There should be no need for drama over the US budget. After all, compared with other rich countries, the US starts out richer and faces a milder demographic challenge to fiscal solvency in the next decades.

Compare the US with France, Germany and Japan. Average incomes in the US are 11 per cent higher than in Japan, and 16 per cent higher than in the other two, according to the International Monetary Fund. So the US, and its government, will have more resources to direct at the problem of its ageing population.

And the weight of that ageing group will be lower in the US. UN projections show that, in 2050, for every 100 Americans of working age there will be 35 people over 65. Those ratios will be 47, 55 and 71 for France, Germany and Japan respectively. What is more, the US government’s cost should be lower, since it relies extensively on private sector medicine. The government paid only 49 per cent of US healthcare expense in 2008, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, compared with between 77 and 82 per cent in the peer group.