Just got done with Dave Walker’s “America in 2040: Still a Superpower?” A really good and authoritative read on America’s fiscal future, oversight challenges, and an inside perspective on reform efforts.
Below is a link to the author’s webpage for the book.
A few takeaways:
- Durably reforming and improving fiscal policy (and governance, generally) requires careful needle-threading and broad-based popular support built on common understanding in good faith;
- When presented with the actual problem sets (including in fiscal terms), Americans are not only willing, but eager to undertake hardship to achieve sound governance and a better future; and
- The existing ‘tools’ to course correct from within the oversight, Congressional, and civil service have become tangled up in political quagmire such that solving through small d democratic or small r republican methods individually seems unlikely—a combined approach seems necessary.