We should live our lives as though Christ was coming this afternoon. - Jimmy Carter

The world has not prepared for the future. During the 1950's, people used twice as much oil as during the 1940's. During the 1960's, we used twice as much as during the 1950's. And in each of those decades, more oil was consumed than in all of man's previous history combined. World consumption of oil is still going up. If it were possible to keep it rising during the 1970's and 1980's by 5 percent a year, as it has in the past, we could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade. I know that many of you have suspected that some supplies of oil and gas are being withheld from the market. You may be right, but suspicions about the oil companies cannot change the fact that we are running out of petroleum.

Our fourth major goal, I want to mention briefly, is our welfare system and our tax system. In both of these cases, tinkering is not going to be enough. They must be thoroughly redesigned. Our present welfare system robs the taxpayers who support it, discourages the people who administer it, and sometimes degrades the people who really do need help. It's an extraordinarily complex and difficult problem, even more so than I had expected. Two weeks ago I outlined the principles that must underlie the reform of the system, and we will have legislative proposals ready by the end of this summer. We've already begun to move in this direction by simplifying the food stamp program--eliminating the purchase requirement and reforming the eligibility rules. As for our tax system, it, too, must be reformed through and through. Our tax system was once relatively simple, fair, and progressive. It isn't any more, because it's been changed so much over the years--often for the benefit of those who are rich enough to hire their own lobbyists in Washington. The process of redesign is well underway, and we intend to submit legislation to the Congress for a fair and simple income tax system this year.

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose. The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next 5 years will be worse than the past 5 years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world. As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning. These changes did not happen overnight. They've come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy. We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the Presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate.