So.

This is my understanding of the economy, at large.

There's this finite amount of money in the country. It's some value, and we don't really need to know what it is, just that it's limited, and not in a, "some day, this will all be known," but in a, "it's all spoken for, save for the pennies which have fallen through sewer drains and such".

Okay. Fine. We use this money for money-type purposes. Exchanging it for goods and services. This is fine ... but when we spend money, where does it go?

Corporations, generally. Corporations, that in turn, do two things with their money.

A: Save it.

B: Use it to make more money.

I think A is bad because it's removing money from circulation that could be used elsewhere. I'm not an economist. It might be that people taking money out of circulation and sitting on it is fabulous. But from what I can tell, it really means less money to go around. This means that what money we have should be worth more.

But this is where we run into B. Corporations want to make more money, so they put money into advertising and such to help sell their products better. So. Now, our money is worth more, but we're being encouraged to spend it as though it weren't. Where does this money we spend go? After the costs of maintaining the company, it's all to A and B.

So money is harder to get. The government fixes this by making more money, thus lowering the value of money. Where does this influx of money go?

All to A and B. Your Average Joe (from what I can tell) is probably also going to try and save, and make more money, but realistically, the economy can't support this. So, in a nutshell, the economy we have, doesn't work. It's failing, and only the people who are in that miniscule percentage that controls 90% of the world's wealth thinks otherwise.

Awesome, I've identified a problem. Now, how the hell do we fix it?

Now. I'm not a professional, so my ideas will all be flawed. Sorry, professionalism is for people who can afford school (which I can't (thanks, EDD, for telling me that a one-hour exit interview with my former employer counts as me not telling them why I left!)). Anyway.

The way I see it, there are a number of ways to go around this. Firstly, we need some way to make it so that there is a standard of living that requires no money whatsoever to maintain. Basically, everyone should have an inalienable right so SOME form of shelter, running water, and food. This would be your basic economy, where no matter what, you've got a place to live, the ability to recieve mail, electricity so that you won't freeze in winter/burn in summer, somewhere to sleep at night and protect whatever belongings you own, food so you won't starve, and running water so you can maintain a hygenic lifestyle.

A lot of people, I imagine, would probably be happy with just taking this and adding nothing to the system -- just subsisting on it. 'cause you don't have to work. Well, the thing of this is, if you manage to work some form of healthcare into this, then working will be its own incentive. If you want anything other than those bare neccessities, that'll cost money, and to make money, you need to get a job. Anything that you realistically don't need outside of what's been identified as a right to you, you'd have to earn.

This would never work, of course, because it's too much work, too much money would go into it, and there's an assumption that enough people would be willing to work on the infrastructure of the system to keep it running. Those people, in turn, would get money which they could use to buy goods and services, thus fueling the economy in theory ... but I'm not a professional, so it would all fall apart.

The only other thing I could think of, unfortunately, is figuring out how to get companies to make more jobs.

Unfortunately, this goes against their point A, because downsizing saves money, making one person do the job of two saves money, and making more jobs doesn't.

And since they both have the money and influence the government, why would they want to change?

Are we making a new class of royalty in the modern age, where the only way to survive will be indentured servitude in exchange for corporate housing?

I don't know. But I do know it sucks, and I can't do anything to change it, either way.