Expectations................................Part two

     It isn't all sour grapes.  Our projections of the possible has shrunk.  Our economy is not behaving.  Growing income no longer promises to make light of our burdens in another decade or two.  We do not know what has been depressing our productivity and can't be sure that, whatever it is, we shall recover soon.  Inflation has a mind of its own.  The demographics of the labor force are against us, and at the same time the rules of the game allow endless numbers of people from faraway places, once over the line, to touch base and be safe.

-Thomas C. Schelling, from his 1984 book,  Choice and Consequence:  Perspectives of an errant economist