except on a smaller scale. Instead of saving for tomorrow people are spending today's seed corn, in a sense. We're all guilty, unless we've had no credit card in the last ten years and have been saving more than say, 5% of our income after tax. Sorry CD, but that's the truth.

That's not to say the lower classes in America haven't been completely punkd by the wealthy. They have. But so many, in trying to mimic the rich, have lived well beyond their means as well.

^{“Is not our first thought to go on the road? The road is our source, our vault of treasures, our wealth. Only on the road does the ‘traveller’ feel like himself, at home.”
Ryszard Kapuscinski}

"Economic man" in America is as fictitious as "Soviet man" was in the Soviet Union. "Economic man" should act in ways that maximized financial gain, as determined with 20/20 hindsight. This includes all those retail workers and typists whose main source of information is corporate TV. They are completely, individually, at fault for trying to "live beyond their means" even when all the communication flowing to them said that they could do it, and that they were silly outliers if they didn't do it. Everybody else was doing it!!! Now, the economists seem to be agreeing that everybody else was in fact doing it, and that's why it's everybody's fault!!!

Human beings are social animals -- those hominids who didn't fit into the group, who weren't affected by emotional communications from their fellows, didn't live to have the offspring that eventually resulted in us. Condemning that vulnerability to what other people tell us and thow other people treat us is an exercise in maintaining the fictitious persons that a flawed power system needs for justification.

Personally, I've done everything you say. But I've spent far, far more time than the average person reading financial matters. I can tell you that over the years, taking most of the advice would have turned out very badly, and I could go through specific instances where "Only a fool would fail to do this" turned into "Only a fool did this." But the lower classes need to accept fault? To me, that's like lecturing laid-off workers (That's not to say that the employees at this mill haven't been completely punked by the management, but so many won't work the way the Chinese will)

Yeah, there's a ton of vapid, destructive consumerism but, most working people are merely trying to keep their head above water, enjoy their life and get ahead. Since, work has been marginalized, they naturally turned to the market, real estate, ponzi, whatever.

spending binge for the last ten years--even I am guilty, too many new computers, too many ipods etc. . . but far, far too many people have spent far much more than they earn or ever hope to earn.

And of course the rich have screwed the poor, which I happened to say in my previous comment and you happily sidestepped, but it still doesn't take away from the fact that just about everyone in this country believed they could get something for nothing. It may be a conservative ideal that we all are responsible for our own actions, and yet, it has the attribute of being true.

As Mish says, "things that can't go on forever, won't!" And now almost everyone is going to pay a price for it, even the rich, but sadly, as always the poor will suffer more--I've never, ever said they don't. I supported Edwards, so that should clue you in to whether I am blaming the poor. And it does suck that the poor will get screwed and suffer disproportionately when cities and states reducde services and I'd do it differently were I in power. But it doesn't make it any less true. I'm not syaing the poor are to blame for their poverty, nor am I saying that the unemployed are to blame for corporations fucking them over. Jeez, read my previous posts on the subject. And yet, I know unemployed people and I know poor people who are engaged in a fantasy of spending and wishful thinking. To say they aren't responsible for at least some of their woes--those that are self-inflicted is to deny human agency and to imply all is determinism. I don't buy that or accept it.

^{“Is not our first thought to go on the road? The road is our source, our vault of treasures, our wealth. Only on the road does the ‘traveller’ feel like himself, at home.”
Ryszard Kapuscinski}

Well, if I said that everybody has acted with financial prudence over the past ten years, I was in fact talking horseshit. On the other hand, if it is true that "everyone in this country has been on a spending binge" (I run in a different crowd from you -- I know a lot of overstretched people, but I also know a lot of miserly compatriots), I think it's appropriate to reflect on why all the individuals made the individual choice individually to overspend on their individual finances all at the same time.

To accumulate money purely to accumulate it is fetishism. The economic part of life is to enable the rest of a good life. So how much should one spend? That's much more complex these days than it used to be. And the optimism and self-confidence that enables humans to progress also makes us susceptible to believe the flatterers, the con artists, and the statements that let us do what we want. So people shouldn't believe the banker who explains how the value of your home can be used for current expenses or the company-hired financial advisor who explains that the company's retirement buyout offer will let you reap a stupendous retirement from investing, or the credit card company who talks only about minimum monthly payments, or the president who tells you that it's important for the nation's resistance to terrorism that you go shopping. But most people understand very little about credit or investing, which today is a far cry from Mr. Macawber's Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. So they take the advice of the supposed experts painting their bright future.

I misstated myself if I implied that you have been a running dog lackey of the capitalist class. You have written frequently on how the poor get screwed by the rich. But there's an area here where we seem to disagree on the amount of emphasis that should be placed on the moral failings of the less powerful. Over and over again, we see in history the same story play out in bubbles and consumption and debt. To me, that means that our social system ought to accommodate human beings as they are. And I think moralizing about personal responsibility when the whole system breaks evades that issue. But I may just be being more abstract than you. If the person with the new SUV complained about lack of money, I'd hit 'em with a lecture.

I'm sorry if you bought too many computers over the last ten years. With hindsight, how many fewer would you have bought? What led you to make the buying errors? Should you have bought none? That wouldn't be profligate spending, but it would strike me as letting money fetishism stunt your life.