Now that the U.S. government shutdown is over, perhaps it is appropriate to consider a delicate question: Is it still OK to tell people they need to save more money?
It's an issue that came to the fore during the last five weeks, when hundreds of thousands of federal government workers, and many contractors, didn't get paid, leaving many of them illiquid. I sympathize with the frustrated, laid-off workers, but I have an increasingly disquieting feeling about the rhetoric surrounding it.
Most of all, I was sorry to see so many commentators dismissive of the idea of saving as a basic individual and social obligation. I saw plenty of deserved sympathy for federal employees, and attacks on administration officials for making public-relations blunders. When multimillionaire and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said he didn't really understand why furloughed federal workers were going to food banks, that was poor judgment. But the response was mainly to attack him, and not to ask whether the U.S. savings rate ought in fact to be higher.
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