Breakthrough Debt Documentary to Debut at Sundance; Highlights $62 Trillion U.S. Liab

[mikedev10]

Re: Breakthrough Debt Documentary to Debut at Sundance; Highlights $62 Trillion U.S.

cool shenni, i wanted to go but i had just gone to freedomfest in vegas a week prior. i'm also surely the poorest member of agora's financial reserve. ;p you are in the small group of people who have seen this cut of the movie - as i believe vancouver thus far has been its only showing! i hope it's awesome and gives some friends/family a kick in the pants with me to.

[ASH]

Re: Breakthrough Debt Documentary to Debut at Sundance; Highlights $62 Trillion U.S.

This can only be a good thing. Much of the American middle class postponed a broad decline in standard of living by financing consumption with consumer debt. Uncle Sam has greatly over-promised social benefits, planning to "fund" future payouts with more debt -- government account series bonds that represent an obligation to pay into social security and medicare, but not a means of doing so. Anyway you slice it, relative material wealth is going to decline over the next couple of decades, expectations are going to be disappointed, and an increasingly smaller slice of the population is going to pay ever higher taxes without closing the gap between what was promised and what can be paid for. This is a recipe for social unrest and a lot of angry people. The best case scenario is that a generation of hardship re-educates Americans that TANSTAAFL... but the unscrupulous will attempt to redirect the populist anger and frustration: against foreigners, against corporations, against the wealthy; perhaps against capitalist democracy. No one likes to be told that their expectations are too high, or that their problems are of their own making, but I am not entirely pessimistic. Anti-debt media figures like Dave Ramsey have a large following, and a surprising portion of the public know instinctively that they are ultimately responsible for their own problems. The more people are made aware of the real nature of the problem (e.g. through vehicles like this documentary), the less danger there is of this anger being channeled in unproductive directions.