I wonder if this is related to this: In 23 Advanced Economies: U.S. Adults Rank 21st in Math Skills. The inability to even be frightened by these numbers, by the size of the debt, by the impossibility of ever repaying this side of inflation even some remote part of the total, by the rate of its current growth, all of these suggest a deficiency amongst large proportions of the American voting public requires an explanation. A deficient understanding of maths is not all that far from a genuine possibility. The voting population in the United States is much degraded from the informed public that had once existed.

Australia, by the way, was 13th in math, almost dead on the international average and 4th in literacy. There is hope for us yet. But with the US, I cannot see what the answer is.