• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, August 4, 2008

The conviction that debt is dumb--once the mantra only of militant personal-finance gurus--is becoming something of a national rallying cry as consumers struggle to make sense of their mushrooming gas, grocery and credit card bills. And if consumer advocates have their way, the American public will soon come to see credit cards in the same villainous (and déclassé) light as tobacco, imported water and the Hummer.

Earlier this year, the Institute for American Values--along with six other national groups and more than 62 signatories, many of them academic powerhouses--called for a "public-education campaign for thrift." The idea is to tackle the growing problem of consumer debt in the same manner as anti-smoking and drunken-driving efforts.

While much of the group's attention is focused on the predatory practices of small lenders, such as car-title and payday lenders, larger entities--including credit card companies and state-run lotteries--are also part of the problem, the group says. And all need to work together to encourage Americans to charge less and save more.

"Consumers are really in a double bind right now," says Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, and one of main authors of the report on confronting debt culture. "On one hand, they are more worried about being in debt. And on the other, many people are more reliant on their cards than ever."

Some credit card ads have even shifted their focus to show consumers using them to pay for groceries, she says. And people are becoming inured to standing behind someone in the supermarket who fishes through a wallet full of cards before they can find one that is accepted. "So there's this sense that everyone is in debt, and if it happens to everyone, then it isn't shameful," she says.

But that doesn't mean there isn't a real sense of debt despair, she says. "People used to say, 'Well, I can pay these off anytime.' But people now have less confidence in their ability to reduce their debt."

Debt payments eat up about 15% of the average U.S. family's income, the group says. More than 20% of lower-income families spend at least 40% of their income in debt payments, and nearly half of all credit card holders have missed payments in the last year.

And the anxiety consumers feel about debt is intense: More than one-third (36%) of Americans say they have felt at some point that their financial situation was out of control. People ages 30-49 are more likely than others to have felt this way (45%). Parents with kids under age 18 are also vulnerable (41%), as are African-Americans (46%).

On a certain level, that debt is certainly paying off for Visa, which just reported that quarterly revenues jumped to $1.61 billion from $1.37 billion in the same quarter a year ago--and for MasterCard, where reported that quarterly revenues jumped 25% from the same period in 2007.

But just because consumers are trapped in a relationship with these brands doesn't mean they like being held over a barrel. Still, Whitehead doubts that we will see a day when shoppers regard companies like Visa and American Express with the same contempt reserved for, let's say, Big Oil. "There is a familiarity and dependence on these companies," she says. "It would take some cataclysmic event to change that."

Besides, unlike smoking and other personal habits that have fallen out of fashion, plastic is a little confusing--no one standing behind you at the Cineplex knows if you are financially intact and using a debit card as an electronic convenience, or a reckless spender juggling balances on eight cards.

She doesn't expect much of a change in consumer behavior, although many advocates recommend using cash as a way to regain a sense of control over spending. "We've gone too far in the way of plastic-people perceive credit cards as safer, more convenient," she says. "I doubt cash will make a comeback."