Your only a slave if you let yourself be(and dont read the fine print). While I agree paying cash is a much better way to go there are definitely situations where financing is advantageous such as "12mos same as cash" as you can use their money for free (just dont forget to pay before the 12th month) and use your personal coin for investments. The best advice is to know your budget and have a "rainy day fund" something most of us (myself included) dont do enough.
AHEM: this is exactly VIZIO's business model...they design in the USA(with a whopping 100 employees) and outsource all the production. It has allowed them to be Fortune's Top "Most Earnings per Employee(for the company not the employees) Company". While it sucks for our workers its just good business sense. I hope Boeing threatens to do this so their cry baby/over paid/ungrateful workers will wake up and quit screwing the company. Maybe they could just do one better and put help wanted ads in Detroit as im sure many laid off autoworkers would be happy to work for $25 per hour, full benefits, a $5,000 re-sign bonus, and an 11% guaranteed raise over 4 years...not to mention moving from that crap hole to beautiful Washington State. *thread hijack in progress*