Three Choices, None Good
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
The moral rot of unlimited debt looks "free" but it's unaffordable in the end.
We like to think we're special and this moment in history is special, but alas, we're still running Wetware 1.0 which was coded between 300,000 and 60,000 years ago, when the last "out of Africa" migration finally got traction. Since then, the code has been tweaked a bit here and there (adults can now digest dairy products, etc.), but we're running the old code, and so we make the same mistakes and follow the same emotional pathways as individuals and as groups.
Which leads us to our current predicament, which is not unique: we're living on debt, "money" borrowed from the future, a future we're assuming will be so over-supplied with energy and other goodies that we'll be able to pay all the interest we're piling up with ease.
All the charts below are shouting "parabolic," as in crazy-unsustainable increases. There's the federal debt, $36 trillion, up 4X from the 2008 spot of bother, there's TCMDO, total public and private debt (McMansions, university degrees and SUVs all paid for with debt), ...
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