Capitalism for Kids

There’s a new commercial about kids and money that feels to me like the end of civilization. It’s a promo piece from the people at Chase who want us to know that they are open for business, and they want our kids to open up accounts.

You probably haven’t seen it in the wild because nobody watches news on television. That would be nobody except for me and Alice. CNN is permanently on in the kitchen, the background noise for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Yes, I am that kind of person. The result is that I can pretty much narrate the Chase commercial, right down to the sweater the banker is wearing when he says goodbye to all the junior capitalists.

But it’s what happens along the way that really concerns me. According to Chase, childhood is an adventure that’s pleasant enough but doesn’t really add up to much. Skipping rope? Learning to play piano? Trapping fireflies in a jar on a summer night? Old school pleasures make no sense to Chase. Life doesn’t begin until you are making money.

And Chase wants you to make a lot of it fast, enough, in fact, to fill its accounts. At that point the soundtrack of the commercial crescendos, and we get the inevitable capitalist montage. One kid hawks his collection of Pokemon cards. Another does yard work while yet another cuts hair. The barber kid hires another kid to shill for him and drum up customers in the street. Meanwhile the grass cutting kid holds her cash up to the light to make sure, I suppose, that the bills are not counterfeit. Some of the kids looks serious, and one or two snarl, as if transformed by the act of making money into parodic duplicates of the adults who validate them. All their little faces harden, as if that’s what it takes to survive in ChaseWorld.

What’s missing here is any vision of a society which is not grim, transactional, or defined by money. Income is the issue, not income inequality. Do any of you know where your children and grandchildren are? If you do, don’t let them near the kitchen television. The price they pay might be their immortal souls.