The US has trillions of reasons to ring in the new

RING out the new, ring in the old. No, hang on, that should be the other way around, shouldn't it?

Not as far as 2011 was concerned. The year began with a tea-powered Republican caucus taking control of the House of Representatives and pledging to rein in spendaholic government. It ended with President Obama making a pro forma request for a mere $US1.2 trillion ($1.18 trillion) increase in the debt ceiling. This will raise government debt to $US16.4 trillion - a new world record! If only until he demands the next debt-ceiling increase in three months' time.

At the end of 2011, America, like much of the rest of the Western world, has dug deeper into a cocoon of denial. Tens of millions of Americans remain unaware that this nation is broke - broker than any nation has ever been. A few days before Christmas, we sailed across the psychological Rubicon and joined the club of nations whose government debt now exceeds their total GDP. It barely raised a murmur - and those who took the trouble to address the issue noted complacently that our 100 per cent debt-to-GDP ratio is a mere two-thirds of Greece's.

That's true, but at a certain point per capita comparisons are less relevant than the sheer hard dollar sums: Greece owes a few rinky-dink billions; America owes more money than anyone has ever owed anybody ever.

Public debt has increased by 67 per cent over the past three years, and too many Americans refuse even to see it as a problem. For most of us, "$US16.4 trillion" has no real meaning, any more than "$US17.9 trillion" or "$US28.3 trillion" or "$US147.8 bazillion".

It doesn't even have much meaning for the guys spending the dough. Look into the eyes of Barack Obama or Harry Reid or Barney Frank, and you realise that, even as they're borrowing all this money, they have no serious intention of paying any of it back. That's to say, there is no politically plausible scenario under which the $US16.4 trillion is reduced to $US13.7 trillion, and then $US7.9 trillion, and, eventually, $173.48. At the deepest levels within our governing structures, we are committed to living beyond our means on a scale no civilisation has ever done before.

Our most enlightened citizens think it's rather vulgar and boorish to obsess about debt. The urbane, educated, Western progressive would rather "save the planet", a cause that offers the grandiose narcissism that, say, reforming Medicare lacks. So, for example, a pipeline delivering Canadian energy from Alberta to Texas is blocked by the President on no grounds whatsoever except that the very thought of it is an aesthetic affront to the moneyed Sierra Club types who infest his fundraisers.

The offending energy, of course, does not simply get mothballed in the Canadian attic: the dominion's Prime Minister has already pointed out that they'll sell it to the Chinese, whose Politburo lacks our exquisitely refined revulsion at economic dynamism and, indeed, seems increasingly amused by it. Pace the ecopalyptics, the planet will be just fine; would it kill you to try saving your country, or state or municipality?

Last January, the BBC's Brian Milligan inaugurated the New Year by driving an electric Mini from London to Edinburgh, taking advantage of the many government-subsidised charge posts en route. It took him four days, which works out to an average speed of 10 kilometres an hour - or longer than it would have taken on a stagecoach in the mid-19th century. This was hailed as a great triumph by the environmentalists. What's the hurry?

What indeed? In September, the 10th anniversary of a murderous strike at the heart of America's most glittering city was commemorated at a building site: the Empire State Building was finished in 18 months during a depression, but in the 21st century the global superpower can't put up replacement skyscrapers in a decade.

The 9/11 memorial museum was supposed to open on the 11th anniversary, this coming September. On Thursday, Mayor Bloomberg announced that there is "no chance of it being open on time". No big deal. What's one more endlessly delayed, inefficient, over-bureaucratised construction project in a sclerotic republic?

Barely had the 9/11 observances ended than America's gilded if somewhat long-in-the-tooth youth took to the streets of Lower Manhattan to launch "Occupy Wall Street". The young certainly should be mad about something. After all, it's their future that got looted to bribe the present. As things stand, they'll end their days in an impoverished, violent, disease-ridden swamp of dysfunction that would be unrecognisable to Americans of the mid-20th century - and, if that's not reason to take to the streets, what is?

Alas, our somnolent youth are also labouring under the misapprehension that advanced Western societies still have somebody to stick it to. The total combined wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans is $US1.5 trillion. So, if you confiscated the lot, it would barely cover one Obama debt-ceiling increase. Nevertheless, America's student princes' main demand was that someone else should pick up the six-figure tab for their leisurely half-decade varsity of Social Justice studies. Lest sticking it to the Man by demanding that the Man write them a large cheque sound insufficiently idealistic, they also wanted a trillion dollars for "ecological restoration." Hey, why not? What difference is another lousy trill gonna make?

Underneath the patchouli and pneumatic drumming, the starry-eyed young share the same cobwebbed parochial assumptions of permanence as their grandparents: we're gayer, greener, and groovier, but other than that it's still 1950, and we've got more money than anybody else on the planet, so why get hung up about a few trillion here and a few trillion there? In a mere half century, the richest nation on Earth became the brokest nation in history, but the attitudes and assumptions of half the population and 90 per cent of the ruling class remain unchanged.

Auld acquaintance can be forgot, for a while. But eventually even the most complacent and myopic societies get re-acquainted with reality. For anyone who cares about the future of America and the broader West, the most important task in 2012 is to puncture the cocoon of denial. Instead, the governing class obsesses on trivia. Just plucking at random from recent California legislative proposals: a ban on non-fitted sheets in motels, mandatory gay history for first-graders, car seats for children up to the age of eight. Why not up to the age of 38? And all this in an ever more insolvent jurisdiction which every year drives ever more of its productive class to flee its borders. Tens of millions of Americans have yet to understand that they can no longer can be kicked down the road, because we're all out of road. The pavement ends, and there's just a long drop into the abyss. And, even in a state-compliant car seat, you'll land with a bump.

At this stage in a critical election cycle we ought to be arguing about how many government departments to close, how many government programs to end, how many millions of government regulations to do away with. Instead, one party remains committed to encrusting even more barnacles on America's rusting hulk, while the other is far too wary of harshing the electorate's mellow. The sooner we recognise that the 20th century entitlement state is over, the sooner we can ring in something new. The longer we delay ringing out the old, the worse it will be. Happy New Year?

Mark Steyn will visit Australia in February and March as a guest of the Institute of Public Affairs. Details at www.ipa.org.au