(06-01-2016, 04:29 AM)Galen Wrote:(05-31-2016, 09:07 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: I would also say that the very same people think that capital materializes from thin air, when capital is derivative from savings. Inflation not only harms the poor by preventing their consumption through the erosion of the currency's value but it also disincentiveizes savings for those who are not poor making capital harder to accumulate and eventually leading to economic stagnation which also harms the poor.
In short, it seems to me that if one wants to actually help the poor the first step is to abandon funny money and adopt either hard currency or a currency that is defined and convertible into specie.
From an economic point of view this is correct but then it would admit that the god of the liberals and progressives has limits. That is blasphemy in the religion of the liberals and progressives.
Capital can also result from gross exploitation -- sweating the workers while they get only the barest of sustenance necessary to keep them from dying. Savings are obviously impossible among people so grossly exploited.
It's work that creates capital, and money is only a means of measurement. Also -- it is well worth knowing whether the people who really do the work get fair rewards, which is often a matter of who gets the rewards.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.