Quote from: Johnny Mnemonic on June 17, 2014, 11:34:07 AM

Quote from: smooth on June 17, 2014, 03:13:46 AM

Quote from: aminorex on June 17, 2014, 01:40:23 AM

Quote from: stylin on June 13, 2014, 04:23:50 AM

Quote from: Johnny Mnemonic on June 12, 2014, 04:33:54 AM

Savers are useless non-contributors. Not that there's anything wrong with saving, but economies of scale don't depend on it, and so there's no economic justification to encourage it.

You cannot be more wrong. Saving is simply deferred spending. It's spending later vs. spending now. You could argue that incentivizing spending over saving is transferring prosperity from the future to the present. In the end it's a zero sum.

More than that. Saving is required for capital formation. Many enterprises and much innovation depends upon capital formation. Without capital formation it is much closer to net zero-sum. With capital formation, it is more like win-win than it is without it.

Yup. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_identity

The caveat is that not all investment is actually useful investment. For example, building up inventory of unsold goods is considered investment in accounting terms, even though the goods may not be wanted and may never be sold.

That said, you do need savings for there to be (good) investment.

Guys I'm not claiming that saving is unimportant. I'm talking about savings in the form of unspent currency. I was responding to hbadger's claim that inflation punishes savers. There are plenty of appreciable saving/investment vehicles that will result in greater long term yields. Incentivizing saving in the currency itself, however, will only serve to kill its velocity. Economies of scale require a currency that moves.

I hate to bring fiat into the argument, but despite all it's problems the U.S. dollar does a great job at supporting large-scale economies. Even with a 2.5% - 4% annual inflation (definitely not "saver friendly"), capital formation does not seem to be a problem. Go figure.

It's not a claim, it's a fact. If you make people lose money you are punishing them. And since you don't have the monopoly of violence, you have no power over them and people will simply use a coin that suits them better as a store of value. Individual savers will never care about creating artificial incentives for their economy, let alone a foreign or global economy. Only politicians care about that, because it lets them deliver better looking economic growth indicators which will help them with their propaganda.

Also, you keep pushing the false dichotomy that if someone saves, he can't possibly spend. Meanwhile, actual data shows that bitcoiners spend all the time, but even more during spikes. Go figure.