As I have mentioned before, I am a volunteer for the nonpartisan Washington D.C. think tank “Fix the Debt.”  As such I give presentations to civic organizations in the Omaha area about our debt problem and what we can and should do about it.  I have now given four such talks and have another one coming up next week.

What is most difficult for me is to try to convey a sense of urgency about addressing this problem. Most people deplore deficit spending in a general sense but not nearly enough people think that dealing with it should take priority over current presumably pressing spending needs such as, for example, depletion of the highway trust fund, expanding military spending, or improving early childhood education, just to be specific.
So here is how I am going to try to create a greater sense of urgency.  Several months ago I had a post entitled, “The Slow Growth Fiscal Trap We’re Now In” in which I said (in brief summary) that our current economic condition of

• slow growth means
• low inflation which leads to
• low interest rates which in turn leads to
• massive debt which eventually leads to a new and much more severe
• fiscal crisis.

This is the predicament we’re now in.  Do we consciously maintain a slow growth economy, with all the unemployment pain and stagnant wages which this entails, or do we speed things up, enabling more people to go back to work, and also deal with the higher inflation and interest rates which this will entail?
Faster growth may well eventually come on its own anyway and then we’ll be forced to fix our fiscal problems at a time when they’ll be much worse than they are now.
Isn’t it clear that it is much better to act now in a responsible manner rather than to wait and have to react hurridly later on when the problem is much worse?