Good post, I've never liked debt either!
Debt is one of the primary mechanisms whereby the wealthy (by virtue of receiving interest) tie the non-wealthy into dependency.
In the UK I calculated a while ago that the average income earner (median income) in the UK with an average mortgage would spend nine years of their working lives paying off the interest, that's just the interest on that mortgage.
HOWEVER, much to my surprise what I found was it wasn't the high property prices, or the cost of the interest per se that performs what I, following J.L Fisker call the 'lock-in'.
Rather it's just having an ordinary level of consumption by UK standards - owning a car (costs 4 years for example), convenience foods, holidays, all this results in the average person only being able to afford about £600/ month towards their mortgage, which locks them into a 25 year debt cycle.
If you cut your expenditure, you can overpay the mortgage and escape the 'death tie' before you actually die!
NB - here in the UK there's very limited opportunity to escape high mortgages which are the main cause of our debt given the fact that most of the land's owned by the Queen or James Dyson*. There's not a lot left over for us plebs.
Being locked into debt is, unfortunately a deeply embedded structural feature of the UK physical economy. It takes an enormous effort of will, planning, saving, co-operation and luck to escape it!
*Of Dyson 'hoovers' - the patriot who moved his manufacturing base to China because the labour costs in South Wales were too high.
9 years just for the house interest? Ouch!
That's life in the UK for you!