Mary Meeker's Big Presentation Shows That Something Has Changed In America

Internet analyst Mary Meeker is out with her big annual slide presentation on the state of the internet. She comes out with one every year, and it really is a great product to click through, filled with charts and stats on all the big trends about the web.

In addition to focusing simply on the internet, Meeker always devotes some time to other big economic trends, and it's here that we learn something interesting.

In recent years, she has been concluding her presentation with some ominous charts about the deficit and the debt.

For example, last year this was one of the final charts in the deck.

Also last year, she devoted one chart to warning about how terrible American health statistics look.

In recent year, this has been the Zeitgeist: No discussion about the future of America is complete with out serious warnings about the healthcare system and the deficit.

But that's changed in 2014.

As Conor Sen points out, this year there's no big sectioning warning about the deficit. There's still a statement in there about the budget, but it's much less ominous.

And as for healthcare, this year there's a whole section devoted to reasons for optimism, and "green shoots" in the industry, with slides like this one.

If nothing else, this represents a turning point in the thinking of the elites. Stressing about the debt is tired. Talking about how we're actually solving our big problems is hot.