I rather enjoy thinking about politics, policy, etc., even if doing so is often quite discouraging on several levels. But this is important stuff; it matters even if folks (no doubt including me, more often than I'd like to think) prefer to be in denial, fatalistic or
ignorant.
I copied below a few paragraphs recently written by a pretty well-known doom-monger. The concepts aren't that original - plenty of folks offer up similar thoughts (in fact, more everyday as more of those who have been in denial are finally waking up). But I think this explanation is more effectively worded than most.
Politicians will always be hopeless panderers. And perhaps voters will always be hopeless takers.
But, fortunately or unfortunately, simple math will now overwhelm the widespread grabbing that has dominated our politics for so long.
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" . . . the unsustainable "bubble" is not student debt or
subprime mortgages or anything else. The bubble is us, and the assumptions of
entitlement. Too many citizens of advanced Western democracies live a life they
have not earned, and are not willing to earn. Indeed, much of our present
fiscal woe derives from two phases of human existence that are entirely the
invention of the modern world. Once upon a time, you were a kid till you were
13 or so; then you worked; then you died. That bit between childhood and death
has been chewed away at both ends. We invented something called
"adolescence" that now extends not merely through the teenage years
but through a desultory half-decade of Whatever Studies at Complacency U up
till you're 26 and no longer eligible for coverage on your parents' health
insurance policy. At the other end of the spectrum, we introduced something
called "retirement" that, in the space of two generations, has led to
the presumption that able-bodied citizens are entitled to spend the last couple
of decades, or one third of their adult lives, as a long holiday weekend.
The bit in between adolescence and retirement is your working life, and it's
been getting shorter and shorter. Which is unfortunate, as it has to pay for
everything else. This structural deformity in the life cycle of Western man is
at the root of most of our problems. Staying ever longer in "school"
(I use the term loosely) leads to ever later workplace entry, and ever later
(if at all) family formation. Which means that our generation is running up
debt that will have to be repaid by our shrunken progeny. One hundred Greek
grandparents have 42 Greek grandchildren. Is it likely that 42 Greeks can repay
the debts run up by 100 Greeks? No wonder they'd rather stick it to the
Germans. But the thriftier Germans have the same deathbed demographics. If 100
Germans resent having to pick up the check for an entire continent, is it
likely 42 Germans will be able to do it?
Look around you. The late 20th century Western lifestyle isn't going
to be around much longer. In a few years' time, our children will look
at old TV commercials showing retirees dancing, golfing, cruising away
their sixties and seventies, and wonder what alternative universe that
came from. In turn, their children will be amazed to discover that in
the early 21st century the Western world thought it entirely normal that
vast swathes of the citizenry should while away their youth enjoying
what, a mere hundred years earlier, would have been the leisurely
varsity of the younger son of a Mitteleuropean Grand Duke.
. . . Any functioning
society is like an orchestra. When the parts don't fit together, it's
always the other fellow who's out of tune. So the Greeks will blame the
Germans, and vice-versa. But the developed world is all playing the same
recessional. In the world after Western prosperity, we will work till
we're older, and we will start younger – and we will despise those who
thought they could defy not just the rules of economic gravity but the
basic human life cycle."
CPG and POC recently got around to working with a home brew kit (gift from Nicole to POC). Our two trainee brewers did quite a bit of work a couple weeks ago getting the process started. (Fortunately, they kept us all fully informed into the wee hours of the morning via "groupme".) 
