What is Occupy Wallstreet?

[kandrathe]

None of that is hidden. It's all right there in the budget. The increase in the debt includes, rather than excludes, the payments on the "unfunded" liabilities (whatever a funded liability is - a liability where you have a mountain of gold waiting in a vault to pay it back?)

Just think of it as a part of the budget. Makes it much easier.

Maybe "hidden" is the wrong word. It is more that media, and therefore politicians are myopically focused on the present deficit and budget (when not blathering about the Republican's game of circular firing squad.) There is a future decade or two of dwindling tax revenues, and increasing social spending which needs resolving. Revenues from individuals will decrease, and the total number of wage earners decreases. Unless, they get sensible with immigration policies, and start attracting the best and the brightest workers now to come to the US. This can only happen if we preserve the US as a place where corporations want to be, and hire people. Otherwise, we end up in a downward spiral, where companies leave, our productivity drops, tax base weakens further, infrastructure fails, and then... bedlam.

I've proposed before that our government might be trying to inflate our way out of debt, making today's problems shrink away, bringing with it high inflation.

We can only dream. Sadly, attempts at generating inflation (and, just maybe, the accompanying fall in unemployment) have turned out to be almost useless. The US is still stuck with near-deflation, record unemployment, and stagnant nominal growth.

I'm afraid that when the match on our economy is finally lit, pent up inflation demand will explode beyond what they can handle. We'll have to wait and see.