Kieran Healy recounts how he talked his six-and-a-half-week-old son out of declining to apply for the Citibank Platinum Select Mastercard he was offered.
Times have certainly changed. About eighteen years ago, as a young Army officer, I applied for a gold card and was turned down on the grounds that I wasn’t making enough money. Four years later, just out of the Army and temporarily unemployed en route to graduate school, I was considered worthy of a platinum card. Soon thereafter, credit card companies began setting up stations on the quad to give out cards — and free T-shirts! — to any undergraduate who would take one.
Somehow, I don’t think this is a positive evolution.
