response

I work in IT and have for almost 5 decades. One of the intellectual exercises we perform when "something has gone wrong" or as we sterilely say an "incident", is called "root cause analysis". That exercise is not beloved of most because one has to ask hard questions and often get hard answers, unpopular questions and unpopular answers.

In the case of the current federal, state and local government budget crises, trying to do that, in almost all cases, causes a political outcry. So it is avoided. It was certainly avoided in your editorial "State of the Unions." To your credit you did mention "get long-term entitlement costs under control."

The problem far exceeds that.

The scandalous financial crises over the years have laid bare the unsustainable nature of government policy at all levels going back decades. The state workers feel like victims - they are. But then so are and will be present and future citizens of the state and the nation - our children and grandchildren. It is difficult to name any public (or more than a few private) policies that are sustainable. As I write this, the price of gasoline is soaring. Nobody's budget for fuel costs going forward is adequate. That will ripple through the world economy.

Until realistic analysis of the future costs and available resources are made, the most endangered species is humanity. The root cause is a failure to understand and act on the insight of Gn 1:28a - God blessed them, saying: "Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it."

One can only fill what is finite. What is finite has limits. When you get to the limit, that is all there is. When you get near the limit, the scramble for the diminishing amount left is not pretty.