People do save in America. They “save” money through captial gain. I am one of them. Before tax (Roth-IRA, 401K) and after tax account.
My point is: One of the largest saver, Bill Gates, worth more than $50 Billions dollars. According to gov’t saving rate, Bill never saved much of anything his whole life. The only thing he may have saved, according to saving rate data, is part of the dividends MSFT paid out of his $600,000 a year salary (according Microsoft’s proxy statement). The bulk of his $50 billion he never saved. He got to be the richest guy in the world by not ever “saving” What he did was to start a firm and plow back profits and cash flow into future growth (which most of us think of as saving!), but from gov’t point of view, there’s no official saving.
I’m poor compare to Bill Gates, of course. From gov’t saving rate data, I never saved much either – because I took a small salary (low 6 figure)and much of that money plowed back into my start-up company, before-tax and after-tax saving account. America actually save A LOT and may have the world’s highest real saving rate, but because it’s almost all aimed at capital again, it never shows up in the gov’t whacky saving rate. The media will never explain this to you because it doesn’t make a ‘good’ bad story. We all know bad story sell better than good story.
My point is:
From an average joe’s point of view, I am probably rich. But from the gov’t statistic point of view, I’m just a loser with negative saving rate.
