How did we arrive at a new normal of indifference to living on borrowed money? Federal budget deficits are poised to eclipse $1 trillion in 2020 and may never fall below that level again. There was hardly a word about this once-hot issue among Democrats or Republicans running in the midterm elections. Similar problems of matching spending with revenues exist at the state level, where unfunded pension liabilities grow while taxes are cut.
At the individual household level, following an uptick in savings after the Great Recession, most Americans can't or don't care about saving or balancing spending and income. About 80 percentof the population carries debt, totaling about $13 trillion, and one in five households have zero or negative assets.
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