"Trickle-Down Economics Cannot Fail; It Can Only be Failed"

This seems to be the message from our friend George Will today, over at the Washington Post. He goes through a litany of depressing statistics about the savings rate in America. To wit:

As of 2013, 45 percent of working-age households had no retirement savings. Social Security (average annual payment, $15,500), which provides 33 percent of seniors’ annual income, and 90 percent for the bottom third of retirees, but only about 35 percent of a typical household’s pre-retirement income, last year became America’s first trillion-dollar-a-year program. Absent reforms, its trust fund will be exhausted by 2035 and benefits will have to be reduced 23 percent. A 2015 Federal Reserve studyrevealed that half of those surveyed said they could not gather $400 to cope with an emergency; one-third said they could not sell assets, tap retirement savings or turn to family and friends to pay three months of expenses. By 2017, median household savings ($14,500) for those near retirement age had declined 32 percent in a decade, and for the first time, older Americans had more credit card debt than younger Americans. Between 2003 and 2015, the indebtedness of those between ages 50 and 80 increased 60 percent. Today, those between 65 and 74 have five times more debt than that age cohort did two decades ago. 

Do you wonder how such behavior became to seem normal? 

Now, of course, Mr. Will could give us a candid answer here. He could write something along the lines of:

"Well, the lack of retirement savings of people in 2013 may be reflective of the fact that wages have not moved in approximately 40 years, so the people who are nearing retirement have effectively worked their entire careers without a raise. Add to that the decline/demise of the defined-benefit pension, such cuts as people like myself (Mr. George Will) have mercilessly pursued over these same 40 years, calling them such derogatory terms as 'unfunded liabilities' and 'union-mandated perks' that are 'destroying jobs.' We could talk about how unions, for all of their flaws, had an important role to play in countering corporate bargaining power in consolidated labor markets, even as I relentlessly advocated for right-to-work laws and other such measures as would destroy collective bargaining for labor (but not for capital). We could talk about the reasons the Social Security trust fund is going broke; you know, the part about the first $90,000/year is subject to taxes for it and nothing else; the fact that the 'trust fund' has been raided for years (YEARS) to fund government projects and tax cuts alike. Certainly, that the largest single contributing factor to bankruptcy filings in America is medical debt seems relevant to such behavior becoming normal."

Mr. Will could have given us any of that... even just a taste would have been refreshing. What do we get instead?

Americans consider deferral of gratification unnatural, which it is. Time was, however, thrift was considered a virtue. People sat at kitchen tables, calculating how to bring their outlays, for living and retiring, into alignment with their incomes. But eventually many people decided: This is no fun. Instead, let’s disconnect enjoyable spending decisions from tiresome facts about resources, thereby living the way the federal government does.

So, instead of addressing what has actually happened in the past 40-50 years (essentially Mr. Will's adulthood, or at least the majority of it), he invents a fictional halcyon time, when puritan virtuous Americans "sat at the kitchen table" and made responsible economic decisions. (As an aside, was this fictional time during the roaring 20s? That sure worked out well.)

Spare me Mr. Will. Economics is not a morality tale, and if even it was, I would be more comfortable playing my ideology to St. Peter than yours. And as a final note, is there any problem, big or small, that Mr. Will can't somehow blame on (a) the American people and/or (b) the federal government? That's some definition of "patriotism."