Old New Years Problems

All nations face problems. Some are specific: The management of the rainforest. Some are generic: Management of health care resources. Some are practical: Farmland productivity. Some are theoretical: The inevitability of the destruction of the bourgeois. In all of this international competing mess, the United States has to pick leaders that have insight into the nation's specific and generic, practical and theoretical problems.

We have, for some reason, focused upon a number of bizarre components of the nation's integrity. We worry about coal plants emissions, income disparity, regime change in Libya. Now these may or may not have some value as problems, they may or may not have some relevance in history, they may or may not have some provable importance to us at some time. But there are two obvious, staggering problems that we face that are irrefutable, hazardous and entirely within our control that are almost never discussed. First, we are a culture totally dependent on fossil fuel most of which is supplied by foreigners who do not like us and wish us harm. And, second, we have allowed to develop a financial system that depends upon a growing and productive group of younger people to support programs promised to the older population and the direction of that supporting population is declining.

These two problems can be quantified and must be dealt with sooner or later but there is no evidence that the current candidates plan to discuss or deal with any problems that are not of their own fetish or choosing.