  but even if we fix the excess spending, there is still the aging population and all the pensions etc and our declining tax base. I dont see how we can support this all. It seems like most of our money will be spent on people who dont even work anymore :(  When taxes are administered correctly and honestly, there should be enough money to cover most of the public services that are truly needed. Do some research on CAFR in the US and you'll start to see the big picture.    Here's a link to an interesting article:     http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=7134    Yamazaki says that one thing that needs to happen is that you need to encourage the old folks to move out of the city so that land prices drop to reasonable price levels