Of course, that’s not even close to true. In an economy in which real wages have been stagnant or even in decline for years, credit has had to make up the difference. Banks and credit card companies have profited off the rest of the country’s debt. “America is a nation whose growth in recent decades has been predicated on a model of consumption. From a nation that used to save to invest, we now borrow to consume,” wrote Moses Kim at Naked Capitalism back in 2009.