No, that would be Defense (and I mean more than just the DoD) and its constituent issues.
https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/new/budgetinfographic.png
It's been a MAJOR point of contention between the Democrats and the Republicans on how defense dollars are spent. Republicans (the party that I am affiliated with) tend to group veterans benefits and pensions in areas outside defense itself (which I do not consider a fair representation of the cost of defense). Internal estimates put all defense spending including veterans benefits at around 13-15% of GDP inclusive of the secret budgets allocated to No Such Agency and transfers to our ECHELON partners. No nation, including the US, is actually that forthcoming about their defense budget.
At the current rates, we cannot pay for our outlays. How we want to fix this, by increasing the burden on individuals, or by increasing the burden on corporations, or by cutting Defense or entitlements is problematic as one is dependent on the other. For instance, guess what happens if severe cuts happen to CMS? A significant portion (no one really knows except we know it has to be between what the early 1960s was prior to Medicare and today) people on this board would be out of a job fairly quickly, as much of your revenues come from CMS or CMS-derived insurance programs. If Defense is cut, not only would direct matters suffer, but Google, Facebook, and quite a number of the tech companies that are funded through Defense associated expenditures would take a major hit. Seattle and Long Beach would take major hits to their manufacturing as most of that is Defense related as well.
The argument is that no one wants to take the political consequences for unwinding since it deliberately victimizes a particular group, so until that happens, we will run into high deficits until fiat currency self-corrects. It happened in Weimar, but I think the more prescient example would be the 17th Century Dutch Republic or the present-day Japan, which didn't go bankrupt, but everyone was basically living hand to mouth on limited means after the East Indies fallout for over a century.
Having this argument about guns and butter is irrelevant because it's not possible to deal with the economic complexities by any policy mechanism anymore. There is no political solution out of this now, we arguably passed that threshold in 1992 or so and definitely post-2008. If you want to do something productive about the upcoming lean times, it would probably be around figuring out how to make your life less expensive. The advice when living in a lean time is that it isn't anarchy, it is just that you can't be profligate like right now. Every expense counts, and so we will have to multitask like learning how to do our own house repair work, cook our own food, clean our own houses, and vacations that aren't staycations are a rare treat. Basically, our lifestyles are all going to be like living only on Social Security and consumption declines naturally. I used to say that you should live like you did as students, except that this generation's students live at an economic state above what they will eventually make.
But at the same time, live it up. Travel, experience, and do things that require a major infrastructure, because that infrastructure is going to be more expensive shortly. For my wife and I, that is being gluttons and oenophiles since we do not expect the national logistics network to be as forgiving in the future as it is now bringing everything and anything from all the corners of the world into my Level B city.
