And what I am saying is that gun control, abortion, gay marriage, immigration, healthcare, drug legalization and a whole array of other issues today are secondary --have to be secondary-- to being 200% focused on regaining economic prosperity.

We are on a solid path to $20 trillion dollars in national debt in four years. Look at Greece. That's where we are going. Unless things change. All of the above issues start to move under a different lens when you suddenly find yourself on the road to insolvent third-world-nation status.

I have lived in a country where distraught groups took to the streets, destroyed businesses and property, took over airports and blocked roads with big piles of burning tires. Can't happen here? I hope. We are not that special. People --mobs-- can become really irrational when economic opportunity isn't available.

That's why I said that the number one priority is to focus all of our efforts --every one of us-- on regaining our economic standing. This effort had to start four years ago, not now. We wasted four years and made the job exponentially harder.

I really hope that Obama focuses on what's important and doesn't waste our time.

On another post someone said that the country isn't going to be destroyed by another four years. Of course not, if what that means is that we are not going to have our cities look like favelas in Brazil. What will happen --and what, to a certain extent has already happened-- is that our country is being destroyed from the inside and outside in terms of economic and industrial capability.

I don't know where the tipping point is. But this isn't a game you can keep playing forever. I've done the math, and it's ugly. Just fire-up your favorite spreadsheet and try to figure out what you have to do to pay off the national debt in, say, 25 years. It is a sobering exercise because you realize how futile (and dumb) ideas like "tax the rich" really are. The couple of models I've played with indicate that if, and only if, we get dead-serious about cutting our spending to the bone and having a balanced budget we can pay off the debt in about 50 years with some moderate restructuring of income taxes that will affect everyone, not just the "rich".

Think about that for a moment: Fifty years. Fifty. That means living in near economic stagnation for a very long time while you pay off your debts and achieve balance. Even if the goal was to cut the national debt in half, it'd still take 25 to 30 years. In other words, under nearly all scenarios you, I and the next generation will be saddled with this problem.

I care about social issues. Of course I do. I also care about having a good environment within which to address them. That's why I say that nothing, absolutely nothing today has a higher priority than getting us back to a strong economic standing. If we don't focus on that we are fucked. We are on a slippery slope. And we are accelerating down that slope. Stopping becomes exponentially harder as we focus on solving the wrong problems.

This is basic in business: You have to have a solid balance sheet before you can engage in R&D and grow. If your business is constantly bleeding money you, all of a sudden, find yourself in a situation where you just can't innovate, compete and grow. A solid balance sheet allows you to do nice things for your employees and your community. You can engage in philanthropy and buy everyone pizza on Fridays. If you are up to your eyeballs in debt and bleeding money you are not going to be donating time and money to your local community and your employees better pack their own lunch. Basic.