People spend a third of their lives learning to earn money, a third to earn money and another third of their lives to save their money. It is a matter of debate which third of their lives is more important than the others. No risk no return is the fundamental law of money, if you have less qualifications to earn good money, chances of good income are still there but people will agree that probability is low and risks are high.
What we consider here is the government’s role in defining someone’s savings pattern? The government allows a person to hoard only a certain amount of cash or assets, the rest has to be either paid in taxes or locked into the free market or with the government. While this is a fundamental reason that keeps the economy running from an individual’s point of view, it is highly perplexing what to do with his money.
On one hand the government gives you the option of depositing your money with it and losing your money like slow poisoning thanks to higher inflation rate than deposit interest rate, or losing it altogether if you belong to one of those countries whose government is more unstable than a twig in a storm. On the other hand, the government encourages you to invest in the stock market and also incentivizes you by offering tax savings on long term capital gains, the catch being you can’t get out of the market without losing if you are caught in a downturn and anyways in the long term a balanced portfolio will give you an inflation-adjusted return of only around 10% on an annual basis. A lower than 10% return with the half dozen hedges so that you don’t get a heart attack when you are being hit left, right and centre makes a common man a most unlikely candidate to succeed in saving his money too much.
While GDP defines the spending power of a country’s population is it really good to have a population which spends all of its money for goods and services, or a population which saves and increases its asset base? The answer to the question is same as whether it is better to have a perfect process line producing output from input with zero inventory, or to have some inventory in place. A perfect system is only good as long as it lasts, in an imperfect world concessions have to be made, only time will tell if the concessions provided by the government to save our income can really boost the country to the status of most desirable place to live in or just a huge economy.
With Regards,
Arindam Acharyya