It's not better, nor worse, for society at large. That's actually impossible. The "market cap" of an economy is simply a reflection of the total wealth of that economy. It doesn't matter so much who happens to possess that wealth, from an economic perspective.
Distribution of wealth actually matters very, very much.
Politcally and socially, sure. Economicly or mathmaticly, not so much.
But thats not the point Im making, as it isnt about wealth; its about availability of credit. You (usually) dont get significantly more or less wealthy if you invest your credit money for instance in the stock market. But what you do achieve is making credit (ie money) available for businesses and generally thats a good thing for the economy. If everyone would hide their fiat under their pillow you would have a problem. Thats why I say the small disincentive inherent to inflationary credit money is actually a good property for the economy at large.
You're missing the point. Credit availability is a problem for
whom? I'm not trying to be a jerk, I'm trying to be a better economics professor than you apparently have been exposed to thus far. The classic method involves asking questions of the student, in order to lead them to a deeper understanding of the topic. Economics is more than mathmatics or statistics, it's
people, so both the who and why does matter.
Moon I'm having trouble understanding your two statements in relation to each other. They seem to be contradictory. In your eagerness to teach, you may have been a bit unclear. The way I see it, economics is both social and mathematical science, and from that perspective, the distribution of wealth matters very much. I agree with you that the
who and the
why does matter.
.
That quote is taken out of the context of an ongoing conversation. The basic point is that, while economics can't practically be separated from the social aspect (a core premise of Praxeology, BTW), a great many modern 'economists' (Krugman being one example) will in one article discuss the mathmatics as if the social context of such events doesn't matter while in another article discuss their political ideology as the 'logical' outspring of rational economic thoughts & theories. It
does matter how wealth is distributed across society; to every ideology, but it doesn't matter to most Macroeconomic theories commonly preached by higher academia. The mathmatics becomes an abstraction, and the social context is lost in the numbers.
