[quote=briansd1]Sure, Dennis sees the writing on the wall; and he does care about the people.
But does he care about the people of the today or the people of the future? It makes a difference because the people of today need to cut back so that the people of the future may live better.
Any credit system is based on front loading the present and borrowing from the future. As long as that works, we will borrow more and more from the future until the system collapses. Who knows when that time will come?
Dennis wants us to live sustainably. Even if he’s successful in convincing Americans, it won’t last long. If Americans didn’t have access to easy credit, our standard of living (the products and services we can purchase) would quickly drop. Soon, other countries where credit is widely available (because not all countries would follow the Kucinich model) would surpass us and we would wonder what’s wrong with our political system.
My prediction is that when the current credit-based regime collapses, another one will takes its place. The power players will be different.
The mortgage business is a good illustration. If mortgage were extremely hard to get, people would live “in poverty”, more simply, in small houses. The economy would not be as strong because all the jobs to support housing would not exist.
Households would save to payoff their houses and future generations would not inherit debts. Over the long run (hundreds of years), that’s a better system.
But who is willing to make the sacrifices today for a future they will never live to see?[/quote]
Brian,
You’re making the same assumptions too many others make — that housing prices are static, and everything else is a variable that is driven by these static prices.
If mortgages are more difficult to come by, housing prices would drop to levels where people could buy with cash or with smaller, safer loans. More importantly, these homes could actually be OWNED by people with little or no debt. That is a very positive outcome!
Personally, I have long advocated for a much smaller, tighter credit market. When credit expands, prices rise, and DEBT rises. Why would anybody ever want that? (If they are asset holders, I understand; but their gain is somebody else’s loss/debt.) This is NOT a good or sustainable outcome in the long run.
