The main idea of fractional reserve is a scam Let's find out whether you've actually thought that through. Example 1 concerns what Milton Friedman used to call "the life cycle of income." The basic idea is that the need for "stuff" like houses, shoes, etc. is highest in early adulthood when people are forming families and raising the nation's children. The income to pay for all that stuff, however, typically doesn't arrive until later in life when the 'young parents' are in their 40's or 50's and have much better jobs than they could have qualified for in their 20's. Our society solves this problem through the miracle of "lending," by which younger people essentially borrow the savings of older people, which they will repay when they get older themselves. This allows the nation's children to grow up with shoes, in actual houses. On the whole it works well. Your plan would cause the banks to have to hold 100% of the older people's savings in reserve. They could lend none of it. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this would make a lot of people unhappy with you in the event you became King and imposed your policy. For example 2 let's use some bright and ambitious fellow who wants to open a pizza parlor, but whose family, the Monaghans, don't have a lot of money. He goes to the bank for a small business loan, but thanks to you, banks no longer lend money. They're sort of Scrooge McDuck money bins where wealth piles up invested in nothing. Please don't sell that idea here. It would be the biggest brake on upward mobility and the American Dream since the days of landed gentry, their serfs, and the lack of any way for a serf to open a pizza parlor. Plus it would leave most parents of young children living hand-to-mouth and depriving their children of many things that they can afford, but only out of money they won't earn for twenty more years. |
You left out or did not read the above part!
The upward mobility only used to work for the
people that had some moral and credit worthiness.
That economic disparity between youth and middle age has always existed, often creating -- out of necessity-- much different societies than we have today.
For example, 100 years ago, young men had several choices: live with their parents, sometimes even after marriage, until they were able to take over their aging parents financial legacy; leave home single and make their way in the world, only marrying when they achieved some financial security; or, for the wealthier, go to school and then join the family business.
In many cases, men didn't marry & have children until they had some way of supporting them based on something other than "potential future earnings". The wives of these men were often much younger than they were, but they rarely starved.
Banks and lending eventually became "the great social equalizer" in many ways -- now your parents didn't have to start with either a family farm or family business in order for you (& the bank) to eventually own one. Now, your parents don't have to be wealthy for you to go college. You no longer are forced to "make your way" before marrying, instead all that you have to have are "good future financial prospects" for banks to lend your future earnings to you now.
Banks & lending made a place for themselves in the lives of ordinary people over the last hundred years, in ways that they never had before. Without the perpetual access to credit that we've come accustomed to, alterations to society itself would like adapt and make up the difference by reverting to past successful models for seeking personal financial stability.