Price shocks in formative years scar consumption for life

Is it possibly both? ;). I mean, a good education in frugality at the same time as being traumatic? And as an adult you have both strengths and weaknesses as result of this? You have excellent frugal habits that help you live happily on less, but also may be risk averse to the detriment of your career, and lacking in confidence at times. That's certainly my wife's experience.

Accepting is different than celebrating. I disagree that it's part of the zeitgeist. The zeitgeist is that you and your life have to be perfect, because that is the image you get from everyone on social media.

If people produce less, the tax intake will be lower, which makes the country less competitive internationally.

In particular, the smaller the GDP, the less military spending the country can support. If the country can not support a sufficient military spending owing to a lack of consumption (production), it will be conquered by someone who can, a bit like private equity buying out an unprofitable company with good potential. (c.f. Ukraine - very poor GDP, but decent possibilities for growth w.r.t. arable land, supply of young human capital, seaports, industry etc, thus currently undergoing hostile takeover)

> You assume people don't even consider saving somehow. Why is that?

There's no such thing as saving; if I save money, it's to consume it in the future eventually. So this has to cancel out over the long term.

If people are saving money and never withdrawing (e.g. never using the freedom bought by the past work to avoid future work), that's fine too, but if they withdraw it, it decreases national production, so it only works if people are prevented from withdrawing savings, at which point nobody would keep them.

Basically, people have to work, and this is the fundamental premise. That being said, the basic nature of the consumption is irrelevant. This is why digital services, gambling, and financial services are so important - it's much more socially efficient for people to dispose of $100 worth of money through slot machines or Netflix subscriptions or overdraft charges (all of which are effectively free to "produce" in terms of national resources) than by e.g. buying a new car, which requires actual steel and semiconductors and rubber and ... which require the expenditure of resources (land, labour, capital) in order to produce.

> Millenials: people born 1981-1996, thus a critical mass hits adolescence when Fight Club is released.

Millenials, except the affluent or very early ones before '83, were also the generation to see the 2008 financial crisis undo their entire Life's hard work (several times now) due to a broken and rigged economic system and were left to internalize how rather than address the corruption and malfeasance the very people who destroyed the Global economy were rewarded with bonuses and golden parachutes. Corporations were bailed out while people were forced to default on loans and forced into bankruptcy and were literally forced out of their homes: some who had already paid for them no less, because of arcane investments instruments like MBS and CDO that were so over-leveraged that they made the entire world' economy implode.

What's really f'd was that some of us who had to take time from our studies to focus on this saw it coming: I probably broke that 10,000 hour mark on studying Global finance and economics in 2007 by the time I was taking my upper division courses in my undergrad. I couldn't make sense of my degree because I realized by my junior year we were not just going to enter another temporary recession but that the entire economic model was based on short term thinking and gambling: derivatives and (re)hyptohetication were all that made the credit expansion possible. Unfunded liabilities, derivatives Markets and dark pools exceeded the Global GDP by many times!

Instead of focusing on the adverse affects of cytokine production in my experimental models, I was learning about Basel I. Instead of focusing on the long term implications of RNA-synthetase in possible therapeutics I had learn what the Glass-Steagall Act act was and why it would have to be violated to keep Goldman Sachs afloat etc...

I can keep going, but the point is: this wasn't about being an Edgelord quoting Tyler Durdan this was about the systematic and wanton destruction of the institutions we were FORCED into since birth; people also seem to forget that millennials represent the most Schooled generation that is walking this planet, I was coaxed into a head-start of sorts at age 2 and almost never had a semester where sports or extra curriculars/Summer School weren't involved until I left University at 23 as we were told this was the only way to get ahead in Life. We were also the first generation unable to expunge our University debt, all previous generations could and routinely did in order to get ahead for their advanced degrees, and these were for seemingly trivial sums compared to the immense increase in costs from that period assuming their were any costs at all: many universities in the CSU system were no cost for residents most of its existence.

This had cascading effects all over the World and with the advent of ubiquitous wifi connectivity we could see first hand the devastation of it happening in real-time.

I still recall with great clarity how austerity being imposed on Greece had children having nothing to eat and literately passing out form mal-nutrition while the EU stripped it's public assets away while rushing to get to my biochemistry finals because I had to work in catering in order to feed myself because I couldn't eat more than once a day otherwise.

I remember how JP Morgan, led by Blythe Masters, were consolidating their stronghold in the Global commodities Markets that spiked the cost of food that led to the Arab Spring after having been bailed out years before with NO ONE going to jail.

I also called the largest bankruptcy in US History (at the time) in 2007 a year before it occurred in what can only be called regulatory capture and blatant corruption by the SEC/FDIC and JP Morgan when it took over Washington Mutual: who I was a customer of.

So, your over simplification is not just vapid, it's insulting to our collective intelligence: we have more in common with our grandparents in terms of being scarred by artificial crisis after manufactured ones that only end up enriching and serving the most corrupt amongst us: to this day the fact that Nancy Pelosi still hasn't been indicted is testament of who this system really serves.

Speaking of gambling, you also left out theft and loss.

You seem to be applying a macroeconomic template. Individuals can and do behave somewhat differently. I don't have any responsibility to prop up your economy with my spending and you have no responsibility to prop up mine, but please do. If I spend less and you spend more, I hope you spend it on my services and goods, so I get your money and you get my designer throw pillows or whatever. The vast majority of the wealth of the wealthy is in unrealized gains which may be spent someday, it sounds like you're calling them economically unproductive.

I hope to pass my savings on to my heirs, and they can spend it or not as they see fit. I can also spend less on f**ing petroleum and spend more on something else, which is the point of this whole thread. Desiring not to spend, and desiring not to earn, are vastly different.