Pity that once a very small chunk of the population did get to live about its means,
Doesn't this actually contradict your (spot on) diagnosis of the "Anglo Disease"?
There has been a concentration of financial "wealth" in fewer and fewer hands, but these people were the ones who were already loaded.
I don't think the Uber-Rich have been living beyond their means. What property they have will probably be free of mortgage, and the transient bubble price to such "rentiers" is irrelevant: they ain't selling, but rather renting out to "little people".
These few been profiting - via the Debt machine and the Bubble - at the expense of the many who have been borrowing against the inflated assets created by the Bubble, and consuming high off the hog.
ie it's not a "very small chunk" of the population, but a very large chunk who - because their real income has been declining (hoovered off by the few via financial Capital)- continued to live beyond their ever reducing means and put the US into global hock.
That, as I understand it, is the Anglo Disease.
- Jake Ceterum censeo Chicago esse delendam