How might Social Security impact the planning and budget of today and the future?

[sdvwallingford]

Dear Pottc, unfortunately the problem is that Social Security is virtually empty because the money over the last 25 years has been moved around. The trust fund is actually full of bonds from the government to the government, not actual money.

One of the big problems we are going to see is a near collapse of our infrastructure. Communities all across the nation have been putting off repairs to their water facilities, or just privatizing them and leaving them to rot. This is why there is now such a huge market for bottled water for every day use, when before this was thought to be ridiculous. There is very little uniformity in our national electrical network or grid, and until it is brought into modernity the grid remains vulnerable. About five years ago there was a black-out that hit the northeast for almost two days because one station was overloaded. The progression of the internet technology is making control of this infrastructure extremely vulnerable as well.

The problem with drugs is getting worse, not better. I don't like knee jerk reactions to this subject, but the enslavement of people to criminals is a national tragedy. Legalization is not an option, because every vice that has been legalized has just gone from being a problem to being a catastrophe (alcoholism, unregulated health care, gambling, pornography, etc). When the pusher goes from being the local stoner to the multinational corporation, we will really be in trouble.

We like to think the gap in income and wealth is just jealousy, and maybe it is, but it is turning way too much of our population against patriotism and against capitalism in all of their forms. Just telling people that they should feel lucky that they don't live in Haiti will only work for so long (I've heard that on conservative radio more than once).

Energy is going to be a problem because we still have a fossil fuel monopoly and the fuel is starting to run out. The lead lobbyist of the American petroleum industry was on C-SPAN a few months ago, and he said the world can only produce oil at its current rate for about 40 more years. We should have been working on an alternative source of individual energy a generation ago, because it will take decades to rework the infrastructure for a new fuel.

The world is just running out of credit for our debts. We have already borrowed from every country in the world and we have already depleted Social Security and Medicare, and even the retirement accounts from private industry are very shaky, some have already collapsed. When the money is no longer any good, the entire society will collapse.

Just a few things to look forward to.