Only Switzerland, which remained on an official gold standard until 1934, and continued to back its currency with large reserves of gold until the early 1990s, has continued to have a high savings rate, standing as the last bastion of low‐time‐preference Western civilization with a savings rate in the double digits, as every other Western economy has plummeted into the single digits and even to negative saving rates in some cases. The average savings rate of the seven largest advanced economies12 was 12.66% in 1970, but has dropped to 3.39% in 2015, a fall of almost three‐quarters. While
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