Oddbean

lol, respectfully hard disagree in return.😆 This may be a semantic disagreement. But to further explain, there is no such thing as idle resources in an economy (aside from literally purchased and rotting capital). Money is not a resource, it is a record keeping system. The act of saving is producing resources into society and holding onto a receipt of your contribution. All savings are the creation of capital for productive endeavors, it is simply that you choose to not yet decide which enterprise to place it in, so you simply leave it to the whole of the economy to decide. But your net contribution remains an investment of resources regardless. TARGETED investment is to believe you have found something that will, on net, do better than the average of society (which will be realized in the value of the money itself). Thus it becomes worth it to explicitly decide where those resources go. But either way it is a net capital availability for society, and what it means is the same. One is simply targeted, while saving money results in investing in the index of the entire economy that uses it (in an abstract sense). Plus being critical for the safety, security, and mental well being of all members of society in their individual situations. In other words, there is no objective claim that “investing is better than savings,” because it is purely a subjective judgement over where resources should be directed. To my future, or to a business enterprise? To anyone in the economy to determine where it goes, or to a specific counterparty or idea? And to say that the security, net surplus, and personal sovereignty of the individual isn’t important or “as important” as some business enterprise for society is, imo, to misunderstand what society is. To sacrifice the well being of the people for the blind goal of “more output” is to beg the question of what is valuable to begin with. You have to make that judgement first before making the claim, which means it’s built entirely on our subjective idea of which is a more valuable use of resources. But it’s ALL an investment of resources somewhere.