Western governments hardly operate on a shoestring budget, rather they've spent generations spending profligately with the assumption that massive sustained eco

Western governments hardly operate on a shoestring budget, rather they've spent generations spending profligately with the assumption that massive sustained economic growth would bail them out without having to make any hard tradeoffs. That strategy has worked out ok so far but it has always been a fragile one and we might be entering an era where it fails to work in many places. The transition to much lower deficit spending certainly won't be popular and might go catastrophically poorly. I actually think there's a pretty good chance that things will go quite poorly, but there's no reason it has to be so.