America’s Looming Debt Crisis Could Spark The Next Great Awakening

The total of U.S. federal, state, and local debt, in combination with future spending commitments, foreshadows the most predictable financial disaster in human history. Washington’s obligations, growing at an estimated $1 trillion annually, now exceed $23 trillion, while neither of America’s two largest entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare, are on sound footing.Going down to the state and local levels, a May 2018 report by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government reveals that public pension funding in New Jersey and Kentucky is already at “high risk of insolvency,” with California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and several large cities close behind. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, at least 20 state public pension programs have no more than half the assets they need to pay promised benefits.Ominous trends, to be sure. Yet to say America appears headed for a destabilizing debt crisis is not the same as saying every cultural consequence will be negative. History records many economic and social upheavals that ironically sparked a renaissance of neglected moral and spiritual values. Could our approaching brush with national insolvency really produce anything like a religious revival?

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