But I finally found out that, for most of time in history, Americans were not like what they are today in term of saving. Actually as recent as in Regan years the bottom 90% of Americans still managed to save 10% of their income. Today the bottom 90% saved -10% of their income, i.e. over-spend 10% of what they earn.
Similarly on so-called democracy. Neither the Declaration of Independence nor the constitution says anything about democracy. Neither the President, members of the judiciary nor the Senate were elected by direct popular vote. Only the House of Representatives were directly elected by popular vote. We had township democracy which is local, a kind of individual and independent. This is actually a model of American liberty in her first 100+ years. So, where does this national level democracy, or say modern democracy, come from? It took me quite a while to find out its sin: Wilsonian idealism.