A parent to his young child: “I’m sorry honey, our generation is not able to fund research and development of new and cool things that your generation can use to grow the economy and improve the quality of life. And we cannot rebuild the bridges because we are using today’s dollars and tomorrow’s dollars to fund two insane wars and bailing out unregulated banks. The economy you inherit will  have to depend on new stuff created by other countries who had the money and intelligence and vision to invest in R and D. You’ll also inherit a huge debt we created to fund these unwinable wars. You’ll just have to get used to living with less, a lot less. You understand, don’t you?”