Problem with a balanced budget amendment is that it can be achieved in multiple ways. Printing money borrowed from the future, taxing the citizens, and actually spending less than the existing taxes taken in.

I would prefer a maximum budget of X% of GDP (14%?) with a growth rate no greater than that of the GDP and if the GDP falls, a shrinkage rate twice that of the shrinkage of the GDP. That way, if the economy starts to go south, there is an "automatic" stimulus in the form of more money left with the people. Of course, mechanisms to ensure that GDP and growth/shrinkage rates were rationally measured would need to be in place, as well as what was calculated in the gov't budget.

Apathy won't be a problem once the unbearable pain threshold is reached. When women see their children starving, they're gonna want change. And this time, not the Obama version.

YES! Nullification. At some point, if states just tell the Federales to stuff it, there's not much the Feds can do.

The solution is to make enough people suffer enough that they get fed up with the system enough to actually change it.

Of they could get so fed up they elect Hitler (or Obama) out of sheer frustration and stupidity.

Two problems with that:
First, I don't think you want to make voting too easy. Make it so that people who are motivated can easily vote, while those who aren't can sit at home and collect their welfare payments right up until those who are motivated to stop paying the taxes vote welfare out of existence.

Second: It's a big step away from a Republican government. Democracy is a nice term for "mob rule". We already have a problem with the majority of voters being stupid enough to elect Obama (twice) - with women being 20% more likely to be stupid than their male counterparts (that being the gender gap in the last election). Now you want to make their emotional snap-judgments the source of governance? Holy crap! We've already got $211 trillion in social welfare lined up (over the next 50 years) for which there's no budgetary source! Add in the fact that statistically, women are less conscious of the differences in orders of magnitude in mathematics and you could have them voting for a $100 trillion program to "save the chil-l-l-l-l-ldrens". A real-time vote-from-home system sounds good on first thought. But deeper analysis would show that it's a system that could respond too fast - that would be like a machine with a slow feedback loop.

Imagine such a system in place on 9/12/2001. Someone says, "Iraq did it! Nuke Iraq!!" 50 million Americans shout, "Hell yeah" - jab the keyboard on their computers and Iraq disappears in a radioactive cloud.

A week later we find out Iraq had nothing to do with the attack.

The problem is that the voting majority (women) are only too happy to vote themselves "bread and circuses". Their penchant for social welfare programs accounts for most of the current $17+ trillion in debt and almost all of the $211 trillion in additional unfunded mandates coming due over the next 50 years. (Yeah. An average of $4 + trillion MORE than we're spending now.)

A Constitutional Convention would be an opening that would allow them to codify the penchant for "I still have checks in my checkbook - how could I be broke??" governance.

Presently you have tension between credible, responsible government (the Constitution) and insane, profligate, socialism (the current voting public). Wouldn't a Constitutional Convention just be handing the keys to the store over to the criminals who want to rob it? Put another way: How do you think FDR or Obama would change the Constitution if they had the opportunity?

America's headed for a financial crash. It may be headed for an armed revolt. The blueprint for governmental recovery is the Constitution. It's the only GOOD thing we have left. Why risk it?