A Crisis of Unsustainable Consumption

The budget stalemate between the right and the left comes down to a basic difference in economic views, the left feels that we need to tax more in order to consume more money, and the right believes that we need to consume less money in order to tax less. Whichever side of the argument you come down on, it's not hard to see which of these positions is fundamentally unsustainable. And it is amazing that the same people who can and do lecture for hours on environmental sustainability, seem to have no grasp of economic sustainability. If you tell them that the solution to high fish prices is to catch more fish, they will tell you right away that you'll fish out the lake. But tell them that the deficit is too high and their immediate solution will be to tax more, never considering the possibility that it's possible to tax human resources, as much as natural resources.