Political Quotes

“Witnesses appearing before the Committee on the Budget stressed the importance of increasing capital formation in this country if we expect to increase our standard of living. I, and we all, should be particularly concerned, because as we compare what is happening in the United States with other nations around the world, we see that the United States ranks either last or very close to the bottom in terms of the amount of savings. For every take-home dollar, our savings are very low. You compare our 5 percent savings with countries like Japan at almost 19 percent, South Korea at approximately 32 percent, we see that we have encouraged spending and consumption rather than savings that are so important to having capital available for investment. In comparing the United States with the rest of the world, we also see that the investment in those new tools and machinery per worker is lagging in this country compared to the rest of the world, and not surprisingly, the rate of increase in our productivity is also at nearly the bottom of the list.”