We Certainly Deserve Whatever Terrible Times Lie Ahead.

We don't have much of a savings rate in this country. Most families just get by. They have a car and a house that they owe money on. They pay a lot of taxes. Property taxes. Sales taxes. Income taxes. Gas taxes. Social Security and Unemployment withholding come out of their checks every week, right off the top. Those are taxes too. By the time they get down to the money they have left to feed their families, it isn't very much. Not enough. It isn't that they don't want to save. They do. Save to give the kids a good education and a decent start in life. Save for their old age, so they won't be a burden. Those things are important. The money is just not there. Ya do the best with what you can, today. You hope maybe there will be a little left over to save tomorrow.

There are people in this country whose lives aren't like this. Percentage wise, they aren't many but there are a lot of people in this country. There are hundreds of thousands of them, maybe even a million or two. They have real nice houses, more than one. They have shiny, expensive cars, more than a few. Boats, nice ones. They travel, a lot, 1st class. Golf, twice a week. Pick up the tab for lunch with the guys, more than I make all week. Their kids go to Name schools. Their shoes aren't made in Bangladesh. It's all about percentages. Percentage wise, they don't pay many taxes. Percentage wise, they don't spend that much on their very comfortable lifestyles.

These people serve an important purpose. They hold America in trust for us. They own the land. They hold the stock in the companies where we work, of the banks that loan us money, the companies that sell us gas, the hospitals where we go when we're sick, the cemeteries where we're buried when we die. These people control the Capital that make our way of life possible. They take the risk. They need to be protected. Like the whales. Like the redwoods. Like the spotted owls. They are the foundation of our social ecology. Think green. Green is the color of life. Green is the color of money. Same thing.

We have done the Capitalists an insult. We have borrowed too much, for too long. More than we can pay. More than we are worth. We have lived our lives and fed our children with their money and now we can't pay them back. They are left holding worthless paper. An empty promise, from those for whom they have held America in trust, for so long. I feel so ashamed. We certainly deserve whatever terrible times lie ahead,