I happened to come across this paragraph in an article I was reading this morning on one of my favorite sites.
"Capital gains on equities, 401(k) plans, and home values are excluded from measurements of personal saving; when they are added, total U.S. domestic saving is around 20 percent of GDP -- about the same rate as in other developed economies. The national account also excludes "intangible" investment: spending on knowledge-creating activities such as on-the-job training, new-product development and testing, design and blueprint experimentation, and managerial time spent on workplace organization. Economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research estimate that intangible investment grew rapidly during the 1990s and is now at least as large as physical investment in plant and equipment: more than $1 trillion per year, or 10 percent of GDP. Consequently, the size and growth rate of the U.S. economy have been seriously underestimated. In fact, when tangible and intangible investment are both counted, the apparent (and much decried) increase in consumer spending as a share of GDP turns out to be a statistical artifact."
SOURCE:
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050301faco...retch-myth.html