We live in a paranoid economy, argues our Schumpeter columnist this week. Consider the mission of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, traders’ instinct to bet the house, or Wall Street’s obsession with dark dates (are we on the brink of 1929? 1873?). Sure, the strongest pitch you can make to investors is claiming your business will end the world as we know it, but American capitalism has gone fully apocalyptic. 

For lawmakers in Washington (and American pensioners), a different scary date looms: 2032, when the Social Security trust fund will run dry. Congress has reformed Social Security before, but that was then. If legislators act soon, the changes don’t need to be drastic. But that’s not how Washington tends to work.

1994, the year Republicans took back the House of Representatives for the first time in four decades. Read about how the victory shaped politics in the 1990s and beyond in our latest chapter of America at 250.