And there lies the crux of the issues today in my opinion.

Saved money/capital spends just the same as borrowed money/credit.

However the real difference is one is achieved through hard work/labor/sacrifices already done and represents savings of excess money not needed today vs. money created out of nothing with the promise of doing the work at some later date to pay for the spending today.

It's always the Popeye's Wimpy scenario of "I will gladly pay you next Tuesday for the hamburger I wish to eat today."

Trouble is next Tuesday Wimpy is again hungry and wants to pay you the following Tuesday for yet another hamburger when he still owes for the past X amount of hamburgers he has already consumed. There is no penalty imposed upon Wimpy to pay up. There are not high enough interest rates to penalize him for borrowing today for what he promises to pay in the future and there is no will to cut him off and let him go hungry for a while.

Meanwhile future demand for goods and services is pulled forward to today which makes today look better than it would be than if it was only based on goods and services bought with savings/capital.  Now I'm not saying that we need to eliminate all credit only that the cost of this credit should be accurately reflected in higher interest rates to encourage less of it.  Eventually, later on there needs to be even more and more pulled forward demand to make things look at least as good as they are today. The only way that can be accomplished is by lower or zero interest rates and more and more credit often extended to people that will never have the ability to re-pay it. At this point, the people have effectively been enslaved by the cheap money/credit/pulled forward demand. They have enjoyed the items and owe for them but now only face endless years of working/paying for something they have already consumed.  At some point the consumer is unable to pay anything from savings as they have none and are up to their eyeballs in debt that has all been via easy credit and leverage in the system. Then when we have a slight downturn in the overall economy they do not even have the means to make the payments on credit.

At that point what do we do ?  

The latest commercials on TV tout a loan against your car title. Come in with a paid off car (wonder how many can even say that ?) quick and easy you can walk out with some cash for an emergency and still keep your car ?

Are folks already so tapped out they have nothing held back for even a small emergency of a couple hundred dollars for a furnace or appliance repair not to mention a new roof or large auto repair? My guess is yes a lot of them are that tapped out.
They have been brainwashed into only thinking about the per month payments vs what something actually costs. All they see and realize is they seem to be trapped in a cycle where they can't get ahead and everything they need is going up and up but they don't understand why.

That is what is going on now, constantly rolling of old debt forward / refinancing along with additional new debt being taken on. Nothing is ever paid off it's always rolled forever forward. The Fed and immature CONgress keeps promoting this as some sort of sound monetary policy when it is merely theft of all future earnings and labor.

There is also no will to act like adults, cut off the out of control spending, and simply living within the means of the taxes and fees collected today.  The younger generations are being blindly saddled with debts that they have not consented too but are expected to pay without complaint. Somewhere down the line and rather soon this ponzi scheme is going to be exposed.

At some point market forces vastly larger than the Fed and Congress are going to realize that they are going to get screwed and either never get paid back the money they have lent or it will be in worthless dollars that are equivalent to toilet paper.

China is already taking this tone as they are not expanding buying of new debt in the forms of govt bonds and are rapidly acquiring as much hard physical gold as they can. They are seeking to lock into physical and tangible items and I think will eventually push to be the reserve world currency again backed by some sort of hard physical assets. 

All of this stuff is an eventual impossibility that the laws of mathematics will quickly resolve into maximum pain and financial destruction for everyone (my opinion only) 

John BTW you just need to remove NOSPAM from my email address in my profile.