The national debt has almost tripled as a fraction of GDP since the mid-1970s, so that the nation’s debt is now slightly larger than the nation’s total annual product, approaching $19 trillion by the end of 2015, and that figure is set to grow ~3 percent annually, more or less indefinitely. The proceeds from that expanding pile of debt have been used to consume, not to invest, and so growth, already slow, will get slower still. Eventually, it will become impossible to sustain living standards by borrowing. And at some roughly coterminous point, the Boomers will be dead and the problem will
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