Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health-care resources more prudently – rationing, by its proper name – the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.

Increased revenues, meaning higher taxes, will be a central element of any successful long-term budget plan, and President Obama is right to insist that the wealthy - the slice of America that has come through the recession in by far the best financial health - should provide those funds.

Thanks to decades of accumulated federal budget deficits and, more significantly, imprudent Medicare and Social Security policies, we've stolen almost $60 trillion from our children.

To be sure, India has achieved enviable success in business services, like the glistening call centers in Bangalore and elsewhere. But in the global jousting for manufacturing jobs, India does not get its share.

China has lunged into the 21st century, while India is still lurching toward it.

During my 30 years on Wall Street, taxes on “unearned income” have bounced up and down with regularity, and I’ve never detected any change in the appetite for hard work and accumulating wealth on the part of myself or any of my fellow capitalists.

Most troublesome is the legalization of 'crowd funding,' the ability of start-up companies to raise capital from small investors on the Internet.