For a number of reasons (no one cause) people overvalued houses. As
our valuations decline, so does our net worth. So does our collateral for
loans.
These bad investments will need to be sold off at fire sale prices
and re-purposed.
People with capital have no idea what stuff is worth, so they're not
willing to take anything as collateral.
Our government has borrowed a huge amount of money.
The first baby boomers are reaching their retirement age. Fewer people
working, more people to support. Everyone who is against immigration
should have to get at the back of the line for public support.
As baby boomers get older, they will need more health care, and yet
our health care system is a bad mixture. It is not a socialistic system
in which nobody pays for health care and nobody gets as much health care
as they need. It is not a capitalistic system in which everybody pays for
health care and everybody gets as much as they can afford. We have a
system where health care provision is tied to your employment, and you
get as much health care as your employer can afford.
We need to make a transition from gasoline-powered cars to electric-powered
cars.
We need to build a thousand nuclear power plants, and we haven't even
started to build the first one.