Everyone saves and becomes independent? But isn't that how whole nations rise? I mean, historically? If you can get most of the middle class to save a substantial portion of their income, then everybody gets rich. And when everybody gets rich, suddenly you're not a Third World Country anymore. Suddenly you're one of the industrial countries. This is the road that Japan followed, and that Korea and Taiwan have been trying to follow. More so, if a nation has a high savings rate, it can, at least in theory, pay off it's foreign debts and suddenly start accumulating income flow from other countries. Thus countries rise is in the hierarchy of the world. That is, as I understand it, how America managed to pay off all its debts to England in the 1880s and 1890s. And if you can get the whole middle class to save 20% then you get a whole lot more in savings then if you've only got the rich saving 40%, or, in our case now, 15%. Yes?
--Lawrence Krubner