This should come as no surprise. Our parents and their parents were much better savers and typically bought only that which they could afford. Of course, one could argue that there was nowhere near the amount of temptation then as there is today to fuel a consumer-driven economy and certainly not the ease of access to the great enabler--easy credit--to make it all happen.
Nowadays, the average-income, thirty-something North American walks about with a credit card that could buy them a mid-sized car. And when those who are tempted have the means to act upon it, the results could be tragic, as housing bubbles and stock market corrections have so eloquently shown.
Assuming our brains are wired to be defenceless against resisting temptation (cue Genesis, chapter 3) and we cannot remove that which tempts us, it would stand to reason that a suitable solution would be to remove access to credit. Many of those "occupiers" living in tents on parkland in [insert you favorite metropolitan City here] are staring at 50K college tuition loan paybacks that they perhaps should have never received in the first place.
Governments look good making and guaranteeing college loans to all and everyone associated with that gets a warm fuzzy feeling; that needs to stop. Raising interest rates over time is critical, too. This will make saving more attractive and consuming, less so. There's a reason grandpa is sitting on a fortune and it's not by living a consumption lifestyle.
So, let's give the 99 percent a hand up by helping them go through life debt free. This starts by eliminating the access to cheap and easy credit for the masses.
