Last one turn out the lights

Let's look at some figures:

The cost of unfunded Social Security and Medicaid is over $100 trillion — and rising. This is about ten times bigger than the total existing debt of the United States, and it is about $330,000 per man, woman and child in the United States — or about $1.3m for a family of four. And rising.

So your average US family of four is facing a government-imposed bill of $1.3m on top of existing taxes! Change the sign around and they'd all be millionaires! Welcome to the age of the negative millionaire.

It is not surprising, then, that leading experts are now openly asking if the United States is bankrupt, and they are anticipating possible futures in which young, educated Americans flee the country in large numbers to escape crippling taxes — and, of course, in so doing, leave their fellow citizens with even greater per capita burdens to bear. A real case of "last one to leave please switch off the lights."

To quote one leading authority, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas:

I see a frightful storm brewing in the form of untethered government debt.… Unless we take steps to deal with it, the long-term fiscal situation of the federal government will be unimaginably more devastating to our economic prosperity than the subprime debacle and the recent debauching of credit markets. (Richard W. Fisher, 2008)

by Kevin Dowd