Absolutely... sustainability isn't just for the planet. Families can do it, too, in terms of their acquisitions and life styles.
Fundamentally, all things eventually reach equilibrium. If people saved 5-10%, then eventually year to year growth is from a lower level, but growth will happen as the investment pool grows. It's the accelerants poured on in the past decade plus which have created an unsustainable lifestyle bubble which is unsupported by what is actually produced (we levered our prior production capacity, in a way). Purchasing was pulled forward by many years. People could toss out entire furniture sets because of easy credit, move up the ladder to far more expensive cars (every couple of years), etc.
So as savings by families goes up, pretty soon there is a lot of savings in the country, and families can start to uptick their buying but from a position of strength rather than weakness.
I do this, and have for years. Unlike most Americans, I don't spend 25-40% of my income on interest to bankers. When a savings pool of my own, I've increased the amount of money I can spend dramatically.
For many people, cutting back on spending for 2-3 years will turn the tables and enable them to save 10% of their income with *zero* effort -- they now *save* the money they used to send down the banker drain. And with compounding, it gets easier and easier.
The "secret" is to strive towards debt free behavior, and the result is the bank is always paying *you* and you have more money to spend every single year.
SO the endgame is simple: eventually spending is way UP; banking profits are way DOWN. Everybody wins but bankers. The entire model of allowing banking to blow up is directly reverse of what I think is a model of healthy financial behavior, and the dysfunction has come home to roost. Now even the gov't is racking up debt for us to spend, at a clearly unsustainable rate.
The inability to defer gratification is the #1 evil. |
