But isn't that highlighted point exactly the problem.  The incredible size of the baby boomer generation has caused enormous problems (starting with class sizes exploding and school facilities not ready for the bulge 50 years ago) as it has gone through the demographic cycle.  I'm under the impression that the combined impact of SS and Medicare, coupled with longer life spans and wonderful, but costly, new medicines and medical procedures, will not allow the generations following to pay for the boomers.

No piles of pieces of paper, no matter how high, and no sequences of entries in computer databases, with the most significant bit no matter how far to the left, helps with the problem.

There is no finance problem. There is a capacity to support a given retired population with a given working population problem, sure ... but neither trust funds where the government holds its own IOUs as if they were assets nor funds where the government holds promises from corporations and individuals to fork over government IOUs at some time in the future addresses that problem.

In the US, Energize America addresses that problem ... in Europe, Energise Europe would do. Reversing the other massive dependency, the dependency of the US Empire on the US Economy, would free up substantial resources to do so. But the issue is food and clothes and housing and heat and transportation, not financial assets.

In an economy where the government's IOU passes as money, the constraint on government spending is its impact on the economy ... there is no finance constraint of the sort that a business or a household faces in that system.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.