I respectfully disagree, @wundayatta. “Human capital” has an inestimable value, that’s true. But borrowing on a national scale to fund what should be day-to-day expenses, and I include housing, health care, basic education and other human-related personal type expenses, is going to crash the system. Who will fund our orgy of “human capital development” ad infinitum, and what do we do when the lenders decide that the return on investment just isn’t there?
The system has to support itself or it is… what’s the word I’m looking for here? ... the green-type word that’s an anti-mantra for so many these days? ... oh, yeah… “unsustainable”. We have to have a sustainable system, and right now we don’t.
If we don’t get back to that, then the system will drown us when it crashes. I don’t suppose it’ll happen this year or next, but it’s inevitable that it will. I wonder how long the Romans and the Egyptians before them had discussions like this.