land which they sold to their son. They had "savings" in the sense that they owned something that they could sell. Prior to the 1930s, a good percentage of Americans owned land. It was not so unusual.

Conservatives think that we are still that kind of agrarian society in which if you work hard, you can "save," that is accumulate property or money that you can hand on to your children and that will support you in your later years.

The industrial revolution changed that.

As a society, we did not respond to that change until Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive Party popularized the idea that working people, people who worked in industry should not have to work a 50 hour week and that child labor should not be permitted. Then, finally, in the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt instituted Social Security which is the savings that most of us have and rely on.

The Republicans still think we are an agrarian society.

Now we have undergone a technological revolution of sorts. The social changes that we need to respond to this new "revolution" in which computers do much of the work we used to do have not yet happened. I don't think we have even figured out yet how to respond to this age of technology. Jobs that used to pay well no longer exist or are filled by people who will work for a bowl of rice and a roof.

Bush talked big about the "ownership society." Remember? Everybody was going to be an an owner. That led to the mortgage crisis and nearly brought down the world economy. Most of us never got to own things, we just got owned.

Each new age, each new level of technology and innovation, as it sweeps across society requires a new kind of social organization.

This is what Republicans don't understand or don't want to admit.

People can't save because the system is rigged to make them think they need all kinds of things they can't afford on the wages that the system is willing to pay them. Our businesses rely for their income on the fact that people spend and don't save.

We need to change the system.

Some people are good at inventing new technology. We need some people in our government and leading our society who are good at inventing new ways to keep our society healthy and working in the technology of our time.

In short, and I know I repeat myself a lot: our new technology requires us to make some changes in our social organization. That's the job of Congress, but there will be individuals, creative individuals to whom we need to listen who will have ideas about how we can best live together in peace with all our new technology.

Right now, the richest, rich either because they are creative with things or because they are clever at accumulating money through sometimes devious means or because they were just born rich, are pretty much grabbing the money and holding onto it tight without doing much of anything of social use.

Even those who have charities are actually controlling where their money goes and trying to determine what kind of society we will have. They are not necessarily the best qualified to respond to technology with ideas about social change. It is a totally different talent.

So the reason that so many people have no savings and no way to support themselves in times of emergency or when they age is that our social organization and the way we allocate money as a society is outmoded. It no longer works.

We still think we are farmers. Most of us are not. There will be no farm to sell or to continue to live on with our children when we are in our 70s, 80s and 90s. (I'm already in my 70s.)