But don't panic.

Raise your little finger to your lips and repeat after me: "$44 Trillion Dollars"

Now follow this link, and click on the "endorsements" link, and look at the credentials of the people listed there. Recognize any names?

"It is the dawning of the age of aquarius, the age of aquarius... aquarius!!!"

The Coming Generational Storm

] Claire Buchan, a White House spokeswoman, said the
] administration has already looked into ways to compensate
] for future crunches on resources, pointing to a 2002
] White House appointed commission that advocated phasing
] out Social Security options for younger workers while
] allowing retired and near-retired persons to keep their
] benefits.

Social Security is a wealth redistribution system. Admit it. Thats what it is. When it started it was, on a demographic basis, taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. The reason its going to fail is that, on a demographic basis, its now stealing money from the poor and giving it to the rich. We ought to accept that its a wealth redistribution system and run it like one. You ought to get it only if you need it, and it ought to suck just enough that most people won't want it. I'm all for raising the amount of money one can put in tax deferred personal savings accounts if we can do that without bankrupting the government. However, the path to fixing social security is to see it for what it is and run it appropriately. In order to do that the people making decisions about it are going to have to agree to cut their own potential income. For the most part, politics doesn't work that way. So if you're between the ages of 20 and 40, prepare to get fucked, because you are the smallest generational demographic, and thus you have the smallest amount of democratic political power. You will witness the very definition of tyranny of the majority in your lifetime.

Good news -- and bad -- for baby boomers, says AARP

] SAN FRANCISCO -- Tech job postings on two popular online
] employment sites have increased sharply, a sign that the
] long moribund job market may finally be turning around.
]
] Craigslist tech job postings in the San Francisco Bay
] Area have doubled from a year ago and are up 50 percent
] from six months ago, said CEO Jim Buckmaster. Activity
] has particularly picked up in the past four weeks, he
] said.

Wow...

Wired News: Not So Quiet on Tech Job Front

] Intel Corp. Chairman Andy Grove, a pioneer in the American
] high-tech industry, warned that the U.S. could lose the bulk of its
] information technology jobs to overseas competitors in the next
] decade, largely to India and China.

[IP] IT job exportation heats up.

] But today Galton's beautiful form might not be so
] regular. Although bell curve distribution is still
] considered normal, a surprising number of economic and
] social phenomena now seem to follow a different arc.
] Instead of being high in the center and low on the sides,
] this new distribution is low in the center and high on
] the sides. Call it the well curve.

Death of the middle class

] In the case of physical property, we take it for granted
] that the ownership right should have the potential of
] persisting as long as the physical object itself. In the
] case of an idea, however, we have chosen to strike a
] different balance in recognition of the chaos that could
] follow from having to trace back all the thoughts
] implicit in one's current undertaking and pay a royalty
] to the originator of each one. So rather than adopting
] that obviously principled but unworkable approach, we
] have chosen instead to follow the lead of British common
] law and place time limits on intellectual property
] rights.

I'm rerecommending this. I've read it now. Greenspan explains the changing nature of the situation just as I have in the past, and this talk offers itself as a good reference for such an explanation, as people usually don't want to take my word for it. :)

Intellectual Property is broken. You heard it here from the guy that runs the economy. So don't tell me I'm being silly.

Of course, Greenspans perspective on how to fix it is probably 180 degrees from mine.

FRB: Speech, Greenspan-Market economies--April 4, 2003

] Whether we protect intellectual property as an
] inalienable right or as a privilege vouchsafed by the
] sovereign, such protection inevitably entails making some
] choices that have crucial implications for the balance we
] strike between the interests of those who innovate and
] those who would benefit from innovation.

This is a worrysome and cryptic comment.

1. He raises the specter of Intellectual Property as an inalienable right. With respect to the Constitution that is an extremely radical position. It has gained ground in recent years because of careful marketing efforts by the media industries. His comment is too vauge to know what he really wants, only that he thinks IP should be strengthened.

2. The separation of "those who innovate" and "those who would benefit from innovation" into two separate and exclusive groups is crusty industrial age thinking.

3. Finance people often do not understand the economic importance of activity which occurs outside of the market. I didn't figure Greenspan to be one of those people. Your strong protections for innovators aren't going to do you much good if you can't innovate because all of your citizens are stupid. If you create a world where culture only exists for entertainment purposes and comment, criticisms, and derivative works are all impossible to produce your culture will stagnate and your people will become dull.

4. If you have to rebuild the entire operating system from scratch in order to make a small improvement to a particular feature, you aren't going to do it. IP maximalism hurts innovation.

Greenspan: Secure intellectual property

] One of Wall Street's leading economists is predicting a
] global recession this year, prompted in large part by
] fears surrounding Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
] (SARS), the "mystery illness" with cold-like symptoms
] that is blamed for 78 deaths in 15 countries, CNNfn has
] learned.
]
] Morgan Stanley's chief economist in the United States,
] Stephen Roach, will formally advise clients Friday that
] he's forecasting a world recession in 2003. His previous
] forecast was for an annual growth rate of 2.5 percent.

A long, tough war causes moderate Islamists to join radicals, Russians to renew their distrust of the west (anyone else notice they are moving their navy into the Arabic Sea?), increasingly common terrorist incidents, instablility in the UN and NATO systems... Throw in a plauge... Decreased travel, deaths...

Uncertainty.

Prolonged uncertainty keeps money in shoe boxes.

No new investment means no new jobs, which cuts consumer spending. Uncertainty becomes self fulfilling... Weakness... Depression... Poverty...

Economist predicts recession, partly linked to SARS - Apr. 2, 2003

] Pareto claimed that in just about every society, the
] probability of having a certain wealth follows the same
] mathematical relationship for the best-off members of
] society. If you plot a graph of per-capita wealth against
] the number of individuals who are worth each amount, the
] curve is always the same - it has a mathematical form
] called a power law.

More social power laws.

Wealth spawns corruption

] "The DMCA is one of those laws that limits criminal
] prosecutions to willful violations. In other words,
] Congress only wanted violations of the DMCA to be
] criminal when the person actually knew that they were
] violating the law and did it anyway. Because the San Jose
] jury was not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that
] ElcomSoft knew they were violating the law, the jury
] acquitted. "

politechbot.com: GWU prof Orin Kerr explains why Elcomsoft acquittal happened