Why America is about to change.

The United States is approaching one of the great pivot points in our history, the largest perhaps since the New Deal in the late 1930s.

Our Federal deficit is currently running at roughly 11% of the entire gross domestic product.

That means one tenth of our economy is, literally, make-believe. We are borrowing a last gasp of American prosperity.

Even with vast sums of fantasy money flushing through the system, unemployment tops 10%. Another 5% or so of our workforce are substantially underemployed.

The bottom line? Behind the bogus accounting and big-government borrowing lies one junkyard dog of an economic future.

Which is where the “change” stuff comes in. We are, out of necessity, on the edge of a great realignment.

In the next decade, the social contract between Americans and their government will be rewritten in new and painful ways.

Sacred cows of every variety will be slaughtered. Or else.

So here are my big predictions: three things that liberals will have to give up and five things conservatives will have to sacrifice.

Not because they want to, but because they don’t have a choice.

Let’s start with the pain on the left.

1. Social entitlement programs will be slashed dramatically. Social security checks will begin arriving later in life and they will be smaller. People who are independently wealthy might not get them at all.

2. Significant economic sacrifices to prevent climate change won’t happen. Yes, we’ll invest in ‘green jobs’ and more efficient clean fuels. But that’s it.

3. Public employee unions — from cops to teachers — will be forced to accept substantial pay and benefit cuts, bringing them back in line with the private sector.

Now for the right.

1. Conservatives will have to accept higher taxes, at least on par with those passed by George H.W. Bush, probably higher. You just can’t cut your way out of a deficit this big.

(Liberals will suffer some pain here, too, because more of these taxes will have to be levied on middle- and lower-middle class families.)

2. Military and homeland security spending will have to be cut sharply. The military faces a realignment on par with the post-WWII era.

3. Republicans will have to agree to some kind of healthcare reform, one that begins to reduce the massive cost of Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA.

Unfortunately, it’s increasingly unclear whether Barack Obama is the right President to begin guiding us through some of these brutally difficult steps.

The healthcare reform effort was a debacle, not only because it didn’t pass but because it didn’t accomplish the cost containment that is essential.

The budget he’s offering also offers little hope for transformative thinking.

Here’s an astonishing fact from David Sanger’s NYTimes piece, out today:

By President Obama’s own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years. In fact, in 2019 and 2020 — years after Mr. Obama has left the political scene, even if he serves two terms — they start rising again sharply, to more than 5 percent of gross domestic product. His budget draws a picture of a nation that like many American homeowners simply cannot get above water.