I was just thinking about the ugly implications of that fact. Many sensible economic policies (e.g. putting Social Security on a sounder footing) require costs up front in order to deliver much larger long term benefits. If the median American's savings are small enough to not be able to take a long term view, then the political process will be even more biased against long term thinking than otherwise (there are already some built in incentives for politicians to not focus on problems which are likely to occur after they leave office).