Before anyone can earn, spend, or save a single euro, that euro has to be created. In our economy, central banks create the base money supply.
Let's start simple. Imagine a small economy where the central bank creates all the money that exists:
That's it. One thousand euros. Every transaction in this economy — every paycheck, every purchase, every bill — comes from this pool.
The central bank doesn't hand money directly to people. It flows through commercial banks, which lend it to businesses and individuals. And lending comes with a price: interest.
Three companies borrow the €1,000 to start their businesses. The bank charges 5% interest. Simple enough. Here's what that looks like:
Now look at those two numbers. This is the most important part.
The central bank created €1,000. The bank demands €1,050 back. Those extra 50 euros do not exist anywhere in the economy.
It's not a trick. It's not hidden. The math simply doesn't add up. More money is owed than was ever created.
If €1,050 is owed but only €1,000 exists, there are only two options:
If all three companies compete for the same €1,000 to repay €1,050, at least one of them mathematically cannot repay its loan. It fails. Workers lose jobs. This isn't bad management — it's arithmetic.
The central bank creates more money. But that money enters the economy as new loans with new interest. The gap doesn't close — it gets bigger.
In practice, economies choose Option B. And they do it every cycle, every year, forever. This is why the economy "must grow."
Every politician, every economist, every news anchor talks about economic growth as if it were oxygen. It must never stop. But why?
Not because of human ambition. Not because of greed. Because of the interest on the debt. The system created more obligations than it created money to fulfill them. To keep it going, you need more money, which means more debt, which means more interest, which means more growth.
Growth isn't a goal. It's a debt payment.
The economy doesn't grow because we want more.
It grows because it must, or it collapses.
Change the numbers. Watch the gap.
This isn't a theory. It's the structure of the system. When money is created as debt with interest, the economy must grow perpetually — not to improve lives, but to service the debt that created the money in the first place.
The question isn't whether this happens. It's what it requires — from workers, from resources, from the planet.