[Benjamin]

I haven’t listened to this discussion, but I want to address your thoughts:

1) I think there’s opportunity to discuss how you define productivity. I think that it is a mistake to think that people get less productive as the age. There may be, by necessity, a shift in the area of their productivity, but that’s not the same as being less productive.

That said, I do think the reality is that many people do choose to be less productive as they age. Further, because of the common financial/economic paradigm, you typically see people try and pay off all their debt, and live out their years on whatever nest egg they’ve built up.

The government printing money is not the entire picture for inflation, not by a long shot. It’s important to remember that when commercial banks are making loans, they are essentially creating 90% of the money for that loan instantly.

So if you have a country that has a sizeable portion of the population heading into the years where they have chosen to be less productive, they will be paying off loans started in their 30s, 40s, 50s… and if there isn’t an equivalent amount of young people getting new loans, then the money supply is going to contract.