For anyone who doesn't believe entitlements + interest on the debt will crowd out all other spending

[dawg]

50. Indeed, dawg. But going even beyond our unwillingness to pay adequate taxes ...

that whole global military hegemony thing might be part of the problem as well.

Oh yes, we also spend twice as much per capita on health care, despite getting worse outcomes. All because we insist in using market systems for nearly everything.

We intervene in free markets in order to benefit the "haves" (long-lived patents for drugs, bans on re-importation, bans on Medicare negotiating for drug costs); yet we insist on harshly applying market outcomes on the "have nots".

There is probably no single service less suited to well-functioning markets than health care.

And yet, with all this: the refusal of the American rich to pay anything approaching a modern first word tax rate; the fact that Americans are bearing an outsized burden for world defense/domination; and the fact that we have a uniquely expensive and underperforming health care system - some people are still insisting that the solution to our debt is for working class people to "eat our peas" and make do with less.

Rich folk are pretty damned lucky Americans are so docile.