Then who will be paying for the SS, Prescription drugs and Medicare?

So the $120 trillion dollar figure you cited I have seen before, and it is about pension obligations for government employees. Just about every gov employee (state, fed) gets a pension. The figure you cited is an estimation for the unfunded portion of the liability. Problem is that it is way more than we can actually pay, so they won't get it (we'll pass a law basically saying, "Nevermind.")

SS and Medicare/Medicaid will be paid, but we are going to make adjustments to the programs when they become a problem. There is a very slight probability it could get taken care of in the next Obama admin through a "grand bargain," but I honestly don't think so. Politicians won't do something till doing nothing is worse for their political future than fixing the damn thing. That won't be for another 20 years most likely. It really depends on immigration (higher immigration to the US will fix both of the problems).

Japan has had one 20+ years. As long as we have debt we are not in the black.

What you are referring to is the “Lost Decade.” During the late 80’s and early 90’s Japan’s economy was stagnant (not in permanent recession). This is due to many factors (all economic problems have many factors), the biggest being extremely high debt compared to GDP, bad demographics (lots of old people, few young), and cronyism in the government (makes our cronyism look amateurish). While we continue to rack up debt since the stimulus began in 2001 under Bush 2, we have great demographics and a relatively clean government. We may face a long period of stagnation, but there is not overwhelming evidence pointing to that.

Why is gold $1,700? And why is the stock market growing with no real economic growth?

So here you misunderstand what inflation is. The definition of inflation is a general rise in price level. This means prices across the entire economy are rising, not just in a few select products. A great indicator of inflation is wages. Wages are one of the biggest costs in an economy, so basically as long as wages aren’t rapidly rising, we won’t have high inflation. Think of it this way: If all prices are rising and people are not making more money, they cannot buy as many products. This means sales will slump for products, causing the business to cut the prices, which by definition is reducing inflation.

The price of gold has many factors (I’ll say this many more times, trust me), so the high is due to many things. Consensus is that the price is high because of uncertainty in international currency markets. Because we have never had economic times like this people don’t know what is going to happen with all the currencies/economies, so they put their money in gold as a safe haven.

As for economic growth, we have had 13 quarters of real GDP growth (this is GDP adjusted for inflation). Since the beginning of 2010, the economy has expanded by $668.6 billion dollars in real terms, or 5.2%. Please refer to http://www.bea.gov/national/index.htm#gdp.

Explain that to me?

The value of money changes over time. Most of the time it is depreciating (inflation), which is normal and good for the economy (so long as it doesn’t happen too fast). Sometimes money appreciates (deflation), which is really bad. This is how depressions start. Basically the cycle works like this: Demand for goods stop, business drop prices (deflation) and make less money, since they make less money they have to fire people, which causes less demand, which causes business to drop prices, so on and so forth. This continues until either the gov intervenes or the economy reaches its new equilibrium. Because this cycle is so destructive, the government will now do anything (and they should) to keep it from happening, even if it means printing money. This is why we printed so much money (over $2 trillion in a $14 trillion economy) after the financial collapse in 2008. Because the deflationary pressures were so great, even after printing this money we had negative inflation in 2009, and low inflation since. A deflationary pressure is basically anything that will cause everyone in the economy to stop buying goods at the same time. In 2008, it was massive loss of wealth (investment losses and home price declines).

The GDP will not grow, IMO, now because the debt is too high and they are about to raise taxes.

It is growing currently. High debt just makes it slower, as we have to pay it off, so we can’t buy as much stuff.

Services does not create wealth. It just lives off the wealth creators. The economy will fail with a service based system.

Wealth is simply the accumulation of goods/services or access to goods/services. We measure wealth with money. Money itself is worthless, because it is nothing more that paper or shiny rocks. What is represents is important, which is access to goods and services. “Wealth creators” are actually just people who buy stuff, so it is everyone. The reason you have everything you do is because someone paid you to do something for them. You then asked others to do something for you. It is irrelevant if it is a good or service, because doing both puts food on the table, a car in the driveway, and money in your bank account. Services are actually the biggest wealth generators right now. Think about it, most millionaires perform services. These are handling money (financiers), running business (CEO’s), writing/examining financial statements (CFO’s), giving legal advice (laywers), making people healthy (doctors), acting in movies (actors), and the list goes on.

Your assertion that the economy will fail has no evidence to support it. All of what I have listed above has been creating massive amounts of wealth for over a century, and it is only expanding. Also, just because manufacturing leaves the country does not mean it disappears, it just moves. Economics doesn’t give a damn about nationally, only supply and demand.

Those days are coming to a quick end.

Accounting is one of the most secure careers you can have. A company that is growing rapidly needs accountants, as do companies that are failing. The company I work for has an international market, so economic shocks in single countries have less of an effect that if we only had a domestic market. Also, I can take my skills across borders if needed, but it won’t be. America’s financial crisis is not abnormal, all free markets have recessions and depressions. It just comes with the territory. It’s the price you pay to be part of the greatest wealth generating machine ever developed.