EP 998 The Treasury Recently Said America is Broke. Our Guest Has Been Saying it for Years.

 Laurence Kotlikoff, PhD. is considered one of the 25 leading economists in the world according to the respected magazine, ‘The Economist.’  And he’s been the clearest and most consistent voice as to the fiscal gap that America has accrued by way of its public debt, roughly $40 trillion, and its ‘off the books’ obligations to Americans by way of social insurance programs, particularly in an aging society with a below replacement birth rate.  He will try to engage your thinking around what he deems the fiscal gap accounting which he developed so you get a picture of how bad our fiscal circumstance is.  It is difficult to overstate the woeful picture we have built by increasing the debt year after year for more than fifty years, absent a few years when Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich worked to rein it in in the 90’s.  The answers are by no means simple or without pain.  It will require a new approach to both health care and Social Security.  Unfortunately, no one is talking about it and no politicians have the courage to be associated with the fiscal medicine we will have to take.  Let’s start with the reality which Professor Kotlikoff, of Boston University, lays out today on this podcast.

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