Entitled = (Majority of the Voters) = dictate policy

I agree with sp. Of you aren't feeling it you're lucky. My lifestyle hasn't changed much but it's changed. Thankfully I'm not raising a young family.

"Concerning Fiscal Math
CBO?s latest outlook shows a deficit of about $1.9 trillion in 2026 and publicly held debt rising to about 120 percent of GDP by 2036, a level that would have been treated as a national emergency in prior eras. The story underneath is even more disturbing. Mandatory spending and compounding interest costs drive the long-run trajectory while Congress repeatedly turns budgeting into a cliffhanger, manufacturing shutdown threats and continuing resolutions over a shrinking slice of the budget. By 2036, discretionary spending will make up less than 20 percent of total federal outlays, yet it will likely still dominate the public drama.

That mismatch is the reason why the appropriations process, which determines discretionary spending, feels like constant crisis without producing long-run control. Net interest costs are projected to surge from roughly $1.0 trillion in 2026 to roughly $2.1 trillion by 2036, rising as a share of the economy from 3.3 percent of GDP to 4.6 percent. Those numbers matter because they describe a government that is steadily losing fiscal room to maneuver. When interest becomes one of the fastest-growing items in the budget, policy choices start to narrow even before anyone votes for austerity.

Despite these warnings, Congress continues to spend a disproportionate amount of time and political energy on annual appropriations brinkmanship. Shutdown threats dominate coverage, agencies plan around continuing resolutions, and the public is told the budget fight is underway, as if the main drivers of long-run debt are being tackled. They are not. The annual appropriations brawl is increasingly a fight over a smaller component, while the larger forces keep moving in the background.

If this sounds severe, it is because the situation is severe. A country that runs trillion-dollar deficits in ordinary times and watches debt climb toward historic peaks is not choosing a stable future. The real danger is that deterioration can feel manageable for a time until it suddenly is not. If interest rates rise higher than projected, or growth becomes weaker than expected, the debt math worsens quickly. The margin for error shrinks as interest costs rise. The risk is not merely higher debt in the abstract. The risk is reduced capacity to respond to recession, to fund defense and preparedness, and to protect vulnerable households when policy flexibility is most needed."


In the 70's discretionary spending was over half the budget. Discretionary spending is money spent on services ( actually building stuff and providing services or doing stupid stuff) the government provides. Interest provides no service and most mandatory spending is wealth transfer.

A common theme in empires that had a debt backed currency

Current UE is about 4%, last quarter GDP growth about 1.56%, current inflation is about 3.3-3.5%, current debt increase rate is 6%, Those numbers all seem small, they seem simple, but we don't seem to be able to or want to work on a fix.

Bryce

We have no identity or common interest anymore

The labor hates the management and their grievances are justified in some situations

The lazy and dumb are content to live off subsidies with no desire to better themselves at the taxpayers expense

Tax dollars are being sent to foreign countries while our infrastructure crumbles in the name of globalization and holy wars

We had the chance to be the next Greece or Rome with some lessons learned from their collapse

But we blew the opportunity

Oh well, football season is starting so all will be well

In some situations I am sure you are right. But, having worked crappy jobs most of my life, I have found that 99% of the time, the ones that complain the most about management are the ones that do the absolute LEAST work....

Copy/paste


John Maynard Keynes lived as a quintessential elitist who despised the very people his theories claimed to help. While you hear endless praise for his "compassionate" economics, the man himself viewed workers and savers with open contempt, calling them irrational actors who needed enlightened technocrats to manage their affairs.

The Cambridge don made his fortune speculating in currencies and commodities while simultaneously advocating for government controls that would eliminate such opportunities for ordinary people. He lost his shirt in 1928, then again in 1929, proving himself a mediocre investor despite his theoretical "brilliance". His personal financial disasters never dimmed his confidence that he could engineer prosperity for entire nations.

Keynes openly admitted his theories served political expediency rather than economic truth. In a 1944 letter to Friedrich Hayek, he wrote that he expected his ideas to be temporary measures, lasting perhaps 25 years before sounder thinking would prevail. He never intended his deficit spending prescriptions to become permanent doctrine.

The man who gave intellectual cover to every government's spending addiction actually agreed with free market economists on the long run. He simply believed political reality made sound economics impossible. His famous quip "in the long run we are all dead" was political cynicism: politicians need solutions that work before the next election, consequences be (This word is unacceptable on Trapperman).

You celebrate Keynes as the savior of capitalism, but he designed his system to give politicians exactly what they wanted: intellectual permission to spend money they didn't have on programs that bought votes. He knew this would end badly. He just figured someone else would clean up the mess after he died.

Who celebrates Keynes as the savior of capitalism? Nobody who runs perpetual deficits is even following Keynes.

Keynes the savior of capitalism? That's funny......