I had a dream the other night. On holiday in Scotland, I was afloat in a boat in the middle of a loch. A chance encounter with a large ancient reptilian creature had punctured the boat and being an incompetent city-dweller, I had lost my oars and could not swim. Water was flowing into the boat and however hard I tried to scoop water overboard, the boat was rapidly filling up. I was glad to wake up at that point.
Why am I telling you this? Because in economics, there is an important distinction between different economic variables, some of which are flows and some are stocks. In my dream, there were oncoming flows into the boat, leading to an accumulation of stocks of water in the boat, which would soon have led to my demise.
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