Ballaski, get your head out of economic books and think outside the box.

By the mid-1970s, women were entering the work force in droves and local, state and the federal government were quickly addicted to the increased tax revenue that a bigger labour force was producing.

Families were quickly addicted to bigger incomes and started buying bigger houses, new cars and more stuff and sending their children to day care centers and their seniors to old folks homes. Now that women were being paid for work they used to do for free - as housewives and mothers - government was reeling in the tax revenue.

The quality of homes went way down and the square footage went way up. In the name of "mobility", developers started building homes to last the life of a mortgage. In 30 years, the homes were so junky, they were not worth restoring and had to be torn down.

Addicts do what addicts do; people kept buying more stuff. People bought so much stuff, they had to rent storage units to hold it all. That's why storage is a $38-Billion industry today, with a whopping 2.3 billion square feet of storage space in 50,000 storage facilities across the U.S. Americans can't afford to help the homeless, but they can afford an average rent of $91.14 a month to store stuff they won't ever use again.

Unfortunately, economists could not pace with the speed of social changes, and kept promoting old theories - like supply and demand.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. Instead of economist's antiquated theories, examine social change instead.