No, money is supposed to be good at storing value as well. That's why gold evolved as the world currency over the last 8000 years, and that's why central banks still hoard it in bunkers. You can't easily devalue it by creating more of it.
You're failing to understand that treasury bond markets have an important function in the macro economy; ideally, a safe way to save and store value with low risk. And they are larger than stock markets.
> No, money is supposed to be good at storing value as well.
I think you’re confusing wealth/assets with mediums of exchange. Gold for example is a pretty decent store of value but a nightmare for exchange. Want to buy a pack of gum? Why don’t you shave a tenth of a gram off right here on the counter so I can measure it.. etc. You can see how crappy that is.
USD however have never been great stores of value but are great currency because they’re so liquid. Everybody accepts dollars. It’s easy to trade and convert to other assets. How much is that pack of gum? Oh it’s a dollar. Ok here you go. And that’s that.
The name of the game has always been converting dollars to productive assets.
Along comes Bitcoin and cryptocurrency and now crypto currencies in general have features. Bitcoin sucks as a currency for buying stuff but is great at storing deflationary value (or so it seems). Monero sucks as a currency compared to the dollar but has privacy features. Etc.
For #1, I want increase in value over time, but don't care much about volatitlity or ease of exchange.
For #2, I want low volatility (both in value and it's first derivative).
For #3, I want low volatitlity in value and logistical ease of exchange.
So, for #1, I want a different thing than for #2 & #3, for which I might want the same thing, since the needs are, though not identical, at least overlapping.
Productive investments serve #1 well, so I’d leave it to them, and leave the design of money to balance #2 & #3.
I’m pretty sure I didn't invent anything, you just picked a random currency that meets neither your implicit goals not my explicit ones, because it's convenient for a pre-canned argument you wanted to make.
good store of value just means its value is predictable. Fiat currency actually make money a much better store of value, because monetary policy can be used to control inflation. Using intrinsically valuable goods as currency is horrible for store of value because people will always be worried that a new use or way to produce the good will be found.
Fiat money is not a good store of value because it is the easiest to erode (central bank changes a digit in a database, and new money exists). Tell me which country's fiat currency you'd be willing to hold for 100 years, and how much buying power you expect it to retain.
Fiat money isn't supposed to be held for long periods of time. That's literally the point. The government is incentivizing you to invest/consume it, otherwise we're in a liquidity trap. It's just supposed to allow people to to make transactions and be confident that the thing they are selling won't be worth 20% more tomorrow.
You realize the yield on a 1 yr US treasury bond is currently 1%, and the yield of it one year ago was 0.1%? And that bonds pay coupons denominated in dollars?
The savings rate at Bank of America is 0.01% APY.
A person has no risk-free ability to save, and is forced to speculate in asset markets just to keep up with inflation.
> The savings rate at Bank of America is 0.01% APY.
The government doesn't want you holding large amounts of cash. It causes problems for everyone.
> A person has no risk-free ability to save
Nothing is risk free. Yes, the government wants to force people to invest their money in order for it to keep its value over long periods of time. Hoarding money is bad. If you don't think T-bonds pay enough you're free to buy other bonds, equities, real estate, even gold if you like it so much.
> The government doesn't want you holding large amounts of cash.
Government ownership of the interest rate is part of the problem. In a free market, an interest rate emerges naturally based on the supply of money from savers, and demand of money from consumers.
Any individual divides their wealth into either saving or consumption based on their individual time preferences. Some people like stuff now, some people are happy to wait and have more later. Presently, we are forced to consume, or take on riskier assets to save.
> Hoarding money is bad.
Bonds and savings accounts aren't hoarding money; you loan the money out for other people to use productively, and they pay you an interest rate.
> If you don't think T-bonds pay enough you're free to buy other bonds, equities, real estate, even gold if you like it so much.
Again, you're failing to see the consequences of t-bonds having a low interest rate and the US dollar being unable to store value. The consequence are volatile and speculative asset markets. If over time no one wants treasury bonds or USD, they become valueless.
The end result is that everybody is an "investor" (mostly by proxy via 401k and pension funds), and that is then used as the trump card to shoot down any regulations that would reign in the insanity that is the modern stock market, by pointing out that any reduction in market profits hurts those "investors".
You're failing to understand that treasury bond markets have an important function in the macro economy; ideally, a safe way to save and store value with low risk. And they are larger than stock markets.