Credit cards were entirely conceptualized by a socialist utopian science fiction writer named Edward Bellamy over sixty years before the first physical plastic card was ever issued by a bank.

A closer look

Credit cards were entirely conceptualized by a socialist utopian science fiction writer named Edward Bellamy over sixty years before the first physical plastic card was ever issued by a bank. In his wildly popular 1888 novel Looking Backward, Bellamy described a future society where physical money was completely abolished and every citizen was given a cardboard dividend card that allowed them to draw a guaranteed income from a centralized national fund. Real-world financial institutions eventually stole the basic terminology and convenience of his futuristic concept but completely ignored the socialist wealth-distribution part, choosing instead to use the technology to drown the working class in high-interest revolving debt. It is a wonderfully cynical twist of fate that a literary device originally designed to imagine a post-capitalist paradise where poverty no longer exists is now primarily used by college students to buy overpriced textbooks they can never afford to pay off

Credit cards were entirely conceptualized by a socialist utopian science fiction writer named Edward Bellamy over sixty years before the first physical plastic card was ever issued by a bank.

A closer look

Keep exploring

Japan possesses the highest national public debt in the developed world, routinely hovering around two hundred and sixty percent of their entire gross domestic product.

Issuing government bonds is borrowing from grandchildren

Why credit cards are that exact size

Credit card companies actively refer to customers who pay off their balances in full every month as 'deadbeats' because they don't generate any revenue from exorbitant interest rates.

Global debt has ballooned to over 300 trillion dollars, a figure that massively outweighs the total amount of actual, physical money and easily accessible liquid assets that currently exist on planet Earth.

Julius Caesar introduced a massive debt restructuring program that effectively banned creditors from charging exorbitant interest rates and stabilized the failing Roman economy in 49 BC.

Credit cards were entirely conceptualized by a socialist utopian science fiction writer named Edward Bellamy over sixty years before the first physical plastic card was ever issued by a bank.

A closer look

A bigger world.One discoveryat a time.

Keep exploring

Japan possesses the highest national public debt in the developed world, routinely hovering around two hundred and sixty percent of their entire gross domestic product.

Issuing government bonds is borrowing from grandchildren

Why credit cards are that exact size

Credit card companies actively refer to customers who pay off their balances in full every month as 'deadbeats' because they don't generate any revenue from exorbitant interest rates.

Global debt has ballooned to over 300 trillion dollars, a figure that massively outweighs the total amount of actual, physical money and easily accessible liquid assets that currently exist on planet Earth.

Julius Caesar introduced a massive debt restructuring program that effectively banned creditors from charging exorbitant interest rates and stabilized the failing Roman economy in 49 BC.

A bigger world.
One discovery
at a time.