Abandoning gossip, he abstains from gossip; he speaks at the right time, speaks what is fact, speaks on what is good, speaks on the Dhamma and the Discipline; at the right time he speaks such words as are worth recording, reasonable, moderate, and beneficial.
- Majjhima-Nikaya
I believe we are, as a society, wealthy enough so that we should say to ourselves, the American people, no one in the United States should be without financial access to the health and medical care that they need. Now, this is really important: We need to say to the American people, do you know who is going to pay for it? You are, because there's no other source. The government doesn't have any money unless it takes it away from you. ...I would like for all checks from the American government to say on the bottom of them: "This is from your friends and neighbors. It's the only place the government can get money."
I want to create real financial security for people when their working life is over. And in my scheme, I would begin funding it the day that children are born so that your strength of financial security doesn't depend on your financial success in life; so that when you get to be 65, if you were a person who spent your working life, let's say, cleaning hospital rooms, which is a really important thing, but you only got paid $25,000 or $30,000 a year in today's terms, I'd like for you to be financially independent when you get to be 65. And if we began funding your retirement the day you were born, you'd have financial security. Some people would have a whole lot more, but everybody would have a floor that's gloriously better than what we now provide in Social Security and Medicare benefits. I think we're a rich society, and we ought to do that.
In the simplest terms, we need to become a society of savers, and there are a bunch of different ways we can do that. But we can no longer fund growing obligations out of current income, so we're going to have to save toward our future instead of only spending toward our future.
