At some point, we need to come to terms with what money is, not what we want it to be.
As these linear, goal oriented creatures in a cyclical, circular, reciprocal, feedback generated reality, people see money as signal to save and store, while markets need it to circulate. Consequently Econ 101 describes it as both medium of exchange and store of value, yet a medium is dynamic, while a store is static. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store. The hallway is a medium, the hall closet is a store.
As a medium, we own money like we own the section of road we are using, or the air and water flowing through our bodies. Like roads, it is a quintessential public utility. It's not our picture on it, we don't hold the copyrights and, most importantly, are not responsible for its value, like a personal check.
Yet because we desire to save it and it functions as a contract, not a commodity, to store the asset side of the ledger, there has to be some obligation or debt on the other side. Even gold backed currencies are just a receipt for the gold, not the actual gold.
Consequently the more that gets drawn out of the economy, the more that has to be created, to keep the economy functioning and the more tenuous the debts become that back the stored money.
The Federal debt has been growing since the New Deal, so not only was Roosevelt putting unemployed labor back to work, but unemployed capital, as well. Then WW2 came along, as the biggest public works project in world history and the die was cast.
Since then, the military has been the only real public works in this country, that is beyond question. That's why all our military misadventures of the last 50, if not 70 years, have been so monumentally inept and no one is taken out and shot.
The fact is, there simply is not the investment potential for all hundreds of millions of people in this country to save individually, but we do save for many of the same reasons, so a rational public commons and public works would be the logical solution, but the basis of a healthy society is public responsibility, with rights as reward, while in our society, rights are ordained and responsibility is extremely optional. Consequently we have the overwhelming Tragedy of the Commons, as all our air, water and any other resources are destroyed, in order to put more of those dollars in someone's pocket.
