The government (both red and blue) have built a Ponzi scheme whereby the only way people are paid out today (top of the pyramid) is by having an increasing amount tax payers entering the system (bottom of the pyramid). It is an unsustainable model, and the longer it goes for the more unstable it gets. It allows them to make their extravagant and lazy promises, whilst still claiming a balanced budget. It allows them and big business to claim growth on a national scale, without really doing anything cleaver or innovative.
On a per capita scale it is much different. Wages are stagnant. GDP per capita is not helped. Quality of life drops.
Impact on the country is very different from impact on individuals. Governments and big business are busy protecting their national scale metrics, but regular individual people care about very different metrics.
