On a Hole So Deep

We've never been here before:

The current total value of all debt and unfunded promises made by the U.S. government is $61.9 trillion over the next 75 years. $45.8 trillion of that belongs solely to promised Social Security and Medicare benefits. The rest is comprised of publicly-held debt, military and civilian employee pension payments and retiree health benefits, and government guarantees of private pension plans. Each American's piece of that lovely cake is more than $200,000.

Yeah, that's bad. And it's not getting any better. The current national debt $13 trillion, nearly half of which is owned by foreign creditors. In 2008 50% of the federal budget was spent on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and net interest. Under current conditions, by 2050 the federal debt as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product will be 350%...

"We should avoid ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden we ourselves ought to bear" is a George Washington quote Walker utters frequently. The wisdom of a generation that knew too well the dangers of Leviathan government is lost on most people today.

Richard A. Posner, in a recent Foreign Policy article, made a rather unsettling observation:

The adjustments that will be needed -- if the economy does not outgrow an increasing burden of debt -- to maintain the U.S. economic position in the world may be especially painful and difficult because of features of the American political scene that suggest that the country might be becoming in important respects ungovernable. The perfection of interest-group politics has brought about a situation in which, to exaggerate just a bit, taxes can't be increased, spending programs can't be cut, and new spending is irresistible.

It was the word "ungovernable" that struck me most. It reminded me of an equally disturbing headline I saw floating around the news world a few months ago: "Is California the First Failed State?" (linked here to NPR but seen many places elsewhere).

"Ungovernable"? "Failed state"? These are terms we hear associated with countries in Latin America, Africa, or the sub-equatorial Far East. It can't happen here in America. Or can it? We get all the government we pay for, and more. We are saddled with all the government we can borrow. But at some point the lending will stop, or will come at a price we cannot afford to pay, and the consequences in our lives will be severe. Until David Walker et al. strive to make this notion real in people's lives, their warnings will continue to fall on deaf ears...

"Is it conceivable," Russell Kirk asked, "that American civilization, and in general what we call 'Western Civilization,' may recover from the Time of Troubles ... and in the twenty-first century enter upon an Augustan age of peace and restored order?" The question was weighty enough to give him pause when he posed it in 1992. How much farther have we slipped into darkness 20 years later? Yet we cannot believe that anything is inevitable, least of all our downfall. But even as he raises the question, Kirk joins Edmund Burke in reminding us that history is replete with turning points, many of which came under the least likely of circumstances.

And so, as grim as the course of events may seem, there is hope. There is always hope.