I don't think it's just a matter of philosophy - I think a major problem is that modern macroeconomics has a number of counter-intuitive properties that do make

I don't think it's just a matter of philosophy - I think a major problem is that modern macroeconomics has a number of counter-intuitive properties that do make sense, but only after studying it for a while and doing thought experiments. But because the system is complex and often counter-intuitive, people often over-estimate their ability to reason it out from first principles (especially common on HN, which is full of smart people but without any particular economic focus). To give some examples of how it can be counter-intuitive (I'm not an expert, so hopefully this is all correct): Unlike a household, if you look at the economy in total everyone can't save up money at the same time (unless more money is printed). Most of what people think of as money (checking accounts etc) is bank credit that was created by people taking out loans. In fact, savings and debt are basically two sides of the same coin - savings are forgoing current consumption for the future, and debt is a promise to forgo future consumption. People can try to all save money (by reducing spending) at the same time, but since everyone saving at once isn't possible what actually happens is that reduced spending causes incomes to drop, and people have no more savings and less income. It's easy to say things like it should be easy to save, inflation should be zero, interest rates should be high, etc. But there are certain mathematical limitations to what can happen. If most people have high savings (promises for future consumption), that's basically the other side of a debt (promises to forgo future consumption). Who should hold that debt? Should the government run a big deficit? There are similar issues with inflation / interest rates etc. Unfortunately the discussion in some of the other comments here has gotten a bit heated. I'm sympathetic to how frustrating it must be to people with more formal economics training than me though - it seems like every economic discussion immediately devolves into to people (with supreme confidence) arguing against economics 101.