[sprafa]

Interesting ideas - any place one could learn more on how to think like this? Ie books or ? Basically How did you manage to get it to this simple statement, which seems intuitively correct when so much macro economics I’ve tried to read seem like obvious nonsense

[JanisL]

Start from first principles and look at the economic data directly (understanding game theory is a crucial piece of this). Make sure to ignore the narratives as these tend to obscure the understanding of the fundamentals (since most people pushing various narratives about the market are driven by vested interests rather than educational interests).

[lisper]

Years of practice :-)

Seriously though, I am actually in the process of writing a book/blog about this sort of thing (and a whole lot more). In the meantime, you can check out my old blog. See my profile for a link. When the new blog launches I'll post an announcement on the old one, so subscribe there if you want to be notified.

And thanks for the kind words!

[nosianu]

It already helps A LOT if you decouple your thinking from "money". If you realize that "stuff" (tangible but also tangible) is not directly impacted, and that a crash that "destroys billons of wealth" in fact does no such thing, you can start looking at the world sans "money". You will get a much better grip on reality. Of course financials impact stuff - but why? It's all the ideas and assumptions in our heads - and they can change. In fact, they changed a lot over time, and the meaning of "money" is many things.

The second big thing is to understand that ideas for individuals (firms or people), for example "costs are bad because I lose something", have a completely different meaning for the economy. Because cost is income. Cutting costs may make sense for a company, but if you cut costs in the economy people lose jobs. You will actually have to trouble yourself and look away from the money to see what the flow of money actually achieves in the real world to make a judgement. Just looking at the money is meaningless.

The third big thing is about "pensions". While putting back money into some account makes sense individually, again it has no meaning for the economy. Because "saving money" has no useful meaning on the economy scale. Everything is produced and consumed NOW. Nobody puts back stuff into warehouses to be used decades later for the retired, especially not services. So relax when there is talk about "pension crisis" on an economic scale. Sure, who gets what is important and for any one individual the financial stuff really matters because they are bound into the system, but for the economy all that matters is what people in the future will produce. Money "saved" for pensions does not send any products or services into the future, nor is it needed for "investment" (our finance system does not need that, money can be and is created on demand for debt). It sends information into the future, which future generations may or may not use to determine how much of what they produce then they will give to you (in retirement). However, what is available overall and what the then-society will be willing to use for pensions will be up to them. It does not matter one bit (overall!) what irrelevant virtual numbers are written in some "accounts".

Another thing is debt: For an individual it's bad unless it's debt used to produce cash flow. For an economy - it does not matter (of course the details matter, if done bad it can reduce confidence and have a big bad ripple impact). "Debt is money" is not just some phrase. Debt creates money (yes yes money is very complex - much like a quantum particle, it depends on what you look at and context). The best simple example I saw was a story where a kid wrote a promise to mow a lawn (any lawn), and that promise was handed around in the neighborhood to "pay" for neighborhood favor things. If the debt - having to mow the lawn - was actually repaid by the kid this piece of "currency" would just be gone.

I'll leave it up to the reader to think about what "saving" on the economic scale really achieves, it's a fun little exercise. Again it works best if you ignore "money", or treat is as secondary - looking at its effects instead of at it.

TL;DR I recommend not going too technical. The deeper you look the less you see of the big picture. Just start thinking about stuff - ignoring money completely or see it as the completely virtual made-up control-carrot that it is - while doing walks in the park or forest.

[andrekandre]

  > Another thing is debt: For an individual it's bad unless it's debt used to produce cash flow. 

in other words... capital, right?