>
> CB: So, that factoid was basically an irony , a demonstration that
> being broke doesn't really mean being broke, since you can just borrow
> out of being broke with no negative consequence ? Maybe we've all died
> and gone to heaven.
Not quite. Why is it that US/Europe dwellers can seemingly live on endless piles of debt? My personal suspicion points at a couple of things:
1) a history of vast scale production (anyone counted the number of boarded-up houses in most UK towns?) leading to so much shit lying around that even the poor get some (my wife's family in Preston has hand-me-down carpets and computers - a friend of mine who lived in Switzerland for a while picked up a (fully working) hi-fi system literally dumped outside on the street) and as a result, sometimes people will sell anything just to get a little profit (or an angle on a possible future profit). (This observation might apply more in the European welfare states than it does on the more 'mean-spirited' America)
2) dropping prices of certain commodities (e.g. electronic goods), which reflects the offset of stagnation from the US/Europe to everyone else (this has been discussed on LBO-talk before)
What are the implications of the social reality that being broke doesn't mean *actually* being broke? I'm not quite sure - I guess we'll continue finding out over the next years (btw. has anyone written a history of consumer credit from say, 1900 or 1920 to today?)
Peter -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844