Was the American dream of home ownership just that?
The transformation of Americans from a nation of savers and entrepreneurs in the era of the family farm to a nation of consumers in the last eighty years was a fateful one. Our ancestors thought that debt was shameful and a burden; we’ve come to think of cheap debt as part of our birthright. The American Dream as we’ve known it entailed a lifestyle based on permanent debt. The growth of the American economy depended on growing debt at every level from federal Keynesian stimulus to credit card and mortgage debt.
Savings and therefore growth can only be gained from the present, current growth is illusory when "savings" is instead pulled from the future in the form of debt.
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