Reply To: money printing vs savings

#18533
jmherbener
Participant

People strive to economize their resources. Since the division of labor is more productive than self-sufficiency, everyone produces to satisfy the consumptive ends of others and has his consumptive ends met by the production of others. Voluntary (monetary) exchange among person is necessary to economize the use of resources for society-at-large. Within the market economy each person earns income by producing to satisfy the preferences of others and disburses his income to have his preferences satisfied by the production of others. As with any other disbursement of income, a person saves to satisfy his preferences, specifically, his time preferences. Savers lend to investors who borrow the saving to make economizing investments in producer goods. Saving, therefore, is part of the economizing character of the market economy.

Unlike saving, Fed money printing is not endogenous to the market economy. Instead, it is a condition produced externally to the economizing character of the market and impose upon it. Monetary inflation and credit creation, therefore, inhibit the economizing of saving-investing. For this reason, people will struggle against them to re-establish their time preferences both in the rate of interest and in the proportion of income they desire to save and invest. The details of this process are spelled out in Austrian Business Cycle Theory.

http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Austrian_Business_Cycle_Theory