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That said, all this nonsense about equating national income to the GDP goes back all the way to J.M. Keynes, and was parroted without questioning in textbooks by such established "economists" as Mankiw and Krugman. I've never realized how bad all this is, because we learn the correct equation in Germany even in the undergrad courses. Which is this: Also the Statistische Bundesamt (German Federal Bureau of Statistics) does the GDP calculation in the correct way: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/StatistischesJahrbuch/StatistischesJahrbuch2017.pdf?__blob=publicationFile Following the link, we can find all the needed data. For example the total national income was 2,388 billion euro, disposable income for households was 1,814B and saving of private households 181B. Private investments 194B. For the whole economy: disposable income 2,610B, savings 313B, investments 598B. The Keynes assumption that saving = investments is nowhere true. You may also go to BEA or to FRED and compute all this for the US, but the result should already be clear - Keynes was an idiot. As are the MMT adepts.

OMG, why is this a controversy at all? Why not look at a bank to see how it works? All money is someone's liability, that's all. Money is as real as debt. When someone takes out a loan - he expands the balance sheet of the bank, such creating money. The new money is backed by his ability to repay the debt. One could say that money is monetization of debt collateral. Read this to better understand how the banking system works (btw, Stefan repeatedly demonstrated a lacking understanding of this): https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-in-the-modern-economy-an-introduction.pdf https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf Speaking of MMT, the theory starts with two phony assumptions: 1) that money is created by the government. This is false given the explanation above. All money is simply an expansion of the balance sheets in the banking system. This is true on all levels - FED, commercial depositary institutions and so on. All players can create money through such expansion, and this is mostly done by the private sector. 2) the sectoral balances equation suggests that budget deficit is necessary for private saving. This is false, because they regard GPD in Y = C + I + T + (X - M) and national income Y = C + S + I as equal. However these two Y are different. GDP is not national income. (in the US GDP = $19,965B, National Income = $16,607B) National income plus depreciation plus indirect taxes are equal to GDP. Thus S = I is complete bullshit. Therefore, given that basic assumptions of MMT are false, there is no need to give MMT any attention. Period.

Yao! For those of you paying attention to all the videos I've been plastering over the boards, I'm sure you've noticed that a lot of them are regarding an economics theory called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). I was converted to this camp by Nima when he was posting here on the boards awhile back, and it sounds like absolute heresy to those who come from an Austrian economics background (which was me). Yesterday I was able to go on the Tom Woods Show to debate Bob Murphy on the subject. The debate was "formal"; that is we had opening statements and allotted amounts of time to respond to each other, and thus weren't allowed to interrupt each other. I'm not a big fan of this style of debate, because I think figuring out the truth requires a certain amount of "getting in someone's face". There was no formal resolution, but I believe I made a good case for MMT. You can listen to the podcast here: https://tomwoods.com/ep-1116-debate-bob-murphy-and-dylan-moore-on-modern-monetary-theory-mmt/ The big crux was the disagreement was the source of money: is it a commodity or an abstraction? If the rules permitted me to get in Bob's face, this would be the #1 thing I would have gotten into his face for: after he agreed that there is no constraint on government spending in a floating exchange system, near the end he repeats that "government taxes people in order to pay for bonds". By saying this, it means he didn't understand what "no constraint on government spending" means, which is one of the prime ideas behind MMT.

Well, I am not an expert in pensions, but I would have figured out the annual return for it. Like I think with its tax relief its around a 5% yearly return. Now, if you can take the money out and get the same or better return, then I think it's better to do so, Having easy liquidity is always a plus. However, you also want to factor in time. Like I think a pension doesnt take much time, but other investments may take a lot of time. So you want to calculate the hours spent to make sure you also account for that. You can for sure speculate on the economy, I certainly do which is why I have insurance with silver, gold, crypto, and lead. But these are not investments imo, its more like insurance. (tho crypto is more speculation and it obviously brought in crazy returns over the years but tanked recently) Anyways, investing for me is a full-time job. Its not easy. It sucks people rob us every year which makes it harder, and im talking about inflation because t@xation is not enough for these statists. You probably want to talk to a financial advisor tho or read financial books if you want to get more situated. Also, most people don't even think about this stuff at all. So you are way ahead of the curve

I liquidated my 401k because it was worthless and bought real investments, like rental property and businesses. Why invest in crypto? It doesn't make you income. Would you rather have $5,000,000 in gold in a vault collecting dust OR $5,000,000 in income producing investments paying you $750,000 per year in income?

Maybe a good specualtion might be in having another passport if you can. Some flexibility. As I said I don't trust crypto, but plenty of people do (Stefan) and don't (PeterSchiff). There's something called the "crack up boom" in Austrian economics where cash goes into physical assets, the only thing would be later liquidating those assets. I think many people in the Uk don't trust the pension system. Most of my family are/were saver types, though the pensions don't payout what they use to and even if they did, what's the point with taxes. Flexibilty is important. Keep your options open, as Trump says in his book.

For a second it didn't click what show you were referring to... haha. I (personally) would be highly skeptical regarding anything that's on TV, 'even the questions'. Is there any chance you could ask someone (who you know) at least about the pension route? ('skin in the game' and all that... ) As of the crypto, there's quite a few threads, videos on the board/channel (if you understood what the main properties were, that'd be a good start i.e. - What is & why crypto isn't a 'Fiat currency'). Maybe if you had specific (educated) questions, until then I'm hesitant to go any deeper. (it's a touchy subject to give advice on, I think) Barnsley p.s. (I'm not an economist or anyone who is greatly knowledgeable about money, trading, gov. regulations)