Forty Three: Good Credit Chump

As I go through my weekly ritual of paying all of my bills (on time, mind you) for business and personal matters, I feel a constant and overwhelming sense of being a gigantic chump. Those of us who pay our mortgages, taxes, and the endless blizzard of life-sustaining expenses are in fact making up for the other vast numbers of those who either cannot, or choose not to pay theirs. What value comes to us chumps? Is there a ledger somewhere that will someday pay us dividends? Or are we just idiots being taken advantage of by a system that rewards the reckless and irresponsible risk taking and consuming of an ever increasing portion of society?