At the end of the day, propserity and spending are intimately intertwined. Someone has to spend money for me to make money, and I need to spend money for other

At the end of the day, propserity and spending are intimately intertwined. Someone has to spend money for me to make money, and I need to spend money for others to make money. Saving and investment are also intimately tied to this - at the end of the day, you need to save money up in order to be able to spend it in larger chunks. Deficit spending lets that get turned upside down a bit, though. A line of credit lets you spend the money first, but in return you have to promise to save it plus some extra later. That's great when the loan is being used to make a good investment. A good investment being one that increases your future purchasing power, thereby meaning you can pay the loan back, plus interest, and still have more left over. In other words you're using the loan to become more prosperous, because you're making money you couldn't have made without it. And the lender is becoming more prosperous too, because they're earning interest on the money rather than just stuffing it under a mattress and letting it slowly deflate. That's less good when you just use it to make a purchase. Then you're just agreeing to pay someone else money in return for agreeing to enable your impatience. Over the long run your purchasing power goes down because there's nothing counterbalancing those interest payments, and your own prosperity decreases. It's downright bad when you take out a loan and use it to make a purchase that you've fooled yourself into believing was an investment. Which is a lot of what folks have been doing over the past decade. Then you become less prosperous because you wasted all the money, and the lender is likely to also become less prosperous when you ultimately default on the loan. It's like a kitchen knife: You can use it to make delicious food, or you can drop it on your foot.