How the Crash Will Reshape America

Re:How the Crash Will Reshape America by kaens on Wednesday February 18, 2009 @07:09AM (#485648)

I'm no economist, but from a level-of-the-average-american perspective, this country has had an entire culture based around living ridiculously outside of your means for the last few decades - at least in the middle to upper-middle classes.

That's the entire point of, for example, credit cards.

Everyone knew it, and after a generation or two, people seemed to take it for granted.

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Re:How the Crash Will Reshape America by time_management on Wednesday February 18, 2009 @12:50PM (#486007)

The worst thing about the culture of living outside one's means is that it encourages, and sometimes forces, others to do the same. Wages can go down, and prices can go up, financed by a credit time-bomb we all end up having to pay for, collectively, in the future.

Take the housing bubble. If you bought a house in California between 1995 and now, you paid a massive premium because you were competing against financial morons with no sense of history, much less fiscal responsibility. It's like the admonition about never arguing with idiots, for fear of becoming one.

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