Why Americans are in so much debt

One reason for this is the power which man has acquired over the forces of Nature .  Until this moment buying power, as has been seen, has invariably been distributed to the people in the form of salaries, wages, dividends, and profits ;  but man power is being displaced by machine power so quickly that even now since machines do not earn wages enough buying power to enable the output of production to be consumed is not being issued .  It is certain that, under the Money System, this state of affairs will be greatly intensified .  Even at the height of the American boom there were 2,000,000 unemployed persons in the United States who had been thrown out of work because machines were doing that work .  A recent calculation suggests that at least a quarter of the 12,000,000 persons now unemployed in America can never again be employed under the present system perhaps under any conceivable system .
How then, as salaries and wages disappear, is buying power to be distributed ?  Here is a new battle-field for Money which will resist to the utmost the idea that, as human labour becomes more productive, larger quantities of money will be needed to exchange the products of that labour .  The question, Are men to be given money for nothing ?  is bound to be asked by those whose office it is and has always been to give money, invented by themselves out of nothing, in exchange for the largest possible quantities of goods and services .

R. McNair Wilson, Monarchy or Money Power