What We Are Is What We Buy

Amid all the dour economic news comes one important fact: Merikans are saving more.

According to government statistics, even I have only ever managed about a 5% savings rate, because this savings rate is tied to discretionary income only...capital gains and pensions are not included.

For me, the government failed to account for gains from the sale of a rental that I plowed into my own mortgage. The government failed to account for me spending the last nineteen years overpaying my mortgage so I could pay that damn thing off. The government failed to account for the 12% I plow into retirement. Apparently, this isn't considered "savings."

Hmmm....why would that be? What about my "savings" of $168,000 by paying only $56,000 in total interest instead of $224,000? Doesn't count. That kind of shit doesn't grow our economy. Not plowing it into a bank that would lend that money to others to spend, build, or create. I'm hoarding it, so to speak.

Of course, as Americans have now gone from a negative savings rate to something just north of 4%, that 5+% has now also been "removed" from our economy. As 70% of what we are is made up of what we buy, that's a sizable chunk removed, and it's worsening our economic woes.

We ought to have an economy that doesn't need to "grow." We ought to have an economy that produces simply what we need and only what we need. Service based local economies. Sure, we would all have materially less, we would all be less wealthy relative to today's "standards of living," but we'd define another standard. One that considers human interactions in the calculus, one that provides completely for its citizens, and one that doesn't require the eventual depletion of all our natural resources to keep on "growing."