I am definitely not "feeding the economy" by buying a lot of stuff (being a good little consumer) as I would have 10 or 20 years ago.
I have traded a desire for and ownership of material things (house on the ocean and a beautiful sailboat) for a lot of freedom and control over how I spend my time. A good trade!
Outside of some work equipment/supplies, we've definitely been working on saving and having liquid cash available. We had multiple emergencies this year - my wife got very sick and we had an emergency room visit, and we had some deaths in our family which required a lot of travel. In all cases we were able to pay cash from savings rather than charge it, which, 10 years ago, would have been my default way of thinking.
It'd certainly be nicer to have some sort of different health care in the US such that a trip to the emergency room didn't cost thousands, but it is what it is.
If you need 10k to front the cash for 5 more staff at your restaurant, why not? The business will grow.
In general savings through austerity is better, but many companies would not grow past sole proprietorships without credit.
(Then one day the credit dries up and you're hosed, I'm not commenting on the wisdom of the strategy but my understanding was it is standard practice.)
off-topic a bit: What's a little odd to me is how much small/medium businesses rely on credit for payroll. I've got a friend at a small business, and they have a credit line they use for payroll every 2 weeks, and they've been worried that their credit line would be reduced, meaning they'd have to lay people off. I've asked around and some other companies do this as well. Is this practice really widespread, or just the few I spoke with?
gentle plug: the indieconf conference for web freelancers can help you adjust to this new industrial revolution :) http://indieconf.com