360financialliteracy.org is a website that is run by the AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants). The purpose of this venture is to get member CPAs to volunteer to teach financial literacy to the twenty-something and thirty-something masses. The AICPA makes use of its member dues and volunteer CPAs to help teach the benefits of saving and staying out of debt. Sounds good, especially since so many of the young’uns nowadays are being taught by their elders that life is a game of accumulation, and that the appearance of prosperity is what is important. 
When I searched deeper, I came across this disappointment:
The AICPA, which counts 330,000 members nationally, has teamed up with the Ad Council to promote the financial-literacy message in public-service announcements.
AICPA officials hope their efforts will improve savings habits for more Americans, much like the safe-driving campaign of past decades encouraged people to use seatbelts.
The deplorable Ad Council touts itself as a “private, nonprofit organization of volunteers that conducts advertising campaigns for the public good.” It’s actually a propaganda arm of the government that partners with government and big-money players to advance the state’s moral code along with the agendas of powerful special interest groups. Among its many goals are dumbing down the masses; collectively assembling human beings and turning them into pliable sheep; and teaching the state’s secular religion in order to strengthen allegiance to the multicultural-environmental-total drug war state.
Back to the issue of comparing saving dough to wearing seat belts. How is a “voluntary” campaign to promote financial acumen like the government’s mandatory seat belt laws? Answer: it’s not. One is supposed to be a voluntary educational process and the other is coercive behavorial policing. The AICPA surely intends to turn this volunteer effort into some kind of partnership with government wherein forced savings programs are commenced. Government programs of this type (mandatory saving) have long been in the making, and this partnership between a group of supposedly private professionals and a public relations arm of the government is disturbing. Teaching overall financial responsibility involves educating one on taking the long-term view of life as opposed to jumping on the instant gratification route. It’s also part knowledge and part common sense. No matter what, both education and virtue can only be mastered by the individual – these are not collective characteristics that can be beaten into collective brains via slick ad spots with 30-second sound bites. This methodology may work for punching voter cards and teaching the evils of smoking, but it does not work in building enduring character.
As a long-time member of the AICPA, it will certainly get a protest letter from me in regards to the unbefitting use of my member dues.
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The low savings rate is caused by (a) rampant monetary inflation, and (b) government welfare programs which allow people to survive indigence without any savings, and which are funded by taxing away people’s savings. To simply try to convince people to save money, without addressing these two important and basically rational reasons why people should not save, speaks to the ignorance and blindness of the CPAs and not to their wisdom or farsightedness.
Dear Karen De Coster,
Bureaucracy seems to numb the senses of those within and it seems to attract its kind – other bureaucracies.
Numbed senses explains the AICPA complacency to nestle up next to the quasi Council. Vested interests explains why accountants like the lap of government with all of its regulations and ordinances that need to be done with procedural care.
Hopefully your voice of protest will penetrate the bureaucracy.
‘Consumption in the future’ may be a necessary intermediary term for savings to counteract the biases associated with ‘savings’ thanks to the disinformation resulting from several generations of Keynsian economics.
Henry,
You are exactly correct concerning inflation lowering savings rates. I did a quick and dirty analysis of a chart included in the FED release of Bernanke’s comments at the Jackson Hole Conference. Those countries with the highest savings rates generally had the lowest inflation.
Digging deeper I realized that this was not due to a reduced propensity to save but on how the savings rate is determined. Economic savings is generally defined as personal disposable income minus personal consumption expenditure. This would eliminate spending on hard goods as savings, but we all know that during inflationary periods such as the 1970s there is a flight to value as money is exchanged for hard goods.
These ads are simply spitting into the wind.
Printing money yields the highest bang for the buck if the population is saving. Maybe they see the best way to head of rapid price inflation as convincing the population not to bid against the government as much for resources.
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