Justin Wolfers

And a Democrat, advised by centrist Wall Street, responsible, care about the budget types, and you may or may not like that, but that's just been the case, says, we're the grownups in the room, let's fix this.

So here's, I think in any sense, any way of trying to make sense of what Trump's doing, he's just trying to make sure there's no money left for the next Democrat.

Here's the problem.

If you're advising the next Democrat, are you going to advise them to be the full yet again?

Right.

No, no.

The answer is it's a hard question.

Well, I don't think I know that there's no one else in the room.

while that may financially and fiscally make a lot of sense, I just don't see them doing it because I'd be from a political... We know what needs to happen, which is we've never raised as much money as the US government likes to spend.

So we need tax hikes somewhere.

Or we need to reinvent our notion of government to fit into the very small bathtub we're drowning it in right now.

And likewise, we don't raise enough money for our current social security system

What everyone's trying to do is make it the next guy's job to fix.

Right.

Because those fixes are unpopular.

Right.

That's true.

And I mean it as a literal and serious question.

If you're advising the next president, we know it needs to be fixed.

Would you advise the next Democratic president to fix it or would you advise them to play chicken and let the next Republican win?