This is very a similar story to New Zealand and many other developed capitalist countries. No wonder that we are dealing with jobless growth !! But a socialist would need to ask: who is actually doing the spending ? Which social classes are buying houses and durables ? How can you say that "tax breaks" accounted for growth, when we are talking about a consumer boom mainly fueled by loaned money and refinancing ? I haven't done a disaggregate analysis of the US GDP data, and anyway the quarterly figures usually don't provide that anyway. But even without seeing the data, clearly you cannot "borrow or refinance" without having some kind of collateral or asset already, and therefore the people spending must be in a position to spend, i.e. they must have property already, i.e. it must be a propertied class who is doing the spending.
A major prop to consumption in the U.S. over the last 2-3 years has been home equity withdrawals - borrowing against the appreciated value of owner-occupied housing. Since 68% of U.S. households own their dwellings, your definition of "propertied" would have to be rather broad.
Doug
