Just in case the Doomsayer-in-Chief’s nationally-televised gloomfest didn’t totally bum you out, allow me to add more dark clouds to obscure whatever hint of a silver lining you might imagine you glimpse:

Suppose a pipe-dream hypothetical: Somehow, this “stimulus” actually produces a sort of dead-cat bounce in the economy, so that unemployment is down around 5% again by 2012. Is that good? No, not really, because government will have produced that bounce by borrowing massively against the future in a society that’s about to sustain a serious demographic shock.

The first Baby Boomers turn 65 in 2011, and every year after that will see more and more retirees going onto the Social Security and Medicare rolls. Even if we raise the retirement age, there is still the net drain of productive labor. The average 67-year-old can’t produce goods and services as efficiently as the average 38-year-old and (due to certain legal decisions circa 1973) after 2011, we’ll have a growing shortage of 38-year-olds and a growing surplus of 67-year-olds.

We are on the verge of a taxpayer shortage, you see, and what the Democrats want to do is take out a massive loan that will have to be repaid by a shrinking pool of taxpayers, who will be expected to support a burgeoning population of increasingly sickly Baby Boomer retirees.

Just call me Mister Sunshine!