Alan B. Cormack: Super-wealthy control future

George Will (“Why the future will disappoint,” March 28 column) quoted an interesting author who made the case that the future will disappoint us because all the huge advances to our civilization that grew the economy were done between 1879 and 1940. They are not repeatable, and the implication is that nothing so great will happen again.

That theory is highly questionable on its face. (Who knows what marvels the future will bring? Finding the way to produce energy from magnetism; replacing the burning of fossil fuels is the one I am waiting for.)

Will noted the decline of growth in the last 40-plus years and had nothing to blame but “America’s entitlement state,” which “is buckling beneath the pressure of an aging population retiring into Social Security and Medicare during chronically slow economic growth.”

This is a lie that is constantly repeated by the actual entitlement state – the super-wealthy who have been rigging the economic system, lowering taxes dramatically, letting corporations and individuals hide vast sums of taxable income, deregulating everything that needs to be regulated, depressing wages, stealing all the increased productivity and moving jobs overseas. These are the things that make the future disappointing.

This story was originally published April 10, 2016 at 2:00 PM with the headline "Alan B. Cormack: Super-wealthy control future."