Quote Originally Posted by TuffStuffMcGruff View Post
But seriously, It's plain to see that our only idea of how to get out of this is for prices to go up across the board and for people to become dumb consumers again. Everybody knows how cheap things can be purchased for now. Pandora's box has opened and we aren't done digging through the top layer for goodies, plus we have less and less money. Deflation lies ahead of us and we'd better figure out a way to cope with it instead of wishing for the economy that we don't have.

Or we could work harder for more money, which seems to be the idea of some.
Dumb consumers or not, they power the super high advanced economies! Everyone has been battling over this, it's a textbook rule - when the consumer spending accounts to more than 75% of your economy, what do you do? Encourage them to spend!

That's not what they are doing right now. And THAT is what drives to deflation.
Everyone is saving money. No problem with saving, but what people are doing right now is basically hoarding huge stockpiles of cash which slow down the engine of the economy. Simple as that. Banks have huge profits now - why is that?

No lending - no demand, loans are tight because people can't pay.
Lower staff - lower wages.
HUGE savings accounts - cash in the bank!

The dumb consumer as you put it is acting standoff-ish because there's no future of tomorrow. Spending less is no longer an option in an advanced economy. It's far too big to scale down.