"Fixing America," presented by Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, William Fairfield Warren Professor of Economics at Boston University.

Our country is facing grave economic, fiscal, and demographic challenges.  We have real wages that have stopped growing, an economy that’s barely growing, a tax system that doesn’t work, a banking system that doesn’t work, a healthcare system that doesn’t work, a Social Security system that doesn’t work, a carbon policy that is ill conceived, an educational system that doesn’t work, and terrible and rising inequality. 

We no longer save nor invest in R&D, infrastructure, basic science, you name it. Our country is as broke as it gets. It faces a massive, fiscal gap of over $200 trillion when you put all of Uncle Sam's hidden debts on the books. Meanwhile, thanks primarily to our high level of legal (not illegal) immigration, we are adding 100 million people to the population over the course of the next half century—with no master plan for where our country is as broke as broke can be— to the point that crumbling infrastructure is the new normal.

Across the ocean our sworn enemy, North Korea, spends each day perfecting the means to attack us with their nuclear bombs, while we seem to look the other way.  None of these problems will be fixed with politics as usual.  My talk will discuss these challenges and how to address them.