| Rath said: You guys actually think that the giant interlinked system that is the economy is just as simple as personal finance? I really don't know what to say to that. |
You can’t separate the personal finances of the people and companies that make up the economy from the aggregate statistics that we use to represent the economy; one is just a numeric representation of the other. As an example, you can’t have increased GDP per capita without seeing an increase in true-productivity of the average individual within the economy.
Now, you can’t have a healthy economy if the personal finances of the people who make up the economy are not healthy. For decades the US has encouraged unhealthy from individuals and companies within the economy, and the economy on the whole has grown to have analogous flaws within it. Basically, easy to access inexpensive credit has encouraged individuals to take on more and more debt that could bankrupt them if interest rates rise to historically normal levels to see short-term increases in wealth at the expense of their long term standard of living; and the US economy has grown to be a consumption driven economy that produces very little, which has given them a short term boost to GDP but has come at the expense of long term economic growth.
