Friday, December 26, 2008

Why Saving Doesn't Work

Everyone you have ever known has told you to save money.  This begs two questions: what do they mean by 'save' and what is 'money'.  Of course, everyone knows, right?  Wrong.

First of all, the act of saving money is an attempt to defer the redemption of production.  To explain that more clearly requires an answer to the second question.

Money in the modern sense, as in paper, fiat money, has no value.  It represents a token or marker for production.  In essence, a dollar represents, say, one burrito's worth of production.  The benefit of a common exchange currency is a reduction in the amount of exchange tables necessary to facilitate exchange.  This means that things are priced in a common value measure rather than in terms of other goods.

Now, when an employee gets paid, he/she receives compensation for production.  He/she can then redeem that compensation for other peoples' production.  That covers two of the aspects of money, that of common valuation and currency.  The remaining aspect is the one we need to discuss, which is preservation of wealth.

Fiat money, by its very nature, has no value.  Its use is by fiat, an order of the government.  It is not a factor in production nor is it something that anyone wants for any use other than money.  In some ways, as a currency, this is a good thing, as it is, theoretically, not subject to variations in value due to demand for whatever commodity was chosen as money.  For instance, when gold is used as a currency, the variation of the value of gold leads to variations in pricing and valuation that lead to instability in the market.

Now, to discuss savings.  Savings are funds of some sort set aside to be consumed at a later date.  These funds are typically deployed in some sort of investment vessel.  When they are not, they are deployed as fiat funds by default.  The problem is, of course, that those funds are not value themselves.

If you just save money by stuffing cash in a pillow, that cash represents current production, not future production.  In the future, there is no guarantee that production will remain the same.  As an example, a quantity of funds equal to 1/10th the production today may be equal to 1/12th in the future.  This is one reason savings don't work very well.

In our current economic environment, production in first world countries is fixing to fall.  No matter what the savings, there will only be so much production to go after.  The result of this is that savings will be less useful.

More immediately, there is not enough currency in the banking system, according to those who control these things, and so they will make more.  This will increase the amount of currency in relationship to production, which will continue to fall for the foreseeable future.  In the end, this will lead to massive inflation.  Savings denoted in dollars will be reduced in value.

Quixotically, even though in the future there will be more dollars chasing less production, leading to price increases, real values will fall because total production will fall faster than prices will rise.  What this means is that stocks will also be worth less.

Commodity prices will fall in real production terms as well for some time.  In the future, expect to see them rise.  Since commodities are part of the production process, they represent real savings.  In the case of precious metals, they also represent things people want.  In the future, as the dollar goes to zero value as it must, expect gold, silver and platinum to gain in value in both real terms, as compared to production, and in nominal terms, as compared to the dollar.

However, if you really want to save money for your future, invest in people.  Create a business that does something that needs to be done.  Get people you can trust in it.  When things go bust, your company will survive.  When you go to retire, you will have built real wealth that you can live off of.