[lelio]

Others don't care about the downward shift in the wage structure - but how are we to service the present debt if incomes fall so steeply?

My nightmare scenerio is for Bush to get this quasi semi legal worker visa (aka "lower wages more!") passed and continues to push for "free trade" while high paying jobs get shipped out of the country. In 10-20 years we'll have millions of baby boomers that didn't save enough money pleading for government assistance and no one will be around making enough money to pay the social security taxes to support them.

My greatest fear from that is if the best and the brightest (and those that don't want to be around with the poop hits the fan) start to leave the country for greener pastures in China, Russia, and India where the economies are improving.

[neutrino]

I suspect you'll see both come to pass. When people start being really uncomfortable, they become willing to do almost anything to improve things - and that means voting for more goodies and higher taxes.

Higher taxes in England resulted in the very brain drain you refer to.

Conservatism is, I think, more apt to thrive in a land with a strong middle class than in one with a great many poor and angry people.

[A. Pole]

In 10-20 years we'll have millions of baby boomers that didn't save enough money pleading for government assistance and no one will be around making enough money to pay the social security taxes to support them.

This can be worse - those baby boomers who DID save enough money, might see the value of their savings collapsing. Private savings as much as government capacity to give assistance depend on the productivity of the economy. When you account is wiped out, when you do not have good children, when government is bankrupt, you are a toast at old age.

[XBob]

47 - "My nightmare scenerio is for Bush to get this quasi semi legal worker visa (aka "lower wages more!") passed and continues to push for "free trade" while high paying jobs get shipped out of the country. In 10-20 years we'll have millions of baby boomers that didn't save enough money pleading for government assistance and no one will be around making enough money to pay the social security taxes to support them. "

whether Bush does it or not, this is what is actually happening, right now, unless we close our borders, and stop exporting our jobs.