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Comment by imtringued | Hacker News Reader

He also has an unhealthy relationship with money. Withholding money from being spent is immoral because that money is needed to pay debts and saving money causes unemployment. Spending all the money you get is moral. Of course you are allowed to spend your money on stocks and bonds to maintain real savings.

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> Spending all the money you get is moral.

Extending this logic, I would also like to posit that jumping off a cliff is flight.

Do you have any resources that explain how saving money hurts others?

I never understood the animus against saving. Saving just means you have produced more than you consumed, and I admire that.

It's a pretty natural conclusion from many economics teachings that will highlight money only has value in the middle of a transaction and is virtually ethereal while sitting in any account.

That's like saying potential energy doesn't exist, only kinetic energy.

Money is like a loaded gun. It doesn't have to be fired. Just walking into a room waving one around will change the nature of most interactions.

It reduces the multiplier on money supply, which can be harmful in aggregate if it is sufficient to create a deflationary monetary environment. Given how little impact a single earner who isn't Jeff Bezos can make, or even Bezos himself in the face of offsets from central banks, I highly doubt any individual's savings efforts are doing any harm in practice.

You may as well say that taking any water out of the ocean is immoral because if all water was removed, the fish would die.

If you accept that living exclusively off the handouts of others is immoral, then saving money of course is not inherently immoral. It helps you not do that.

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