Originally posted by Wajoma
"Compare Japan with the USA"
Didn't mention the US, my point was just that the Japanese economic model is nothing to emulate, follow the money indeed and you'll find that Japans debt far exceeds the wealth of it's rich so even if you were to claim that all wealthy people come by their wealth through state debt the numbers don't stack up. So yes it is or ...[text shortened]... xt generation.
It's not a nice fact for you to face Finnegan, so you will resist the truth.
The Japanese economy has not returned to growth in perhaps twenty years. The declining population is also a problem . I was not advocating their economy as a model for getting wealthy but as a model for sustaining all the same a decent society in which it is possible to live with dignity to a degree that escapes, for example, the US and (increasingly under its neo liberal leadership) the UK.
So yes it is ordinary Joe thinking they're due this that and the other, and so yes it is this generation living at the expense of the next.
Ordinary people have not enjoyed the benefits of economic growth in the form of improved income since the Seventies. Instead, they have seen their share of the economy's income and wealth shift upwards to the wealthy. Where work is available, it is increasingly in an insecure world of short contracts or in low waged sectors. Instead, since the Eighties, access to credit has been loosened and people have been encouraged to believe that they can meet their needs through loans. Contrary to the stories you have swallowed, in a large proportion of cases, people have been driven to borrow to meet necessities, including education, housing, health, childcare, not for frivolous spending, and that because of a systematic attack on their wages and conditions of employment. Now, with the system (inevitably) falling around their ears, people like you crow your moralistic slogans in order to blame the victims. But the point you ignore is that the very rich have continued to absorb a growing proportion of wealth and income to a staggering extent. It is they who are destroying the prospects of the next generation.