Christ. It's depressing how some people have bought the Tory narrative of 'public profligacy'.
The situation we're in right now is caused by the financial crisis, bailout, recession, and loss of tax receipts. It's not because the public have been spoiled silly with lavish public spending, or by buying themselves yachts and trips to Monaco.
Real wages have remained stagnant for three decades, due to neo-liberal ideology. People are, in fact, poorer in real terms today than they were two decades ago. Meanwhile, the cost of living has soared. People are just trying to make ends meet.
While the public are suffering, wealth inequality hasn't been this bad since the Victorian era. The richest are becoming filty rich at the expense of everyone else. The banks collapse, and the public bail them out. The ratio of the lowest paid workers to CEOs has increased enormously in the past decade. The richest are swimming in money while pilfering the wages from the hard work of the vast majority of the public.
People did take out loans, and they did use credit cards. That's because they needed credit to pay for the basic cost of living; to pay for their insane house prices, the most expensive public transport system in europe, the rocketing petrol prices, the souring gas and electric bills.
We will stay mired in a depression/recession, until people actually have money to spend. The problem isn't just that shops and businesses don't have access to loans, but that there is no consumer demand out there because everyone is broke.
Quick and easy access to credit was pushed on to consumers in order for the rich to have their cake and eat it too: this way, they could keep shafting workers by suppressing wages and workers rights, but at the same time, keep up demand for consumer goods and services. Now that people no longer have access to credit, there is no demand, because everyone is broke.
The insane policy of the Tories is to further slash spending, cutting down growth, and cutting public services, making people poorer and life more difficult and uncertain for the public. They are less likely to spend money when they don't see jobs or a future, and can't even rely on basic services anymore.
For God's sake, the enemy isn't the public, most of whom are just trying to get by. The enemy are the leeches at the top who are sucking people dry.