Economic Paradoxes

It's also really bizarre that money is so integral to modern society yet we don't really know what it is. It's like all the information is out there in the open, but for whatever reason we can't really analyze it in a way that convinces everybody.

And while the guy in the video often makes questionable claims (as is common for most Modern Monetary Theory advocates), I think the main takeaway is that his claims are complementary to the more mainstream concepts of monetary theory and it increasingly looks like *both* the theories have some truth to them, even though they are contradictory. Hence the paradox in the title.

https://youtu.be/RC2oLB4Nsw8?si=45dAtQrLWB42ZY2x&t=4378 - "

[1:13:00] you know 's all this GDP people things are getting sold things are being bought but the people who are getting the income don't want to spend it all well then how does it get sold well the identity is that for last year's GDP let's say was 34 trillion for everyone who spent less than their income someone else must have spent more than their income otherwise it wouldn't have been 34 trillion so if people saved four trillion and didn't spend their income it means some there would have only been 30 trillion in spending and not 34 well where the other four trillion it has to be from people entities businesses who spent more than their income and it's more than four trillion it's a very big number might be seven or eight or 10 trillion okay and so um and so well who spends more than their income well if you buy a house with a mortgage you just spent more than your income you've accelerated your spending if you buy a car on credit you've accelerated your income if you use a credit card you've accelerated your income if you're a business and you sell bonds and and invest you've spent more than your income if you're the government running a deficit you've spent more than your income any entity spending more than its income is said to be deficit spending spending more than their income okay and so what we have is all the unspent income is offset by all the deficit spending that deficit spending is public deficit spending plus private deficit spending and that's just a accounting identity it's always equal it's not a theory there's no dispute we know for a fact