The four-letter word supporters of free trade never utter: DEBT

[orwell]

3. I'm sorry...

...pretty charts aside, high levels of consumer debt has nothing to do with cheap imports. The debt levels are so high because most refuse to live within their means. Savings has been devalued due to low rates of return on savings (central bank intervention to boost demand) and we have been trained by years of inflation to buy now and pay later.

To add to the debtor class mistakes, excess income is frequently converted to consumption rather than to income producing assets. People would rather buy a $3 coffee than put that money away and buy Starbucks stock.

In the end debt itself becomes meaningless in the age of Central Bank money creation. It will take decades before economists catch up to this fact. They are still fighting the "monetary wars" of the last century or wrapping themselves in gold and silver from the Middle Ages.

For all our modernity we are economically clueless.