Fun With Math - Making Our $16 Trillion National Debt Easy To Understand...and Fear

Sometime this week the U.S. Federal government exceeded the $16 TRILLION threshold of national debt. I found it ironic that the Presidential administration that has added more to that level of debt than any other previous administration, increasing it by about 50% in less than four years, is also having its Presidential convention this week. I would bet that these debt "accomplishments" will not be part of the agenda or any of the speeches.

$16 TRILLION is a lot of money, a whole lot of money. Let's play with some math to put $16 TRILLION in perspective:

1. $16 TRILLION is the number 16 with TWELVE zeroes behind it.
2. If every American household chipped in the same amount to pay off that debt, each household would have to write a check for about $140,000. Not going to happen.
3. Since the average household income is about $50,000 a year, every household would have to work almost three years, on average, to retire the debt and forego eating, leisure activities, buying clothes, going on vacation, paying taxes, paying for heat, etc.
4. Since the richest four hundred Americans have a total net worth of about $2.4 TRILLION,  even if the Federal government was able to seize their entire wealth and somehow liquidate it to pay off some of the debt, only about 15% of the national debt could be paid off.
5. Since the 400th richest American had a total wealth of about $1 billion, even if you confiscated the entire wealth of the next richest 400 Americans, you would still end up with considerably less than $400 billion or, at best, only another 2.5% of the national debt. In other words, even if you confiscated and liquidated the entire wealth of the richest Americans, you could not come close to paying off the national debt, a moving target that grows by a TRILLION dollars a year under this administration.
6. If you spent $20 million every day, beginning with the day Jesus Christ was born, you still would not have spent $16 TRILLION.
7. If you have 16 TRILLION one dollar bills and laid them end-to-end, you would circle the globe just over 60,000 times.
8. If you have 16 TRILLION one dollar bills and laid them end-to-end, you would stretch back and forth from Earth to Mars about 2,100 times.
9. If you have 16 TRILLION one dollar bills and stacked them into four equal piles of 250 billion bills each, each stack would reach from the Earth to beyond the moon.
10. 16 TRILLION seconds is over 500,000 years worth of time

You get the idea, I do not want to trivialize the dire economic straits the political class has put us in with more simple math examples. Not only are we in dire straits today, the $16 TRILLION has not made life any better for most Americans:

• Our health care costs are still going ever higher so the $16 TRILLION did not curb runaway health care costs.
• Our government is still fighting a lost war on drugs so the $16 TRILLION did not find a way to successfully address this losing war. We still have over 40,000 Americans who die from drug overdoses every year and we probably still spend more for incarceration than we do for treatment and prevention.
• We still do not have a sane, affordable, and environmentally friendly national energy plan so the $16 TRILLION did not solve our ever present energy problems, the latest manifestation of which is that the pump price of gas has doubled in less than four years, or since Obama took office.
• Our public schools, for the most part, are a disgrace when it comes to educating our kids relative to the rest of the world so the $16 TRILLION was not used to fix our dysfunctional public school processes.
• Many parts of our country are living with crumbling bridges and pothole scarred roads so the $16 TRILLION was not used to fix our infrastructure problems.
• We still have a major illegal immigration problem so the $16 TRILLION was not used to legally, fairly and compassionately integrate the current illegal immigrants into our society or was used to seal our leaky borders, giving the Mexican drug cartels virtually unfettered ways to smuggle drugs, guns, humans, and who knows what else into the country.

So, despite the Federal government confiscating and overspending our wealth to the tune of $16 TRILLION, we can safely say that they have not used that wealth to even begin resolving any of the major issues facing the country. This conclusion was also reached by an actual member of the political class who eloquently stated the reality of this farce a few years ago.

Colorado Senator Michael Bennet stated the obvious in the Washington Post on September 3, 2010: "We have managed to acquire $13 TRILLION of debt on our balance sheet. In my view, we have nothing to show for it." He is right, we had nothing to show for $13 TRILLION worth of national debt and two years later, we already have $16 TRILLION worth of debt and nothing to show for it. 

But it gets worse! If you go to the official White House budget website, $16 TRILLION is nothing compared to where the current administration's budget plans will take us in the next several years:

• According to the latest official White House budget numbers, another $3.44 TRILLION will be added to the Federal national debt by the end of year 2017.
• If this estimate holds true, every American household would be theoretically burdened with another $30,000 share of the overall national debt.
• However, this estimate requires that the economy and the resultant government tax revenue stream have annual growth rates of 17%, 11%, 7%, 7%, and 6% over the next five years.
• Given that the long term, average annual growth rate for the U.S. economy is about 3%, it is highly unlikely that these rosy tax revenue growth rates will hold and we will not add $3.44 TRILLION to our national debt by 2017, we will add significantly more.
• If we assume a much more realistic economic growth rate of 3% annually over the next five years and that the economic growth rate will generate the same growth rate in government tax revenue, than the actual increase in the national debt could more realistically expected to be about $7 TRILLION, or an additional $60,000 or so to each household's share of the overall debt.
• Thus, by 2017, each American household could be on the hook for about $200,000.
• This also assumes a most unrealistic assumption, namely that we do not suffer another recession between now and 2017 which would increase the additional debt even more.

An old saying goes: "When you are in a hole, stop digging." Obviously, the Obama administration, as illustrated by their current, official budget outlooks, have no real plans or ability to stop digging deeper into this national debt sinkhole.

These are scary, scary numbers. And what are our politicians likely worrying about today? Probably the following:

• Their five week vacation is already coming to an end.
• How can they get more money for their reelection campaigns.
• What do Romney's tax returns look like.
• What do Obama's sealed college records look like.
• When is my next five week vacation.

The case for implementing Step 39 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" has never been stronger. Step 39 would implement term limits for all Federal politicians immediately. It is obvious to people even within the political class establishment, see Senator Bennet's observation above, that the current people sitting in the White House and in Congress do not have the will, courage, ability, desire, or understanding/intelligence on how to fix this national debt disgrace. Their inaction and inattention will pose a potentially fatal blow to our democracy, our freedom, our careers, our retirements and our futures and our children's futures.

We are in deep trouble. We need new blood and new leadership very, very soon or we will never climb out of the $16 TRILLION hole the political class has thrown us into. We will explore this hole again next week, hypothesizing what could happen if the hole continues to deepen and review out plan to fill that hole in with at least $9 TRILLION in debt savings over the next ten years, with minimal pain to most Americans.

Please check back then for the details. Oh, by the way, keep in mind that the $16 TRILLION does not include the trillions and trillions of dollars worth of unfunded liabilities and future debt stalking within the Social Security and Medicare programs! 

We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment