Economist Laurence Kotlokoff paints a gloomy picture of United States economic future in the below talk at MIT and in his book The Coming Generational Storm: What You Need to Know about America’s Economic Future.

The aging United States demographics means that there will be more older people collecting Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid than there are young people generating enough money for these programs. This financial gap will get larger and larger the more time we wait. Kotlokoff says we need to do something immediately otherwise the fiscal system is headed for a meltdown. He has his own ideas as to what we should do. But will the politicians listen is a different story.

The talk was given on April 28, 2004 as part of the authors at MIT series.

The below video is a parody of Disney created by Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University. It explains the U.S. copyright laws and the types of work that it protects such as music, film, dance, etc. It says that ideas can not be copyrighted. Only the form in which that idea is express is copyrighted. It talks about the duration of copyright and when a work goes into public domain when copyright expires. And finally it explains the copyright fair use doctrine.

The title of this video “Maxed Out” refers to the maxing out on the credit card. It explores the credit card industry and Americans’ propensity to buy things on credit. The dark side is that credit card debt can sneak up a person. And sometimes the debt gets so bad that the person commits suicide.

The video contains interviews with Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor who co-authored the book The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke.

Mark Penn, a well-known pollster, speaks at Google headquarter about social trends. Penn is also the author of the book titled “MicroTrend”.

Seth Godin gives the following talk at Google titled “All Marketers are Liars” which is also the title of his book.