How PBS Can Help You Stay Out of Debt

Do you sometimes feel like the only poor slob in the richest nation on Earth? Chances are you’re doing much better than you think.

Studies show that human beings do not judge what material possessions we should have on what we actually need. Instead we look to those around us, and compare what we have to what they have. If we’re part of the same social community, we expect to have just about the same amount of stuff. This wasn’t such a bad system in days gone by. People usually lived among a community of peers who had the same types of jobs, salaries and expectations.

These days, our “neighbors” are not the people down the street but the people who we welcome right into our houses via our TVs. Thanks to the magic box, we’re all hanging out with wealthy celebrities on their private islands. We’re comparing our wardrobes to Carrie’s on Sex and the City and our apartments to Shaquille O’Neal’s on MTV Cribs. Instead of keeping up with the Jones, we're keeping up with the Kardashians.

Day after day we are exposed to a world that is coated with high fashion and glamor. Even the cops and scientists working behind the scenes in crime labs appear to have been recently torn away from professional modeling gigs. Just like real life.

Few popular American television programs show working class characters. Researchers have analyzed the programs that do, and you will probably not be shocked to learn that they discovered such programs actually depict quite a good standard of living--higher than the characters could probably expect to have given their likely income levels.

The result, according to a survey conducted in the early 1990s, is that 85 percent of the U.S. public aspires to a lifestyle associated with those top fifth of the income ladder.

You do not have to be a financial genius to realize that most of us can never get there. But we try our hardest using our Platinum Rewards credit cards.

The worst part? When people feel stressed about their finances they are more apt to cut themselves off from real social interaction and watch more TV. There they see more rich and glamorous people, feel increasingly broke and ugly, and watch more TV and so on and so on.

So here is my suggestion. If you would like to live a well-balanced, debt free life, start watching British TV. Many British programs are available on channels like BBC America and PBS, and you can rent others or check them out from the library on DVD.

Where U.S. shows revel in the lives of the well-to-do, British shows are more likely to find drama in issues like unemployment and financial worries. The homes and furnishings tend to be modest. The actors are generally pleasant looking, but not impossibly beautiful.

(Romantic Leads, U.S. legal drama: L.A. Law)

(Romantic leads, U.K. legal drama: New Street Law)

And as an added bonus, the hour-long dramas created for the BBC air there commercial free, so you get almost a full hour of entertainment as opposed to the 44 minutes or so of a comparable U.S. show.

If you’re going to compare your life to the lives of fictional people, I say give yourself a fighting chance and choose people who have at least a fleeting resemblance to a lifestyle you could achieve. You’ll be entertained, more worldly and you’ll probably feel more attractive and richer without spending a dime.

Just don’t adopt the accent. You’ll sound like a twit.

Think You're the Only Poor Slob in the "Richest Nation on Earth?"

Broke is Beautiful: Living and Loving the Cash Strapped Life, due out in Spring, is now listed on Amazon.com for pre-order. It has no cover yet, but you can put in your order anyway!

As we get closer to its release date I will start posting stories related to its theme: Enjoying your life as a broke person and being the best darned broke person you can be.

The Huffington Post put up a clip today from Bill Maher's show on HBO. (Who can afford premium channels?) I am passing it along because the panelists discuss one of the themes in the book. You're not worse off than everyone around you! Studies have shown that television viewers tend to mistake the characters they see on the box for their actual peers on some level, yet the folks on TV live lives of material abundance well beyond what you can get with your meager salary. How? The magic of fiction. Unfortunately those of us in the reality-based economy find it a bit hard to keep up, which gives us the impression that we're the only ones treading water. Relax. There's a lot of company in your pool.

Schadenfreude History: Geraldo and Al Capone's Vault

This is the twenty-second anniversary of a moment Geraldo Rivera would just as soon forget, but no one will let him. We're certainly not going to let him off the hook here. His overhyped television special "The Opening of Al Capone's Vault" has its own chapter in the book Schadenfreude, Baby!

Geraldo's penchant for showboating and putting his own feelings into a story earned him many critics, even before he opened Al Capone's vault on live TV to find nothing but a couple of empty bottles. That's why his public embarassment was the cause of so much Schadenfreude.

And because Geraldo's style seems to have paved the way for a whole breed of opinionated reporters who now dominate the airways, "The Opening of Al Capone's Vault" has become a symbol of self-aggradizing, celebrity journalism with nothing at its center.

In the following YouTube clip, Geraldo took time away from being hit in the face with with chairs and drawing lines in the sand in Iraq to laugh along with his detractors. (Taking the advice of psychoanalyst Claudie Sies).

And let's give Geraldo his props. As Neil Steinberg wrote in his book Complete and Utter Failure, “the definition of real failure is the presence of true consequences—a fall, as opposed to a neglect to climb.” In other words, you have to get off your butt and try something before you can fail spectacularly at it. Could you get yourself a prime time TV show and a big enough audience for an embarassment of this size? I didn't think so.