PERSPECTIVE ON MONEY : Public Enemy No. 1: Credit Cards : Tax policy favors savers, yet the economy urges spending not only your savings, but also money you don’t have.

On the same day that Secretary Robert Reich and the Department of Labor were launching a program to encourage workers to save, the juxtaposition of two messages on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program served to highlight a major cause of that problem and a basic contradiction in our economy. First, the jovial host appeared in his role as shill for whatever sponsor will pay him to promote consumption of their products. The gist of what he told his followers is that they all need to have a back-yard spa. It is, he said, a place for the family to get together at the end of the day, relax and enjoy one another’s company. You deserve this, Limbaugh assured his listeners. Moments later, he was agreeing with a caller from Arkansas that anyone can achieve a comfortable living and financial independence if he or she would learn to just say “no” to themselves and their children, thereby saving rather than spending.

Is it any wonder that people do not save when they are constantly bombarded by advertising that uses every method of persuasion to induce them to buy, buy, buy? The fundamental, generic message of advertising is the exact opposite of that of traditional values. Christians pray: “Lead us not into temptation.” But the whole thrust of our consumption-ethic economy is “Aw, go ahead.”

Credit or installment purchasing is one of the most powerful of the modern solvents that have eaten away traditional values. One of its important effects has been to destroy prudence and enhance present-mindedness.

“Here’s how to get what you want, when you want it” blares an envelope offering a “pre-approved” credit card. It could stand as the motto of the consumption ethic and as the epitaph for traditional values.

While the spread of credit-card financing was “freeing” most people from the limits imposed upon them by old restrictions and values, it was simultaneously placing new fetters of debt upon them. The democratization of debt did not mean the democratization of freedom. On the contrary, going into debt for current consumption amounts to voluntary servitude.

It is the economy’s need for maximizing consumption that has subverted the essential American value of future orientation. Throughout most of the 20th Century and particularly in recent decades, businesses have encouraged us to do the opposite of what Americans have traditionally done. Advertising urges us to indulge now and forget the future: “Buy now; pay later.” Since almost anyone finds buying preferable to paying, this system necessarily leads people to focus on “now” and to think as little as possible about “later.” Sacrifice, so central to the building of our nation, has all but disappeared from the American lexicon, having been replaced by gratification. The modern economy says: Do stop thinkin’ about tomorrow.

There is a further twist to the relationship between the consumption ethic and prudent values that has done so much to shape our current society. The virtues that consumers have been persuaded to give up, such as thrift, caution and investment in future gratification, are the very same that successful businesses cling to even as they encourage ever more consumer credit.

To be blunt, advertising and credit are weapons whereby a small number of people persuades the rest to take up behaviors that will ensure that the latter become losers so that the former can accumulate wealth.

Now, adding insult to injury (or, if they succeed, injury to injury), the political champions of the economic winners (that is, the Gingrich Republicans) propose to change the tax system in order to further reward the winners and penalize those they have talked into becoming losers. The same people who spend huge fortunes on advertising, trying to coax us into spending and borrowing, now say the tax system should be set up to reward saving and penalize consumption. This is a major part of the argument for both Rep. Bill Archer’s proposal to replace the income tax with a national sales tax and Rep. Dick Armey’s plan to eliminate taxes on capital gains, interest and dividends (money that makes more money). The commercials on which corporations spend billions say: “Spend! Spend! Spend!” Their political spokesmen say, “Tax the spenders, not the savers.”

In other words, if you listen to the ads and indulge yourself now, you’ll be a loser, and not once but twice: You’ll pay interest on the money you borrow, and you’ll be taxed for not saving it instead.