I concur with much of what Rick Holt wrote. But note this statement: "If a nation has a high savings rate then certain benefits are shifted to future generations. If a nation has a low savings rate than benefits are given to the present generation." Maybe. But suppose the high savingts rate gets used to fund, oh, say vacation houses at the beach? Or yet another strip mall? Or to gut a steel mill rather than replace the outdated machinery? Suppose the low savings rate is the result of massive social investment in education and training? Building infrastructure? Then what is happening is what we are calling "savings" and "investment" is really consumption or income transfers. And what we are calling "low savings" and "consumption" is actually (sorry -- "low savings" and "government profligacy") is actually social savings and investment. So in this case the next generation WILL be the beneficiaries. You canot make blanket statements about these categories. You have to come out of the boxes of aggregate spending and aggregate saving and aggregate investment and look instead at macro as the combination of lots and lots and lots of micro activities -- each of which, as we should all know by now, involve much more complex forms of economic decision-making and effects than the very simplisitic assumptions that can be drawn from two-dimensional static equilibrium overgeneralized models. -- Mary Schweitzer