This type of thinking always reminds me of Keynes's quote about where we all end up in the long run (the grave), and yet I see this kind of thinking a lot. Russia's 90s crisis would right itself "in the long run" once it "re-tooled its economy" - just wait 15 or 20 years!
In the USA we're lucky as individuals if we make it to age 70. Waiting chunks of 5 or more years here and there, waiting for bad economic times to right themselves, can end up gobbling up a huge part of your life. We don't all live to be as long as Milton Friedman, but we're always advised to take a kind of macro-historic view by apologists of the system, as if we individually lived hundreds of years and could afford to weather even 4 or so years of living through shit-tastic financial conditions. That's a significant part of someone's life.
-B,
Doug Henwood wrote:
"You sound like Andrew Mellon: "“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people." Amity Shlaes says he's still ahead of his time <http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07161/792705-109.stm>. "