The truth is, human beings as a whole are fundamentally cowards. Until you understand and accept that, you can't really even begin to understand human beings and their motivations.
You just can't say you could pick a handful of people from any country in any part of the world and expect them to act any different than you describe in your examples.
I hate to break it to you, but:
1. We are a nation of whiners.
2. Spending doesn't/shouldn't come primarily from credit.
Deal with #1, it's just true.
Once we deal with #2 and recover from years and years of overspending based on credit, we will be on our way back to prosperity.
I'm not saying credit is evil, but I know of way too many insane/immature/simple-minded people in the last ten years who have credit-carded and refinanced themselves into a corner that is now hurting all of us. Idiotic financial corporations enabled them, but now they need to learn from it and fix the mess they've made for themselves for us to get back to prosperity.
How can people who make $4000/month have $800k homes and two $40k cars for God's sake??? I made more than twice as much as these idiots, I made the smart financial decisions, and now I'm in my financial bunker just trying to ride this out in my new business.
Bottom line, your basic statement is flat-out wrong. Without credit, people can spend, unless they are one of the idiots who spent themselves into oblivion in the last decade...
If you didn't have to work so hard, you'd have more time to be depressed.
