[quote=davelj][quote=Arraya]
But, to the idea of; if these people would “live within their means” and accept the fact that they are not “what ever consumption level” our economy would be better off, is not even a valid line of thought – if they did not open up the spigots of easy credit decades ago – we would not have the economy we have today – it would have ran into problems years ago – or the reality of our economy would have been exposed years ago and that is something nobody wants to face. [/quote]
We would not have the economy we have today… in fact, it would be much healthier (re: less leverage and risk), in my view, albeit at a lower level of GDP. If we had grown at 2.5% annually over the last 25 years instead of 3%, but we didn’t have all of the incremental debt that’s built up (which engendered that incremental GDP growth), we’d be in much better financial shape today, although, again, we would have left some GDP on the table, so to speak. Personally, that’s a trade-off I would make every single time.
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