Borrowing money is as American as apple pie. Americans
borrow money to purchase houses, to finance automobiles, and to pay for luxury
items on their credit cards every day. It is a rare individual that can pay all
cash for their house, their car, or their credit card bill every month. The U.S.
economy thrives on credit because of the recycling of cash when these purchases
occur. America
is an economic powerhouse, partly because collectively we borrow so much money
to have things today, instead of saving the cash to buy these items some day,
if ever, in the future. Economic theorists are of the opinion that when you
purchase a house, the cash recycles about seven times: to the realtor, to the
title company, to the mortgage broker, to the lender, the butcher, the baker and
the candlestick maker, and so forth.
We live in the land of opportunity. You do not need a
college degree or pedigree to become an entrepreneur. All you need is the
ability to organize, manage, and assume the risks of a business with a
sufficient amount of cash to fund the business.
Borrowing money is the American paradigm for success for
individuals and for businesses. According the American Heritage Dictionary, a
paradigm is:
- One that serves as a pattern
or model.
- A set or list of all the
inflectional forms of a word or of one of its grammatical categories: the
paradigm of an irregular verb.
- A set of assumptions,
concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality
for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual
discipline.
Usage Note: Paradigm first appeared in
English in the 15th century, meaning "an example or pattern," and it
still bears this meaning today: Their company is a paradigm of the small
high-tech firms that have recently sprung up in this area. For nearly 400
years paradigm has also been applied to the patterns of inflections that
are used to sort the verbs, nouns, and other parts of speech of a language into
groups that are more easily studied. Since the 1960s, paradigm has been
used in science to refer to a theoretical framework, as when Nobel Laureate
David Baltimore cited the work of two colleagues that "really
established a new paradigm for our understanding of the causation of
cancer." Thereafter, researchers in many different fields, including
sociology and literary criticism, often saw themselves as working in or trying
to break out of paradigms. Applications of the term in other contexts show that
it can sometimes be used more loosely to mean "the prevailing view of
things." The Usage Panel splits down the middle on these nonscientific
uses of paradigm. Fifty-two percent disapprove of the sentence The
paradigm governing international competition and competitiveness has shifted
dramatically in the last three decades.
For more dictionary information please see: The American
Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000
by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
