The Old Buy and Buy

Rosanne Altshuler assures us on NPR that saving money will blow up the moon.

Minor tax give-backs amounting to twelve cents per paycheck or whatever do not spur "consumption," our regnant raison d'être. Has so-called capitalism become so crackpot [IOZ: yes!] that we no longer even recognize that their are modes of production--that we no longer recognize production, having sacrificed it to that Mammon, Productivity, long ago?

If you employ people productively, whereby in exchange for making shit or doing something useful and they are compensated with a fair hourly wage or reasonable salary, then they will buy goods and services from other people doing the same. If, on the other hand, you create an economy [IOZ: yes, create] in which the purpose of wages is to spend a percentage on retirement con games in which worker money is pooled and invested by a few money managers who reap exorbitant profits and the retained majority of worker income is to be immediately flushed down the toilet of unnecessary and profligate consumption, bolstered by the availability of unbacked credit, then sooner or later you will have an economy in which people with lousy jobs and no savings who don't produce anything don't buy anything.

Not. Conceptually. Difficult.