Nolan's 'Odyssey' reminds us of America's $40 trillion national debt crisis

Cut ... to ... 2001. Those Americans had just watched a Democratic president and a Republican Congress run a budget surplus while expanding trade. Tell them we would arrive here, in just two and a half decades — $40 trillion in debt, in the middle of a global trade war — and they would simply not believe you.

How did we get here? At bottom: incentives.

People respond to them, and our system gives citizens almost none to really understand the issues because understanding does not translate into any real say. We hand our authority to a proxy selected largely on partisan sound bites, then root for our political team the way we root for a ball club.


Wealth and civic health are twin engines. The nations with the strongest safety nets don't have them because their politicians are nicer; they have them because their economies are richer and their systems reward productivity over plunder.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/odyssey-reminds-us-nightmare-leaving-american-children