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> But you don’t become wealthy by spending and consuming; you become wealthy by producing and saving You can't be producing and saving without somebody consumi
by azov 14y ago
> But you don’t become wealthy by spending and consuming; you become wealthy by producing and saving
You can't be producing and saving without somebody consuming and spending (unless by 'saving' you mean just hoarding the stuff you produced, but even then you have to be spending in order to produce)
- rayiner 14y agoIt's incredible that people don't realize that a modern economy doesn't really save anything. We're not hoarding away bales of hay and sacks of wheat for future use!
- eli_gottlieb 14y agoWell we do keep some commodity reserves, but these don't show up on anyone's account books as "savings". They show up as illiquid assets.
- cglace 14y agoI know many people that save gold and silver
- rayiner 14y agoTotal worldwide gold production amounts to $132 billion, or only 0.2% of world GDP. Even if we saved all the gold mined every year, it wouldn't support any substantial amount of real saving.
- akgerber 14y agoGold and silver have very little inherent value, only trade value (other than a few industrial applications, but they can often be replaced by copper). We don't save very much food, or surplus housing, or surplus machinery or petroleum or solar panels, mostly because these things degrade physically and become obsolete when saved. Instead, we rely on today's economy to provide these things.
- yxhuvud 14y agoTrue, but we do accumulate wealth, in the form of houses, infrastructure and other quite permantent stuff.
- rayiner 14y agoWe do, but our rate of nominal wealth accumulation bears no relation to the rate at which we accumulate tangible physical assets. Not to mention that most of those physical assets depreciate, which must be accounted for.