We’re going down the tubes and we’d best start biting the bullet

“(T)he new economic order has two likely alternative shapes. If people can be educated to understand that one steep, but relatively short-lived, depression can cleanse the system and begin a new era of prosperity, then a new free-market economy can rise out of the ashes of the soon to be old order. To get there, people would have to agree to delay substantially their receipt of retirement benefits (Social Security and Medicare); unionized government employees would have to accept Wisconsin-style limitations on public-union bargaining; federal regulations on business would have to be rolled back to Reagan-era rules; subsidies to businesses and farmers would have to be eliminated over a short phase-out period; oil and gas drilling on federal lands would have to be allowed to accelerate; the income tax would have to be amended substantially, either converted to a low-rate flat tax with few deductions (including the loss of the deductibility of home-mortgage interest) or scrapped entirely in favor of a national sales tax; the power of the Federal Reserve to create money out of thin air would have to be curtailed. In effect, Keynesian economics would have to be placed in the so-called dustbin of history.”

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-end-americas-grand-economic-bargain-7943

(Does anybody believe “gimme, gimme” will change to “Oh, I see. We all have to do our part”? The politicians will not move from the trough, economic elites will not stop funneling into the trough, and the entitleists will not give up their free money.)

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