You know what else is strangling prosperity? Normalization of taking debt. When someone "buys" something using debt, it must be paid for many times over. They usually don't end up paying that all on their own, even though they were responsible for taking the debt.
For example, when you buy an over valued house with a mortgage, say during a housing bubble, it doesn't make sense for you to try and sell it later on for less than you originally "paid" (with your fancy loan). So you are going to hold onto it, waiting for the market to go "up", so that you can sell it to yet another person who takes out yet another loan to "pay" for this overpriced house. In the mean time, either you or some renter is busting their ass to pay the interest on that unnecessary loan. It's completely ordinary for people who who decided not too take a mortgage to get stuck paying the interest for someone who locked a house into debt.
This is completely straight forward but when I try to convey how absurd it is, a lot of common sense people look at me like I'm crazy. It's considered a financially "sound investment" to buy a house and try to sell it higher. Well what if I don't want to live in a world where everyone is just playing monopoly all the time? I feel like there are much more interesting and pressing things to do with our precious human time and energy than cater to these ridiculous cycles of debt.
And lot of people who take debt because it's so "smart" couldn't come up with an original exponential function if their life depended in it.
For example, when you buy an over valued house with a mortgage, say during a housing bubble, it doesn't make sense for you to try and sell it later on for less than you originally "paid" (with your fancy loan). So you are going to hold onto it, waiting for the market to go "up", so that you can sell it to yet another person who takes out yet another loan to "pay" for this overpriced house. In the mean time, either you or some renter is busting their ass to pay the interest on that unnecessary loan. It's completely ordinary for people who who decided not too take a mortgage to get stuck paying the interest for someone who locked a house into debt.
This is completely straight forward but when I try to convey how absurd it is, a lot of common sense people look at me like I'm crazy. It's considered a financially "sound investment" to buy a house and try to sell it higher. Well what if I don't want to live in a world where everyone is just playing monopoly all the time? I feel like there are much more interesting and pressing things to do with our precious human time and energy than cater to these ridiculous cycles of debt.
And lot of people who take debt because it's so "smart" couldn't come up with an original exponential function if their life depended in it.