The brilliant and glum Jim Manzi has pointed out that millions of Americans are depending on promises that cannot possibly be kept, by Social Security, Medicare and government pension schemes. Even private pension schemes that are funded on an “actuarially sound” basis are at risk.
The reason is simple: the resources to meet these promises simply do not exist. No taxation scheme, redistribution scheme, belt tightening scheme or any other scheme is going to make them exist.
Think of a situation where the human race no longer procreated, say because of a wide spread epidemic that wipes out our ability to reproduce. You could save as much money as you wanted, you could hoard bars of gold or bags of diamonds or stacks of hundred dollar bills, but for the last remaining aging humans, there would be no one to care for them in their last years, no one to bury the dead, no one to grow crops, drill oil, man firehouses. Humanity would end in a bleak barren landscape of a decaying civilization.
While our current plight is nowhere nearly that grim, the analogy holds, at the margins. We have many more claimants on future productivity than there is any prospect of satisfying. Forget money or dollars or inflation. What will not exist are enough people who will be productive enough to fulfill these promises, barring unprecedented increases in productivity. The current administration’s anti-energy, anti-business tendencies bespeak a deep luddite streak in the body politic of the republic (and the larger world) that make such miracles seem even more unlikely.
Sadly, you are correct.
How exactly could the government save 34.8 trillion dollars, without destroying the world economy?
And how could they then spend it, without destroying the world economy?
It was not possible from the start - payroll taxes have been a lie from the start, and are really just another income tax.
Fraud by government.
Instead of putting Madhoff in jail, they should have made him Secretary of the Treasury. At least his lies were convincing.
We have a slight demographic problem, and that contributes to the pending crisis. This really depends on who you are and what your expectations are. Some groups will fare well enough, especially those with close and/or large competent and productive families. The most extreme examples are the Amish, but there are plenty of folks in rural and exurban and even suburban areas that will do ok. I agree there will be some massive problems though over the next few years.