You might want to check out FeralChildren.com(http://www.feralchildren.com/en/index.php). It has stories of lots and lots of people who have spent their youths separated/secluded/isolated from society. A common feature of the stories, even if they acquired language before losing contact with other humans, seems to be losing language skills. Some re-acquire those skills, but frequently never become fully fluent.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/arc ... 04654.htmlIt's not that unusual to forget how to speak your native language. Remember the character played by Mary McDonnell in Dances with Wolves? She was the white woman captured as a child by Indians and, by the time she encounters Costner's character, she's almost forgotten how to speak English. The McDonnell character is, of course, fictional, but the language loss is based on fact - I've read a number of 19th century accounts of other white captives who forgot their native tongue.
Immediately following the Great War, a lot of British Tommies married mamselles and settled in France. In the late 1930s, the British Army pension department sent inspectors to France to to interview the ex-pat vets to find out how many were still alive and to verify identities. The inspectors discovered that, in the 20 or so years since the war ended, many of the ex-soldiers had largely forgotten how to speak English. The inspectors sometimes had to employ translators to speak to the English vets.
The 20 year mark is mentioned here too.
I believe the same will apply to the US economy, once it is no longer propped up by counterfeit money and the rest of the world buying US debt. Some in the US will become productive again, but not fully productive, due to the length of time and the aging of the population. It may be that people will not want to or that they can't become fully productive again, but the bottom line in my view is it has been too long and the end result will be a less than fully productive US economy.