There are empty houses, and homeless people, and yet there's no easy way to put the homeless people in the empty houses because for some godforsaken insane reason the rules don't allow it.

That's a microcosm of the entire depressed economy. There's stuff which should be happening, and stuff which could be happening, and people who want either or both kinds of stuff.

But the rules say you can't get from A to C without going through B. And the bridge is out at B.

Why worry about 'purchasing power' when nothing else that's happening makes any sense at all anyway?