I'll be on Rodricks today on WYPR at 1:00 with Addison Wiggin, co-author of Empire of Debt, author of The Demise of the Dollar and producer of I.O.U.S.A., the new film on America's unsustainable fiscal course. We'll be touching on themes in this column:

SEPT. 24, 2028

Dear grandchildren:

Now that you're old enough to begin understanding the world you have inherited, let me try to explain what happened.

By rights, the United States should be in far better shape for you. But your elders failed to deliver "what is due to their posterity," in the words of a conservative British politician who thought about these things a long time ago.

It didn't happen all at once. Nobody intended to leave the country to the next generation diminished in influence and avoiding calls from debt collectors. But little by little, through negligence and appetite, the nation took from the future and gave to the present.

Read the whole thing here.