Page 15 - Winter2008

A DREARY PICTURE wise build wealth in the aggregate when their The truth is
Since the 1980s, Americans have become members refrain from consuming a portion
much less future-oriented, racking up heavy debt of their resources in the present so that those that while the
rather than saving money. The personal savings resources can be invested for the future. This big boys at
rate has dropped from its traditional eight to begins with the first seed that a farmer plants the top are
twelve percent to near zero and went negative in anticipation of harvest and the first calf that
in both 2001 and 2005—the first times since the is raised to maturity for the milk, cheese, and partying away
Great Depression. The ratio of household debt butter she will produce. It extends to the family the remains
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to after-tax income has doubled from just over that saves ten percent of its income to eventually of the public’s
60 percent in the early 1980s to its current 120 purchase a home and the entrepreneur who turns
percent. It would take the average American natural resources and knowledge into industrial wealth, each
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household 240 years to pay off its debt with the machines. of us in the
money it currently saves. As a nation—and increasingly as a global traditional
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This dreary picture of household finances re- community—we have lost sight of these prin-
flects an even drearier picture of public finances. ciples. Worse, they have been systematically foods
The national debt has recently ballooned to over undermined by the government and politically movement is
ten trillion dollars and ever since September, connected corporations for nearly a century. rebuilding
2007 has been increasing at nearly four billion As our government creates new money to pay
dollars per day. In fact, the National Debt Clock for government debt or to bail out irresponsible society
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located in Times Square has been keeping track corporations, inflation sets in and the value from the
of the national debt only since 1989 but has al- of savings declines. After taxes and inflation, bottom up.
ready run out of digits—in September, 2008, the capital investments that would otherwise earn
dollar sign had to be removed in order to make a ten percent return earn only 1.5 percent while
room for the new value. deposits in savings accounts steadily lose over
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Personal success depends on confronting two percent per year. Wealth can be transferred
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challenges with focused, goal-oriented behav- from one group of people to another through
ior rather than hiding from such challenges in taxes and inflation when a nation fails to save
self-defeat, while at the same time restraining and invest, but it cannot be created.
the impulse to spend and consume all the fruits Inner levels of the government have known
of one’s labor in the present in order to build that fluoride is psychoactive since at least 1944,
something greater for the future. Societies like- precisely the time when interest in fluoridating

LEFT: Mike Mudrak
displays vitamin A- and
vitamin D-rich Swiss
cheese from the July
Swiss trip organized by
Judith Mudrak, South-
ampton, New Jersey
chapter leader.

RIGHT:
Chris Masterjohn
speaks from the heart
as he explains the
role of the fat-soluble
activators in mental and
emotional health.

WINTER 2008 Wise Traditions 15