There is no growth through consumption.  I repeat, there is no growth through consumption.  Growth happens through production.  You can’t consume what hasn’t first been produced.  This simple truth has been lost in a sea of bad economics and worse politics.

We’re told that spending drives the economy.  Buy more, stimulate demand, keep the machine humming.  Spending is not wealth.  Consuming is not creating.  You can’t spend your way into prosperity any more than you can eat your way into a harvest.

Real economic growth requires saving.  It requires time, discipline, capital formation, and delayed gratification.  It requires tools, training, infrastructure—all built before the benefit.  Production comes first.  Always.

Saving is punished.  Interest rates are suppressed.  Inflation eats the rest.  You are told to spend now.  Don’t save.  Saving is selfish.  Spend for the good of the economy.  Borrow if you must.  Borrow if you can’t.

This is the mirage.

The illusion is carefully crafted.  Every metric, every headline, every politician’s speech hammers the same lie—consumer spending is the engine of growth.  It’s not.  It’s the engine of depletion.  We’re told to celebrate the burning of fuel and ignore the shrinking tank.

This isn’t sustainable.  You can’t build an economy on shopping.  You need workers, tools, materials, and time.  You need production.  Otherwise, all you’re doing is rearranging what already exists.  Consumption without production is liquidation.

Of course, the state loves this.  The state benefits from the illusion.  People who consume without thinking don’t notice what’s being taken from them.  Their money is devalued, their savings drained, their future mortgaged—all while they’re told they’re doing their part by buying the latest gadget.

When the shelves start to thin, when prices soar, when jobs disappear, the same planners step up and say the solution is more spending.  They double down on the very lie that caused the problem. Most people believe it.

There is no prosperity without production.  There is no growth through consumption.  There is only the mirage, and those who profit from it.  Break the illusion, and you begin to rebuild.

First, you have to stop mistaking the flames for warmth.

Reference

Murray Rothbard; Austrian School Business Cycle Theory