Reply #78: Economic growth tracks energy availability and cost [View All]

[bhikkhu]

...which is, when you boil down all the data and analysis, simply saying that the economy has a real physical basis beneath all the usual economic double-speak.

I would entirely agree with you, except that the projections for energy availability and cost in the US for the next generation or so are all negative - less availability, higher cost...and you can't grow an economy on that, even if the global situation were favorable, which it isn't. Back in the Clinton years we could imagine a way out of that, but that dream crashed and burned ten years ago.

Nevertheless - I do think that Social Security is basically sound enough to weather the long-term zero-growth economy we are likely to have; we just have to be realistic about the payroll taxes that will be required, and ask the wealthy (who got there by our sweat and labor, after all) to pitch in their fair share.