re: What motivates people to live above their means?

Nice rant WT.

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So now it's become an ingrained part of our culture to simply consume for the sake of consuming. Quality has much less meaning as we disregard the mountains of trash from last years Christmas presents to demolition debris from 20 year-old homes.

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Indeed! The American consumer has almost no concept of quality. They only care about cheap. You can see it in consumer electronics, especially. The gear sold in Asia is much higher quality.

The decline In quality also masks inflation. While a socket set today costs about the same as it did 20 years ago, or cheaper... So we think "what Inflation, things cost the same". But, it's not the same socket set. Its almost impossible to find decent quality tools at the retail level.

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It seems to me that should we scale back on economic activity to a more sustainable level, we would find ourselves staring right back down the barrel of our old nemesis, The Great Depression

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Indeed. This country could use a healthy dose of deflation to cure a lot of its cultural ills. A painful process no doubt. But necessary in my view.

But our economic and monetary policies have not been about solid decision making for some time. It's all about pain avoidance.