant to boost troop morale).
To your right, there are brick barracks, office buildings, takeout restaurants, even a bowling alley, and submarines, their rounded turrets poking out of the water. Along roadways leading through the base, old torpedoes are painted in bright colors like children’s furniture and repurposed as monuments to America’s military might. The air smells like asphalt and metal. Signs of life are everywhere, from the seagulls that swoop down to catch fish to the sailors and their families you see moving about in cars. It’s hard to comprehend that I’m also standing on what reporters have called “a minefield of pollution… a dumping ground for whatever [the base] needed to dispose of: sulfuric acid, torpedo fuel, waste oil, and incinerator ash.”
Empire of Waste
When I say that our military produces a lot of garbage, I don’t just mean in this country. I also include what it does abroad and the countries like Israel that we patronize and arm. Last summer, I corresponded with anthropologist Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins, who spent more than a year documenting the human casualties and costs of what the Israeli military and other Israelis have done in Israeli-occupied Palestine. That includes the mass dumping of garbage there from Israeli territories and the barricading of Palestinian communities from waste disposal sites, all of which have led to environmental contamination.
I think progressives would do well to consider how important it is that our signs, our social media posts, our political speeches, and even our patterns of consumption send a message—that many are welcome here, skin color, pronouns, and even specific brands of left-wing ideology be damned.
For example, Stamatopoulou-Robbins visited the 5,000-person Palestinian village of Shuqba, surrounded by open land on all sides and controlled by the Israeli government. Nearby cities and settlements dump waste, including X-ray images, household appliances, broken electronics like cell phones, industrial waste, wrecked vehicles, and car parts right in its neighborhood. One young man told Stamatopoulou-Robbins that he and his wife couldn’t have a baby because of the toxic environment. Many others, he told her, experienced the same problem, along with higher-than-average rates of cancer and respiratory and skin problems. His story, Stamatopoulou-Robbins wrote me, was one of many similar tales in Shuqba, tales that multiplied across the West Bank, where Israeli settlements and trucks from Israel, as she put it, “regularly dump their wastes in proximity to Palestinian residential areas and farmland.”
Her research drives home how we experience pollution all too often depends on who we are. I’m a case in point. My family and I pride ourselves on being the first to inhabit our sprawling rural property since the family whose ancestors built a home on it in 1890 and passed it down to two subsequent generations. In 2020, when we initially came to look at it, we couldn’t afford the asking price. However, the older couple who, in the end, sold it to us wanted a family in the house who would raise children there as they had. As they put it flatteringly, we were a “salt-of-the-earth” family (and the feeling was mutual).
Trash and Belonging
Nowadays, the news abounds with references to who is a “real” American, and who belongs beyond our borders. References to purity and contamination apply not just to our growing piles of waste but to human beings, too. Consider candidate Donald Trump’s promise, at a 2023 campaign rally, to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” or his claim that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and other Somali immigrants are nothing less than—yes—“garbage.”
And it’s true that what (or who) we consider garbage, and what (or who) we tolerate in our field of vision matters. My family recently renovated an old cabin behind our house to serve as an office for me to see my psychotherapy patients in person. The idea was that the veterans and military families who come to me for help with trauma, many of whom themselves are lower-income people of color, would have a peaceful place to process it.
As we demolished an outer wall to add a bathroom to my new office, something fell out of that wall: an old paper advertisement for black licorice candy (“Licorice Bites”) that depicted a Black baby, eyes wide in the stereotypical fashion of Jim Crow Era ads, trying to crawl away from an alligator, its mouth gaping open. Good thing, I thought, that it hadn’t fallen out of that drywall when a patient of mine was there. The experience, while fleeting, reminded me of writer Ta-Nehisi Coates’s point that Americans so easily minimize foreign genocides because we’ve done such a striking job of burying (in the case of my house, literally!) the atrocities of slavery, the segregated world that followed it, and their role in our country’s expansion.
Whoever put it there, that ad in my cabin wall—just like local gossip about that Indian-American family—is a reminder of who belongs and who doesn’t in this country. Like an Egyptian pyramid filled with a pharaoh’s possessions, remnants of American lives remind us of how some of us are kept sick, intimidated, and belittled, while feeding the appetites of others.
In the meantime, I think progressives would do well to consider how important it is that our signs, our social media posts, our political speeches, and even our patterns of consumption send a message — that many are welcome here, skin color, pronouns, and even specific brands of left-wing ideology be damned. Who is “of this earth” is questionable at best.
We should also ask why pictures denigrating Black people and half-naked women, and monuments to weaponry, so excite the patriotic souls of enough Americans that it’s easy to find them throughout our land. We cannot continue to allow the other side’s exclusionary ideals to dominate today’s political messaging.
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As Trump Drives Up Costs, Record Share of Subprime Auto Loans Overdue
"The vulnerable part of the economy is having an even tougher time making ends meet," said one finance professor.
Nov 13, 2025
Last month's jobs report may never be released after being delayed during the federal government shutdown, but other figures demonstrate the havoc President Donald Trump is wreaking on the US economy, including new data for subprime borrowers behind on car payments.
The share of US borrowers with low credit scores or limited credit histories who are at least 60 days past due on their auto loans rose to 6.65% in October, the highest percentage since Fitch Ratings began tracking it in the early 1990s.
"The vulnerable part of the economy is having an even tougher time making ends meet," Massachusetts Institute of Technology finance professor Christopher Palmer told Marketplace on Wednesday in response to the new data.
As Bloomberg reported Wednesday:
Miriam Neal in Atlanta is one of those struggling to afford all of her expenses. The 29-year-old lost her job as a research fellow in December and couldn't make her car payments, leading to her vehicle being repossessed. Thanks to a GoFundMe that she started in July, she was able to get her car back, but said she still can barely afford her bill.
"It's been a little bit difficult maintaining it with the car insurance, the maintenance, and my car loan," Neal said. "I'm usually about 30 days late."
She still hasn't been able to find employment and ended up having to move back in with her parents while she drives for Amazon Flex to make a little bit of money. Still, she estimates she makes only about $100 a day, which isn't enough for all of her bills.
Fitch's findings on missed car payments notably follow two key disruptions in the auto lending space.
"PrimaLend, which serves the 'buy-here-pay-here' auto financing market—where dealers sell and directly finance vehicles for customers with poor or limited credit—filed for bankruptcy protection last month," Reuters reported. "Tricolor, which sold cars and provided auto loans mostly to low-income Hispanic communities in the Southwestern United States, also filed for bankruptcy in September."
In mid-October, the credit score model development company VantageScore released an analysis showing that auto loans "have now evolved from being one of the least risky consumer credit products to one of the loan types most prone to delinquencies," as consumers struggle with rising interest rates, financing costs, and prices of cars, insurance, and repairs.
"Auto loans have not followed the trends of other credit products as delinquencies have been persistently trending up across all credit tiers and income groups over the past 15 years," said VantageScore's chief economist and strategy officer, Rikard Bandebo, in a statement. "Even after the industry tightened lending criteria three years ago, delinquencies have continued to rise."
A few days before the VantageScore analysis, Cox Automotive's Kelley Blue Book announced that in September, the average transaction price (ATP) of a new vehicle in the US had soared above $50,000 for the first time.
"It is important to remember that the new vehicle market is inflationary. Prices go up over time, and today's market is certainly reminding us of that," said Cox Automotive executive analyst Erin Keating last month. "The $20,000 vehicle is now mostly extinct, and many price-conscious buyers are sidelined or cruising in the used vehicle market. Today's auto market is being driven by wealthier households who have access to capital, good loan rates, and are propping up the higher end of the market."
"Tariffs have introduced new cost pressure to the business, but the pricing story in September was mostly driven by the healthy mix of EVs and higher-end vehicles pushing the new vehicle ATP into uncharted territory," she added. "We've been expecting to break through the $50,000 barrier. It was only a matter of time, especially when you consider the bestselling vehicle in America is a pickup truck from Ford that routinely costs north of $65,000. That's today's market, and it is ripe for disruption."
The downturn becomes more evident ...Record number of subprime borrowers miss car loan payments in October, data shows - www.reuters.com/business/aut...
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— Not Born Yesterday (@oatsmint.bsky.social) November 12, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Other recent findings that have shown the economic deterioration under Trump include a Thursday report from Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee (JEC), which found that the average US family is spending around $700 more each month on basic items since Trump returned to office in January.
"As families across the country spend more to pay their bills and put food on the table, Democrats and Republicans should be working together to lower costs," said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), the JEC’s ranking member. "Instead, President Trump is pushing ahead with reckless tariffs that continue to fuel inflation and drive prices up even higher."
A closely watched University of Michigan survey revealed last week that since October, consumer sentiment has fallen over 6% to 50.3, the second-lowest level since 1978, and the "current economic conditions" index has dropped nearly 11% to an all-time low of 52.3.
Earlier in November, the Washington Post reported on layoff data from corporate outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which documented 153,000 job cuts in October, bringing the total for this year to 1.1 million.
"We haven't seen mega-layoffs of the size that are being discussed now—48,000 from UPS, potentially 30,000 from Amazon—since 2020 and before that, since the recession of 2009," said the firm's CEO, John Challenger. "When you see companies making cuts of this size, it does signal a real shift in direction."
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Climate Adaptation Failure Is the Next Debt Crisis for the Global South
This is the new face of global inequality: Countries that contributed least to the crisis are being made to pay twice—first through climate impacts, and then through debt.
Nov 11, 2025
As deadly storms ripped through the Caribbean, a new United Nations report delivered a sobering warning: The world is failing to prepare for the climate it has already created.
The UN Environment Programme’s Adaptation Gap Report 2025, aptly titled Running on Empty, finds that developing nations will need between US$310 and $365 billion annually by 2035 to cope with intensifying climate impacts. Yet, international public finance for adaptation fell to just US$26 billion in 2023, down from US$28 billion the previous year. The result: Only one-twelfth of what’s needed is being delivered.
This gap is not an abstract number. It’s visible in the wreckage of homes, farms, and economies across our region. Last month, Hurricane Melissa, the strongest-ever storm to hit Jamaica, tore through the Caribbean, leaving destruction equivalent to nearly 30% of the island’s GDP. With at least 75 lives lost and damages exceeding US$50 billion, Melissa is not just another storm; it is a case study in the cost of global inaction.
A rapid attribution study found that climate change made Melissa four times more likely and increased its wind speeds by 7%, raising damages by around 12%. For Haiti, Jamaica, and other small island developing states (SIDS), such storms bring unbearable losses eroding livelihoods, tourism revenues, and vital infrastructure. These countries contribute the least to global emissions yet bear the highest costs.
Adaptation finance should not create more debt.
The pattern repeats globally. This year’s monsoon floods in Pakistan displaced 7 million people and destroyed thousands of homes. Whether in South Asia or the Caribbean, the message is clear: The failure to invest in adaptation is costing lives.
Adaptation is not a distant goal; it is an urgent necessity. It means building stronger flood defenses, adopting climate-smart agriculture, and developing social protection systems that safeguard the most vulnerable. Research by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) shows that every US$1 invested early in resilience saves more than US$5 in avoided losses. Yet, the world continues to spend far more on disaster relief than on prevention.
Every dollar delayed multiplies the human and economic toll. In Haiti, where communities are already grappling with political instability, weak infrastructure, and high poverty, each storm magnifies vulnerabilities. The Caribbean, with its densely populated coastal areas and economies heavily dependent on tourism and agriculture, cannot afford to treat adaptation as optional.
At COP29 in Baku, governments pledged through the Baku to Belém Roadmap to mobilize US$1.3 trillion by 2035, including at least US$300 billion annually for developing nations. On paper, this looks ambitious. In reality, it falls far short of what is needed. Adjusted for inflation, adaptation costs could reach US$440-520 billion per year by 2035, and the US$300 billion target covers both mitigation and adaptation, with no separate adaptation goal yet defined.
Adaptation finance was meant to help nations prepare for rising seas, harsher droughts, and lethal floods. Yet, when those funds don’t arrive, countries are forced to borrow. In 2023, 59 least developed countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) paid US$37 billion to service their debts and received only US$32 billion in climate finance. These aren’t productive investments but emergency debts taken just to rebuild what has already been lost.
This is the new face of global inequality: Countries that contributed least to the crisis are being made to pay twice—first through climate impacts, and then through debt. And while the rhetoric of “resilience” fills summit halls, the financial architecture remains rigged against the Global South. Only 15% of adaptation finance in recent years has been delivered as grants; the rest comes as loans. For every dollar of “climate support,” developing nations are paying back many more in interest.
The IIED notes that less than 10% of global climate finance reaches the local level, while international credit rating systems penalize small and vulnerable economies for their exposure to climate risks making it harder for them to attract investment in resilience. These structural barriers are blocking climate justice.
So what should change?
Adaptation finance should not create more debt. Countries hit by climate disasters need grants, not loans, because these crises are caused by global emissions, not their own failures. Second, global lending rules must change. The IMF and World Bank should consider pausing repayments after major disasters. Forcing countries to rebuild while paying high interest is unfair and makes recovery harder. Third, regional cooperation must grow stronger. Shared projects prove that joint action works. Regional funds, supported by concessional finance and local expertise, can deliver faster results than slow global systems.
Adaptation is not charity. It is justice and economic common sense. Without equitable support and reparations, the Global South would sink further and keep on building the same roads and homes after every flood, hurricane, and storm. This is not only senseless but also highly unjust. It is time for the Global North to take responsibility, after all its only fair that the poor and vulnerable shouldn’t have to fix a crisis they didn’t create while drowning in debt.
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