First step is to blame it for the world's problems. Next is to remove the ability to use or store cash. Finally, charge to save with negative interest rates.

And if negative interest rates don't spur growth, it's because they weren't negative enough!

I don't think the issue is that it's hard to tax savings. Printing money is a pretty effective tax.

I think the real issue is the money multiplier effect. If I spend a dollar, it's spent and re-spent. This means that it gets to be taxed many times.

Next thing they'll be blaming AI and robots on destroying the world economy and not the bankers.

In an economic system which requires either gainful employment, or humiliation, poverty, and destitution from its people, AI and robots are indeed destroying the economy.

America produces more then it ever did, yet manufacturing is considered dead as a source of jobs.

The small number of well-paid engineering jobs AI and robots create is dwarfed by those losses.

It only destroys imagined wealth and not actual wealth (more useful stuff is created). In the current system the new wealth creation is skewed to the already wealthy, hence why the majority will see a decline in living standard and the feeling of the destruction of the economy. However wealth disparities takes money to maintain, and it is inefficient. It requires taxpayer subsidies to be maintained. If the wealthy had to pay the unsubsidized cost of the police, legal system, and foreign wars to protect their investments they would stop being wealthy very quickly. So it's not AI or robots that will destroy the economy it's high income taxes and low capital taxes.

> If the wealthy had to pay the unsubsidized cost of the police, legal system, and foreign wars to protect their investments they would stop being wealthy very quickly.

That will depend on how effectively we can replace those systems with AI and robots. We're on our way there with the legal system.

In order to maintain an ever increasing wealth disparity society will have to become more fascist and taxes more confiscatory. To prevent this you simply need to fight fascism in all its forms (including socialism and political correctness). This is guaranteed to happen eventually as fascist states are inherently unstable.

Oh, we definitely need to fight political correctness.

Your god-given right to be a rude motherfucker to whomever you feel like, whenever you feel like, without being subjected to any social censure, must be defended. I just don't understand why we can't call a _______ a _______ in polite company anymore.

As long as the methods used to uphold political correctness does not use state or taxpayers subsidised institutions then it's ok. That's just normal society organization with freedom of association. If you need to use the state to enforce beliefs on others, that is where it becomes fascist.

Socialism is "fascism with a human face", the “The Fascists of the future will be the anti-fascists.” - Winston Churchill.

Winston Churchill is also famous for gems like:

"I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."

"[Ghandi] ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new Viceroy seated on its back."

"I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."

If he wanted to find fascism, all he needed to do was look to his treatment of the imperial holdings - something that British socialists were quite eager to point out.

If you torture the definition of fascism so far as to include social democracy, then it will also encompass America since the arrival of settlers, centuries of monarchical and parliamentarian Europe...

The quote is one I agree with and I thought I should give its origin. I do not agree with everything Winston Churchill has said or done, and I probably disagree with him more than most (even of those on the left).

But perhaps some context is in order.

At that time India was pretty terrible. E.g. burning at the stake of widows after their husbands died. Even Marx found that the British occupation was a civilizing force. It could be argued that the occupation in its totality and for all of it's faults was a net positive.

Obvious fascism is obvious. Which is why George Orwell's books are dedicated to the less obvious fascisms. And it's why I made the point on political correctness, because it's less obvious.

yeah, absolutely ridiculous. Create a burden for the state during bad times by not saving. Also, where is the money going to come from to buy and sell shares. Pension schemes are huge sources of investment. Isn't that also an economic driver?

Besides which, the entire article is rendered moot by the fact that inflation exists precisely as a tax on savings.

Isn't the burden of the article poking at the people who have tremendous wealth and who use it to influence policy?

>> inflation exists precisely as a tax on savings

I don't think the article is suggesting that a person who has a savings account at the bank is the problem. Although the title is misleading in that case....