Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Savings is something Monetarists praise. It fits into their conservative narrative of home budgets & conscientious behavior. It's a dogma taken on faith, never examined because accepting that savings is bad for an economy would make whole careers & reputations worthless. However, on-the-flip-side, Keynesianists, believers in fiscal policy, the imaginary money often called stimulus, pooh-pooh savings. In fact, they have their own insightful phrase for it: the paradox of thrift. Basically, one person's savings is another person's hard times.

The veneration of savings is due to positive preconceptions held by regular people, something they gleaned from their Protestant Work Ethic parents, Boy Scouts or an over-zealous economics teacher. In reality, saving money has no intrinsic or extrinsic value except as insurance, or in anticipation of a purchase, and only relatively small amounts are needed for either, not millions of dollars & certainly NOT $100s of millions. You would be better off using your money to make your life better or more entertaining, because just accumulating money as a matter of keeping score is literally self-embezzlement. Saving money is mostly a form of predicting the future, and no one can do that, regardless of the assurances they give you of the quality of your future Nursing Home.