The problem is not that spending on consumer goods is in itself destructive but that unrestrained consumption that puts people into a position of a excessive debt without an adequate income that is to us as individuals and as a democratic society. “Spend, spend, spend” has replaced “Jobs, jobs, jobs” in the political construction and the corollary to the “Go out and buy” side is “Debt, debt, debt”. A good job provides a positive income and stability. Putting people into excessive debt does the opposite. Of course, the corporations who make vast amounts of money from Borrow Money and Consume don’t want to change this. They don’t want checks and balances on their ability to operate freely, and they have used their wealth to protect the system even while in the long term it will fail and wreck the economy, the society and the people therein.
This is not a new concept and many very smart observers have made this point time and time again since the Depression of the 1930′s. The regulatory controls on our financial system, put in place under the New Deal, have been systematically eroded, until today, the party of FDR has become fully capable of grasping that “third rail of politics”, the Social Security System, begin to implement reforms. The kind of reforms that a political Establishment, under the thrall of big money interests use to destroy the objects of such reform.
Unfortunately, for us all, this is going to have to play itself out. The evidence of the upcoming tragedy was there in the 20′s with the recession in the farm community in late 1924 and early 1925. The new technology of the internal combustion engine brought efficiencies to crop production that increased yields without increasing adequate consumption. Many family farms failed and the farmers who went into massive debt to purchase the new equipment found themselves besieged by financial establishment unsympathetic and unwilling to find a way to keep them from poverty.