I was born in 1955. I just dug out my dog-eared copy of the "Information Please Almanac" from 1955, and flipped it open to a page that shows a pie chart describing US federal government outlays. The military, including veterans' services, accounted for 75 cents out of every dollar spent in FY1955. Interest on the federal debt consumed another 11 cents. That left 14 cents out of every federal dollar spent for EVERYTHING else.

Of course, it was 1955, and the federal entitlement juggernaut born during the New Deal was just getting its feet under it and the welfare state we've all come to know and love was still 10 years from being born. But I can't help contrasting that fact with predictions that the three BIG entitlements -- SS, Medicare and Medicaid -- account for 2/3 of all federal expenditures now, and will consume every nickel the federal government takes forty years from now unless fundamental changes take place.

WHAT CAN BE DONE? Ideas?

What's already being done. The Tea Party movement represents popular resistance to the two-handed-grab mindset that motivates many of the excesses you've mentioned.

Lefties, the people who latched onto the use of greed to motivate their fellow citizens to vote for lefty candidates are a pretty small percentage of the electorate. Like con men everywhere they depend on a certain degree of dishonesty, of the belief that you can get something for nothing, to get other people give the lefty what they haven't earn - trust. They then use that trust to advance the lefty agenda.

But like some percentage of people who've been stung by a con game, the bitter truth is learned. Hence, the Tea Party movement although I think the sentiment that seems to be coalescing in the Tea Party movement has been building for some time.

In other words, ya gotta have a little faith.

I recall 1955, for me it was a nice year what of it I recall. 

Life was not easy, work was hard, money had to be stretched, but there was a lot more sanity to it.  Maybe the best thing then and for almost another 12 or so years, we had not started to question everything, over analyze to the point of getting stupid, and best of all we didn't doubt who we were, what we were, and what we believed and stood for.  My opinion you can draw a parallel from starting to expunge God and our downhill plunge.  God was our national identity, without that we got very lost.

I don't speak for anyone but my perception even though I use the plural.  The blacks hadn't created a counterculture that opposed everything mainstream and, as we're seeing today, hurting everyone to include themselves.

We'll never be able to reverse much of what ails the country, if fact I figure the only way to keep what is left is to use every means possible to resist the horror that is here which is intent on our extinction. 

The melting pot needs to find a way to blend or the muslems will drain it and fill it with the acid of islam with no room for the white, hispanic, black, asian, American Indian, or even the halfrican that is trying to hand us over.

I also would dearly love to return to the innocence that once was, but it is not to be.  Anything that can be done will be painfully slow.  The world is much more dangerous and there is no will to stop the nuclear genie from escaping the bottle.  We once were at the level the rogues are now.  They are not as restrained by any measure as we and the other nations have been. 

A nuclear islamic state with nothing but a maniacal religious obsession is the equivalent of the biblical pale horse.  If you carry that a bit farther the other 3"horsemen" will result from that for those unfortunate enough to survive the initial conflicts. 

Enough along those lines.  I'm a decade or so older than you which is why the little check out crack below my icon.  In truth I don't have an answer to your question, don't know if anyone living does.  Arpad is correct about the Tea Party Movement being a step in the right direction.  I think there's a long road if the journey can be made at all to any kind of good future.

Thanks, Solar, for advising me on how to do this.

The graph I was looking at that generated my OP is this one:



Social Security was in its infancy then, and probably was not included in these graphs. Medicare and Medicaid, of course, did not exist.