[Eric Pode of Croydon]

We need political, religious and business leaders at all levels who are unafraid to tell America that we have been using up our seed corn for decades, and that it will take decades of what a great man called "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" - in a word, austerity - to get back to our former greatness.

Instead we get the likes of Trump and Sanders, who tell their followers that the solutions are easy, quick and cheap, and that someone else (who is absolutely Not Them) will be forced to pay for it all.

I am reasonably confident that no one who tells Americans the truth that they need to hear will ever be elected.

[baltimorepoet]

I am reasonably confident that no one who tells Americans the truth that they need to hear will ever be elected.

That sad thing is, you are probably right.

It is a matter of history, that the elites are the last to feel it when a society is collapsing and that it is too late to fix a society by the time the do feel the pain.

Our current political system is designed to prevent the pain the lower and middle classes feel from the decline, from filtering up the political chain to produce actual leaders with workable solutions to halt the decline.

Ergo, collapse. (Give or take a "Black Swan" event, which will topple the system faster that the entropy.

[Gideon300]

“...it will take decades of what a great man called “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” - in a word, austerity - to get back to our former greatness...

...I am reasonably confident that no one who tells Americans the truth that they need to hear will ever be elected.”

I believe you are right, but I doubt that America can EVER return to it’s former greatness. Americans have learned that they can get along fine with their heads in the sand and their hands in someone else’s pocket. The takers will soon be a solid majority, and when that happens the country is toast. No one will ever get elected who wants to upset the status quo, and it will only be changed by very hard experience.

Sad and “unpatriotic” as it may sound, there may come a time to cut our losses and let the ship sink. At this moment in time, I don’t see anything to be patriotic about.

[Buckeye McFrog]

it will take decades of what a great man called "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" - in a word, austerity - to get back to our former greatness. I am reasonably confident that no one who tells Americans the truth that they need to hear will ever be elected.

The very word "austerity" has become pejorative from Greece to Flint, Michigan.