The challenge of progress is managing the transition from childhood to adulthood.

Children are dependent and self-absorbed. Adults are independent and other-focused. At some point, we all have to change from the former to the latter.

For millennia, we pushed children into adulthood too early; they didn’t have the time to get a good education, largely because they were needed to put food on the table in order for the family to survive.

But as wealth grew in the West, we were able to leave children in school longer. This had many positive effects, including huge increases in knowledge and wealth-generation capability.

Eventually, however, we overshot the mark. Now we the spectacle of permanent childhood, a state of perpetual dependence and self-absorption. But our culture, and therefore our nation, cannot survive if the psycho-social pyramid is too bottom-heavy. There are too few adults supporting too many children.

Left to its own, such a situation will self-correct. The problem is that we have enough resources at this point to support dependent, self-absorbed children well into old age. The ballot box is leveraged to effect this transfer. This makes the imbalance greater.

But the correction will come. And the longer we delay the correction – the longer we persist in providing massive government entitlements – the worse the outcome when the bubble bursts.

The President’s proposed program of massive government expansion and enormous future deficits is like the home mortgage bubble, only 10X (or 100X) worse. Let’s hope that there are enough adults left in DC to resist this unsustainable bubble.

But will the adults there overthrow the children who are leading the charge? I guess that’s the fundamental question we’re about to see answered.

L3