About a new book I've found--

A scary book I've just started reading is "Running on Empty" by Peter Peterson. The US now has obligations to pay recipients of social security, Medicare, and Medicaid trillions of dollars more than it can ever collect in taxes. The problem is not immediate but it is coming to a head in a few years and nothing is being done to cope with it.

Most of us have heard about this problem but have only a vague understanding of it. Peterson's book clarifies a lot of the financial aspects but it is not an easy read. The finances are pretty complicated and involve savings, taxes, investments, balance of payments and similar subjects. It seems to me that if somebody could come up with a relatively simple spreadsheet on these factors, then we could individually change various things and see how the results change. Doing something like this would be a big help in clarifying things for us non-economists. Somebody might even be able to come up with a video game about the subject. (Maybe somebody already has? I don't do video games.)

The politicians are not going to do anything about the problem until a lot of people start asking them about it or untill disaster strikes. Already the US dollar is starting to weaken.