Withdrawal symptoms

People with serious additions to alcohol or some drugs face a difficult period when they quit - withdrawal symptoms include chills, fevers, delusions, pain and all sorts of other unpleasant effects. Nations addicted to debt face similar problems, as we can already see in places like Greece.

We as a nation need to cut the federal budget by about half. Set aside the problem that our politicians can't bring themselves to make the hard decisions.  When someone finally makes the decision, or is finally forced by the bond markets to make the decisions, the question will be how to manage the withdrawal effects.  Millions of people are on the federal payroll, either directly or as contractors and suppliers.  How do we ease them off the addiction to federal funds without bankrupting thousands of companies and putting million more on the unemployment rolls?

If we had enough time, we could make this a relatively soft landing by simply ceasing to hire more federal employees, slowly reducing the volume of contracts, and letting natural attrition and retirements prune the workforce.  Unfortunate, the longer we wait to face the problem, the less time there is to manage a soft landing.

Politicians, and we the voters who elect them, ought to pay attention to this problem, because it is a big one.