The deficit and the debt are so enormous that they beggar peacetime historic comparisons. America's situation, according to new IMF numbers, is not of Greek proportions only because we control our own currency. "According to the IMF's projections," writes Edmund Conway, Economics Editor of The London Telegraph, "the U.S. has more to do than any other country in the developed world (apart from Japan) when it comes to bringing its debt back towards sustainable levels."

We can inflate money as a commonly employed partial cure, though inflation, of course, is not a real solution, but rather a hidden tax on savings and income.

The remaining choice is economic growth. The U.S. today still has the potential for that option. But the necessary conditions for economic growth are being undermined the Obama Administration.

Right now, post-bailout, it is still hard for entrepreneurs or anyone else to get a loan to start a new business.

Soon, under Obamacare, high income individuals (defined as $200,000 and over for an individual, $250,000 for a couple) will start paying a new .9 percent surcharge for Medicare--in effect, an income tax hike. Later, in 2013, under Obamacare another 3.8 percent will be taken from high earners' investment income (capital gains, interest, rent, etcetera).

Meanwhile, as 2011 rolls around, the Bush tax cuts of 2003 will expire and tax rates for the "rich" (that is high income people) will go up. People in the present 33 percent bracket will go to 36 percent, while those in the 35 percent bracket will go to 39.6 percent. That's not including the new Medicare taxes just mentioned, nor income tax at the state and local level, or other tax increases.

Inheritance taxes that went down to zero this year rocket up to 55 percent next year. For people leaving their money to foundations and trusts for heirs the problem is not as great as for the families with businesses, and the entrepreneurs who count on inheritance to fund their new enterprises.

The Administration also plans to hike the capital gains tax up to 20 percent from 15, a further disincentive to investment and growth.

Remember, start up businesses already are hurting and few of the above increases have been applied yet. Even a redistributionist might begin to wonder how to generate new investment and jobs when individual tax takes reach well past 50 percent.

In this account I have not even begun on the subject of greatly increased government regulation of business. Suffice that the growing paperwork burden constitutes a huge entry barrier for the small business. The financial costs of needed lawyers, accountants, environmental consultants, etc. are by themselves enough to defeat small organizations.

In this gloom, spending cuts are not enough. Most tax increases are counter-productive. Our only hope is to change directions and start encouraging growth again--rapid, transformative economic growth.

But isn't this a way to prosper the rich? Isn't that unfair?

The "fairness" issue regarding the rich is bogus. The truly rich, as former Governor William Weld of Massachusetts quipped about his own family, "don't make money, they have money." Of course, they will be affected by income tax hikes, but so long as they are sitting on vast capital, they can afford to be relatively indifferent to income taxes on salaries, at least. The people who get hurt are those who are not really rich ($200,000 a year is a huge income in some places, but not at all, say, in New York or Seattle). No, those held back by high taxes are those who aspire to become rich.

Especially endangered are the aforementioned entrepreneurs, the people who, even in good times, can't get capital easily because their prospects are risky. They have to rely on their own incomes and family to get started. As it happens, these are exactly the people we most need to turbo-charge the private sector.

There are wonderful potential inventions in medicine and technology--where America leads--that are being stifled. A whole new economy, a Life After the Internet (for example), waits birthing. But it may be still born. New "Googles" and "Microsofts" not only can create jobs themselves (as Google and Microsoft have done in the past twenty years), but create an economic environment that promotes literally millions of new derivative businesses. That is the kind of centrifugal dynamism we need--and just about the only thing that can save us now.

Like everyone, I depend on the genius and hard work of innovators in field after field for my own well being and the future of my family. And, the whole of the American economy is in the same situation. Therefore, while I have no special love for the rich, I also don't envy them, let alone want to punish them. As George Gilder says in The Israel Test, how people regard success in others is a test of the psychological health of a civilization.

Do you fear them and resent them? Would you like to clip their wings? That is largely the attitude in welfare states like contemporary Greece, alas, and their policies show it. And so does the sad state to which these attitudes and policies have brought them.

Or do you want to encourage and reward success? Do you perhaps feel gratitude for those who do well? I personally find lavish self-indulgence by some rich people repugnant, just as as I find thoughtful charitable giving admirable. But, the greatest gift of the rich is to create wealth where there was none. That helps everyone.

Huge economic growth through reduced public spending and tax incentives that spur investment are the only way out of the hole. Or, you can retain your addiction to government solutions and class warfare, and just continue to dig downwards.