I proudly claim a place in the first class because I believe that the trajectory of the American government budget is out of control and heading inevitably for a calamity. I believe there is no political will either in the Democrats who control about three quarters of the government (including the bureaucracies) or the Republicans who control the remnant that's left, to pay the price necessary to reduce spending by about one quarter. Worse, there is no inclination to even publicly discuss the looming calamity presented by about $100 trillion worth of unfunded liabilities. Witness the television interview of Paul Krugman among the videos who dismisses fears over the debt.
Private as opposed public liabilities are nearly as bad with underwater mortgages and graduates drowning in tuition debt. There is very little elasticity here to compensate for government profligacy.
We Cassandras look look to the Japanese model of grinding decades long recession with no real recovery as the likely future for the United States.
Finally, we pessimists see the nature of the electorate as one that consistently takes the wrong lessons from history. Hence Nathan Bedford's second Maxim: failed socialism begets not reform but more socialism. So it is unlikely that either before, during, or after a crash that the people will take the steps for real reform. Evidence in support of that pessimism is the cynicism of Obama's response to the Great Recession only to be rewarded with his reelection.
The Pollyannas on the other hand, at least those who dwell with their heads out of the sand who will acknowledge that there is a threat, rely on the third great revolution after agriculture and industry, the digital revolution, to float all boats and so change the world's economic paradigm. In other words, we will invent our way out of this hole. Those who live with their heads in the sand will be preaching wealth redistribution and every setback Japan style which the economy suffers will be cited as justification for more socialism. Every advance whether physical or in lifestyle which might be generated by revolutionary technology will likewise be cited as justification for wealth distributional because such revolutionary technology always creates huge winners and the left will not be able to resist the temptation to play the envy card.
I do not pretend to know where the technologies will lead us. My father was born in 1913 and lived a lifestyle as a youth on the farm very similar to Abraham Lincoln yet he lived well into the digital, space, and atomic age which not even Huxley could have predicted.
I do not deny the technology will bring transformations and wonders but I insist that human nature will not change.
