The worst error of this piece is the nebulous concept of "good times". Japan in the 1980s and the US recently didn't have generic "good times" but an ill-considered economic bubbles. Even at the height of supposed "good times", there was lot of wealth transfer from the productive sector of the economy to the speculative side. Some ordinary people paid real money for houses of inflate value prices and others attained illusory wealth by watching their house values increase - upshot was not "good times".