> Opinions differ on whether this is a negative; mine is that tax policy
> in the US has shifted what "national savings rate" means to the point
> where it can't really be compared around the world.
No, the savings rate doesn't include capital gains, but the Fed's survey of consumer finances shows pretty conclusively that most stocks held by individuals are owned by the top 5% of households which own stock, while data collected by the Dept. of Labor (available at http://www.dol.gov/dol/pwba/public/programs/opr/CWS-Survey/hilites.html) show that less than half of US workers participate in pension plans. So the decline in the savings rate *is* significant for what it indirectly says about social polarization in the US: lots of new wealth is being created, but more and more of it is ending up in the hands of the wealthy, while the 70% of Americans who saw their real wages fall during 1973-1995, and rise minimally thereafter, are either treading water, or taking on lots more debt than they ever did in the past (debts sink to the bottom of the income pyramid, and assets rise to the top). This, of course, is why there are record numbers of personal bankruptcies in the US, something like a million filings a year. To paraphrase some old dead German guy, capitalism creates vast wealth, but it also creates vast amounts of human misery.
> I'm not sure what point they are trying to make.
My impression is, much of the bluster over the savings rate is pretty reactionary; it's a way of scapegoating working folks for the problems Wall Street neoliberalism has created, and of forestalling uncomfortable questions about the unimaginable wealth of our ruling elites, and their noxious habit of irresponsibly gambling that wealth on one manic speculative bubble after another (yesterday S & Ls and Japanese real estate, today dot.coms, tomorrow Eurobonds).
-- Dennis