This is one of those days when I sit in my office, sipping my coffee in the peace and quiet of early morning, and struggle to find another way to tell the world that we’re all mad as hatters.

Any bright sixth grader could conduct a series of simple and conclusive experiments to determine that the world has limits; that we can’t go on growing forever; that five quarts won’t fit in a gallon jar.

At the same time, a Harvard or Yale PhD of economics will insure us that not only is exponential growth absolutely possible in a finite world; such growth is desirable.

These modern economists suggest that Thomas Malthus was a kook; M. King Hubbert was a nut job; Kenneth Boulding had a screw loose; And that obviously, Albert Einstein wasn’t all that bright.  

Operating under the widely held belief that geometric growth is the foundation that utopia firmly rests on, our past and present leadership have run up annual deficits in order to provide more growth than tax collection can support. That deficit incurred under the banner of growth at all costs, has progressed from Millions, to Billions, to Trillions in just 41 years.

I will remind you that should I care to count to just ‘one’ Trillion, it would take me 32,000 years.

Today, our young president tells us, “None of this is my fault. None of this is the fault of my Democratic Congress; George Bush done it all by himself. That crafty George tricked us all”

Mr. Obama goes on to say, “But, I’m no quitter, I don’t quit! Not me. I’m going to run up the deficit by a Trillion or so every year…you know… the one that George forced me to run up, for 10 more years after which economic growth will…”  “Psssst, psssst, Mr. President,” someone whispers in the background. “You can only serve for eight years.” To which the president whispers back, “I know that you idiot, I’m building an alibi.”

The actual current proposal really is to borrow Trillions upon Trillions for years to come; after which we will experience the hyper growth necessary to stem the tide of red ink. The sixth grade students that conducted the growth experiments above call this game “kick the can.” Our leadership calls it “Survivor Washington,” and the preservation of the limo and jet service.

Maybe I forgot to tell you; all 535 members of Congress remain on full pay and benefits. Not one of them has lost their jobs, their health insurance, their homes, their retirement, or the limo and jet service. So if you were worried, don’t be, Congress is doing just fine.

I don’t want to wander too far from the subject; we’re all stark raving mad. As we watch what appears to be a double dip U.S. recession coming down the pike and as we observe many of the European nations fall into what appears to be impossible debt and as we gaze at world unemployment rising to unprecedented levels while at the same time bank after bank is being closed…we are told that a greater rate of economic and population growth is the answer to turning the tides.

Let’s play pretend for moment and consider that such growth is possible; that we can actually return to what we refer to as “normal.” That we can add millions and millions of people and provide every one of them with meaningful employment and never run out of anything, including physical space.

Staying with our pretend game, once we put the millions of unemployed folks back to work and have added millions upon millions of new consumers from around the world. And once all of these now fully employed people have new homes, cars, roads, water lines, sewer treatment plants, high speed rails and so on; then what?

Under the current plan (which is the same in nearly every country in the world), we demand that the energy supply, materials, fresh water, food supply, farm land, all current infrastructure, and our physical space, grow at levels that are unprecedented.

Our plan is to continue to provide more and more and more physical inputs, as the new population that miraculously found viable employment in our game of pretend requires ever greater growth in order that they can remain employed. And of course, their children and grandchildren would require even greater growth than that of their parents and grandparents.

How crazy are we? Mad as hatters.