Western abundance rests on past thrift and capital accumulation, yet younger generations now struggle with housing, education, and family formation.

Low rates and monetary expansion have penalized saving, rewarded debt and speculation, and diverted capital from productive use into financialization.

A painful deflationary correction may be needed to clear bad investments and restore genuine capital accumulation rather than shifting costs to the next generation.

I have been following the work and writings of my good friend Jeff Deist for many years, as I’ve always found his insights extremely illuminating. Just a few days ago, I had the pleasure of coming across one of his most recent speeches and I found every word of it truly compelling and remarkably timely.

In this remarkable speech, Jeff takes what initially appears to be a straightforward economic question and turns it into something much broader: a question about how Western civilization accumulated its extraordinary wealth and whether the monetary system we have built is now destroying the very foundations that made that prosperity possible to begin with.

How did we get so rich? It might sound like a silly, even childish, question. But it’s a question nobody asks. Nobody cares enough to ask. And what happens if it all goes away? Western societies rarely stop to consider any of this because we have become accustomed to an almost unimaginable level of material abundance. Running water, electricity, air conditioning, abundant food, modern medicine, safe cars, instant global communication and virtually the entire accumulated knowledge of humanity available through a device in our pockets would have seemed nothing short of miraculous to previous generations.

And yet, alongside all this abundance, something profoundly troubling has emerged.........

© Eurasia Review