A new paper The US Deficit Debt Problem:A Longer Term Perspective by Daniel Thornton, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, contains some useful graphs on the causes of our debt crisis. The first graph below illustrates the rise of spending relative to government revenue; the second shows that the lion’s share of increased spending has been on social services, Medicare and Medicaid in particular: Source: Thornton (2012) Source: Thornton (2012) The graphs demonstrate, the words of James Hamilton that “Americans want an increasing government contribution to health care, but don’t want to pay for it.” It...