...”I can see no scenario where we can avoid debt default in some form or fashion without brutally slashing entitlements - especially Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Civil Service pensions”...
The first place to start would be to cut the cost of living increases which state and federal employees get in their retirement pensions..Teachers, for example, retire early because they know they eventually will pull in more retirement than they were making while working. Private pensioners do not get such benefits. If these programs are not scaled back, they will crash for too many goodies have been added on over the years for the sake of politics. However, they should not be cut for people already on them but for those coming on, the scaling back should be gradual. Social security was originally set up to be a retirement supplement for old people and it has become a welfare system because of the politicians. We have elected ignorant power mongers to rule over us for many years because we went for the charm rather than real deal and it has never been worse than today...
Exactly right.And thanks for the pickup on that ,I was a little slow. Anybody who doesn’t talk about shrinking the size of the government workforce and its baggage is either too dumb or too dishonest to write about economics at all. And what a target rich environment it is, even this week with Congress called back to session to bailout the teachers’ unions.