The Age of Apparent Limitlessness – How Much of Our Future Have We Spent?

Between 1971 and 2025, American families’ income and consumption both rose substantially. Private and government debt, however, accumulated even faster. Using two straightforward balance sheets, this publication examines how families’ annual income compares not only with living costs, taxes and social contributions, but also with the full stock of outstanding debt and the repayments falling due in a single year. Comparing the two periods does not suggest that families necessarily became poorer. Rather, it shows how the ability to finance life in the present rests on a growing burden of obligations carried into future years, and how the refinancing of government debt allows this situation to persist.

The purpose of Unus Multorum is not to tell readers what to think about a particular event. Its purpose is to reveal the connections that allow every reader to form their own conclusions.