An Ever Bigger Beast

The government is eating the economy. Notice, though, that people have not woken up yet. We will have to hit the wall first. For now, we're just borrowing to solve our problems. Massive tax increases are the wall, and they can only be delayed for so long. I expect the political atmosphere will then become decidedly ugly, uglier even than today because the reality of the situation will by uglier. How this may interplay with the demographic shift toward the Democrats will be interesting.
Eventually, China will stop funding us. Already their funding runs at the minimum level they calculate will prevent a crisis in our economy (and, by extension, in their export trade). There isn't another comparable source of funding. There isn't likely to be. That means interest rates on government debt will go up, making the fiscal situation even less sustainable. Also, the baby boomers are retiring into a socialist morass of vast handouts and bureaucratic entanglements. The population is Mexicanizing. Given these countercurrents, it will be a major challenge to increase productivity at a sufficient rate to maintain current median family income levels--which have not increased in 40 years, except for whatever improvements medicine has provided.