I may have used the wrong phrasing for generational - I meant it much less in terms of inheritance, and more in terms of "doing things now that mean I have food

I may have used the wrong phrasing for generational - I meant it much less in terms of inheritance, and more in terms of "doing things now that mean I have food on the table forty years from now." Like, if you want to do things now so that someone staffs your nursing home when you're old, the net effect is that you're trading real goods and services for "I will do valuable things for society later, such as staffing a nursing home." If you aren't trading current goods for future promises of them, then you're doing things like building machines and roads that deprecate and require maintenance, or growing crops that rot, or otherwise making stuff that won't be very helpful when you're older. And since a lot of people want to be taken care of when they're older, and they're making tons of things that people today want, there's absolutely zero surprise that they're extending shitloads of credit (especially to young people, and college/housing in particular).