Quit shoving, pops. You'll get yours.

It was decent of the Twins to postpone the groundbreaking for their new stadium after that big bridge fell down. When the Twins finally do get around to building their $522 million ballpark plenty of folks in the northern Twin Cities would love to come down to see a game. If only they could get there. Ditto the new Gopher football stadium.

As the rhetoric about America's aging infrastructure heats up, watch how it collides with certain parties' and candidates' "no new taxes" fixations—and how those collide with demographic realities.

Newsweek's Robert Samuelson this week points out how "commitments to the older population are slowly overwhelming other public goals; the national government is becoming mainly an income-transfer mechanism from younger workers to older retirees."

I'm all about low (or no!) taxes, but here's what Samuelson says:

[By] 2030, the 65-and-over population will nearly double to 71 million; its share of the population will rise to 20 percent from 12 percent. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—programs that serve older people—already exceed 40 percent of the $2.7 trillion federal budget. By 2030, their share could hit 75 percent of the present budget, projects the Congressional Budget Office.

He goes on, and the emphasis is mine:

To keep federal spending stable as a share of the economy would mean eliminating all defense spending and most other domestic programs (for research, homeland security, the environment, etc.). To balance the budget with existing programs at their present economic shares would require, depending on assumptions, tax increases of 30 percent to 50 percent—or budget deficits could quadruple.

So, to recap Jon Stewart-style: New stadiums, new bridges, everyone getting older, (cough) $500 billion war (cough), no new taxes.

Let's watch.

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Please let me know if you will or will not be playing hoops at St. John's tomorrow. We tip off at 8:00 a.m., as usual. Bring a friend!