Crash Course Chapter 13: A National Failure To Save

If you’ve just seen the previous chapter on debt, then you might be wondering if either our savings or our assets are of sufficient quantity to make those levels of debt perfectly manageable. In this chapter I will present evidence that the United States has failed to save money at virtually every level of society and make the claim that the United States government is insolvent.

A personal failure to save has been reflected by a state and local failure to save, which are mirrored by a corporate failure to save, all dwarfed by a failure to save at the federal government level. And capping it all off is a profound failure to invest. All of these deficits lie before us and lead me to conclude that the next twenty years are going to be completely unlike the last twenty years.

This is our legacy – the economic and physical world that we are choosing to leave to those who follow us.  Most of these bills will come due, in a big way, in the twenty-teens. Is that too far away to worry about? Not in the least, once you consider the full scope of the deficits.

Our government has pursued a reckless policy of debt accumulation, while neglecting saving and investing, and so have states, municipalities, corporations, and private citizens.