Economist Craig Newmark take a look at a recently released GAO report that examines the long term fiscal outlook of the United States. It makes for depressing, although not surprising reading.
These fiscal challenges are driven by health care cost growth and demographic trends. Absent reform, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will account for a growing share of the economy in coming years. The longer action to deal with the nation’s long-term fiscal outlook is delayed, the larger the changes will need to be, increasing the likelihood that they will be disruptive and destabilizing.
Craigs reaction….
I say that unless our elected representatives in D.C. address this problem real darn soon, we throw them–both parties–all out and start over.
I agree. The parties better reinvent themselves damn fast, and what’s going on in Washington might be “hope and change” but it is not reinvention. Perhaps that’s why the Tea Party movement won’t fade away.
Craig goes on to quote a Richard Fernandez column on the financial crisis and sense of entitlement in Britain…
When a society has been told for years it can have something for nothing the damage is not just physical, but psychological; an entire mentality is crippled. A former British official who is now a director at the London School of Economics says that Britain is in deep trouble. Years of entitlement have convinced people that government is an endless source of wealth. With the economic crisis in full swing, the government has to cut back for national survival. The problem is that no one wants the music to stop. Even the intellectual class, according to Sir Howard Davies, has come to believe that any crisis can be met by simply borrowing and printing more money.
Exactly how is government taking over 16% of the economy going to help ANY of the above issues?
