Did Americans of the Past, Understand Money Better, than the Americans of Today?

 by pinochet


When young Americans read the history of the New Deal Era in the 1930s, they ask themselves how the FDR administration could have imposed a 90 percent top tax rate on rich Americans. From the New Deal Era to the 1970s, Americans believed in tax and spend policies. From the 1980s, Americans adopted borrow and spend policies.

Tax and spend policies are more moral and more justified, than borrow and spend policies. In the old days, Americans believed that all spending had to be paid for, and that one could not spend money that he did not have. Americans viewed borrow and spend policies as being extremely immoral, because they did not believe in imposing financial burdens on their children and grandchildren.

Americans were mostly hostile to indebtedness, and believed in living within their means. Personal bankruptcy was viewed as a sign of moral weakness. The most common debt obligations were home mortgages, and people did not take out loans just to buy the junk we are importing from China. The idea of printing money to cover federal budget deficits was unthinkable. America was the world's largest lending nation, and did not have to borrow money from any country. I think there is a direct link between the decline in personal morals since the 1950s, and the increase in bad ways of managing money.