The Big Answer

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Richard D. Lamm, former governor of Colorado, wrote this article for The Futurist in 1993. He sees America in decline, with the leading social indicators heading south, overconsumption and underinvestment, and inadequate maintenance of our wealth-creating potential. (The amazingly bullish stock market in the late 90s, in which the majority of our adult citizens participated, along with the general level of economic growth and inflation prevention at that time, tended to imply that he was overreacting about the latter, even though the former points still held true. But the market in the 21st century confirmed his worst suspicions.)

The budget may have been getting balanced in the 90s, but the trillions of dollars of national debt then and since are a portent of future problems. Our grade schools and high schools are doing poorly, our kids are killing one another rather than learning in their schools, our cities are crime battlefields and drug marketplaces, and we’re setting ourselves up for a future much like the course of the ship the Titanic.

Titanic sinking

We ignore these indicators at our peril. These leading indicators are the status of a nation's human resources, values, political system, social systems, and economic competitiveness and deserve serious attention.

It is easy to see where national decline is coming from. See Who Will Tell The People?: The Betrayal Of American Democracy.

What isn't so easy to see is how we will ever pay off the 19 trillion dollar debt!

Unless American citizens start defecating money, the debt has put us all in deep doo-doo