"Don't worry. As long as you hit that wire with the connecting hook at precisely 88 miles per hour the instant the lightning strikes the tower, everything will be fine."
--Dr Emmett Brown (Back to the Future)
Better standard of living comes from improved productivity (productivity = output obtained per unit of input). Improved productivity comes from investment in tools and techniques that increase output produced per unit of input. Investment comes from capital. Capital comes from savings.
When government confiscates savings via taxes, debt, or money printing, capital is lost for investment purposes. Extending unemployment benefits without a commensurate decrease in spending elsewhere is not an investment in the future. It is an attempt to maintain or improve current standard of living at the expense of the future. This is because capital that could be invested intelligently in productive problems at some point in the future is being consumed today.
The analogy is taking money out of your IRA or savings acct and spending it on a vaction, or on new car, or on groceries that you will consume in the next few wks. You live larger in the present at the expense of the future.
Capital consumption mortgages the future.
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Ever since man began to till the soil and learned not to eat the seed grain but to plant it and wait for the harvest, the postponement of gratification has been the basis of a higher standard of living and civilization.
~S. I. Hayakawa
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