1) David Stockman is a well noted economist who served as Reagan’s main budget person during the Reagan administration. Recall that once Reagan, and to a great deal Stockman, worked through the economic and financial mess that Jimmy Cartyer left the country with, the U.S. economy took off on one of the greatest economic boom periods ever. Thus, Stockman has a proven track record and experience in the real world.
Which makes his latest analysis that much more depressing, given how accurate he has been in the past. This analysis reveals that
median household income in the United States peaked back in 1999 and has been decreasing at a steady clip over the past 15 years.
Since 1999, when adjusted for price inflation, Stockman estimates that median household income is down by 9%. Thus, most Americans are worse off financially through both the Bush and Obama administrations, with the majority of the decline happening since the end of the Great Recession.
Over that time period, the Federal Reserve pumped in trillions of dollars into money with no sound basis in wealth or economics, the Obama administration spent well over $800 hundred billion dollars in a stimulus plan that was a financial disaster, and the U.S. government has run trillions of dollars in deficits. Stockman’s conclusion is simple: the political class has no clue what it is doing when it comes to economic analysis and policies, not if they have destroyed nine percent of Americans' wealth in just fifteen short years.
2) Stockman’s analysis was not just on a national level, it was on a state by state level so that we can see what states are losing the median household income game slower and faster. But you can probably already guess the answer to what part of the country saw the slowest deterioration in household income.
Yes, the top “state” was Washington D.C. While the average U.S. household saw its median income slip 9% over the past fifteen years, the median household income in Washington did nine points better, i.e. it has not lost anything off of its median household income since 1999, better than every other state except for Wyoming, which also has not lost anything relative to income.
Again, as we have seen time and time again, those in the seat of power in Washington certainly take care of themselves before they take care of the rest of the country, if ever. The least impacted states from a loss of income perspective since 1999 were either in the D.C. metro area influence, (e.g. Virginia, Maryland, and D.C.) or were heavy into the energy industries (e.g. Wyoming, Texas, Oklahoma and North Dakota.)
The rest of the country saw substantial loss of median income levels with some states such as Delaware, Ohio, Nevada, and Michigan seeing their household incomes drop over 21% at the same time that there was no drop in Washington. Thus, is you stayed in these states over the past decade and a half, you lost more than 20% of your buying power through no fault of your own while those in D.C. made sure they lost nothing in their buying power.
3) Two weeks ago, May 22, 2014, was the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Baines Johnson's much ballyhooed “War On Poverty,” according to a recent article put together by Rachel Sheffield. It was with that launch that the scope and expense of the Federal government expanded almost exponentially with the implementation of Head Start, Medicaid, public housing programs, and more.
What has happened in this “war” over the past fifty years is not pretty:
- $22 TRILLION has been spent over that timeframe according to the article but nary a dent has been made in poverty in this country.
- The percentage of Americans dependent on government has remained virtually unchanged since the 1960s.
- This $22 TRILLION has spawned about 80 Federal government welfare programs but has done little to eradicate poverty, as witnessed by the fact that almost 50 million Americans receive food assistance from the Federal government every month, an all time high no matter how you measure it.
- Head Start, according to Obama administration studies, has been turned into nothing more than a glorified Federal babysitting program with no educational or societal benefits beyond babysitting.
- Medicaid, along with its sister program Medicare, is likely to financially bankrupt the country unless something is done to fix the problems they face.
It continues to amaze me that the Washington political class can spend a mind boggling $22 TRILLION and get absolutely nothing in return. Trained seals working on a keyboard could probably do better since trained politicians in Washington got us nothing.
4) If you have been following the news, you know that a lot of our veterans have been suffering, and dying, as a result of incompetence and greed by those in Washington and this administration that operate the Veterans Administration. Although the budget to take care of our veterans has increase substantially over the past few years, that increased funding apparently has been wasted away and we are left with the latest Obama scandal of incompetence.
But although our veterans are dying, citizens in Swaziland are feeling healthier since the United States government is planning to spend $24.5 million to circumcise an estimated 150,000 to 250,000 male infants and males in Swaziland by 2018 to combat HIV. Let that bad priority sink in for a while. Rather than get our veterans the cancer treatments, the checkups, the medicines they need, we are worried about circumcision somewhere around the world in a country that I bet 99.9% of Americans could not find on a map.
Look, I do not consider myself a bad, heartless human being. It is my understanding that HIV is a major problem in countries like Swaziland, whereever in God’s creation it is located. But we have so much suffering and medical shortages right here in our own country in our own VA hospitals, we simply cannot afford to spend over $20 million outside the country in our own times of need.
Besides according to the grant, only “an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 males will be circumcised through this project contributing to a 65 percent coverage by 2018.” Thus, we are talking about a relatively small number of people that will get circumcised which means an even smaller number of people will get HIV in ….Swaziland, sometime in the distant future. In the meantime, many of our veterans are dying today in this country, a situation that might be made better with say the $20 million or so we are sending to…Swaziland.
5) The IRS has been around a long time. You would think and hope that they would have some semblance of competence by now. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) has been around a long time. You would think and hope that the long time IRS would have a great handle on administrating the long time EITC.
Unfortunately, you would be wrong on both counts. According to a recent IRS Inspector General report, the IRS EITC program hands out billions in bad payments for earned income tax credit every year. Accordind to a recent Washington Examiner article by Kelly Cohen, the IRS gave out between $13.3 billion and $15.6 billion in improper payments last year. This fraud and inefficiency was accomplished despite the fact that there is a law that requires Federal agencies to crack down on fraudulent payments
Some of the $13.3 to $15.6 billion went to people who did not qualify for the credit. In other cases, an eligible person was paid the wrong amount. According to the Inspector General’s report, for the third year in a row, the IRS has failed to put together a corrective plan to reduce this improper payment rate and fraud nor has it provided all required information for the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010.
The IRS acknowledged there is a problem with EITC payments and said it was working to resolve the issue. However, given that they have known of the problem and leakage of billions of dollars for three years, I bet we are not looking at a quick resolution of this embarrassment and disgrace.
Just as an aside: how many veterans could have received proper and deserved medical treatment if that $13.3 billion had not been lost to IRS incompetence and had instead been diverted to the Veterans Adminsitration? Just a thought.
So kids, what did we learn from the numbers today: potential and future problems in Swaziland are more important to our politicians than real problems our veterans face today, as always, DC politicians take care of their own financial needs before ours, the IRS still cannot do anything right, and much like the war on drugs, we have also lost LBJ’s Great Society’s “war on poverty,” spending and wasting $22 TRILLION in the process.
Given all of this insanity of these numbers, please consider joining our drive for term limits at the following website:
Because really, how much worse could it get if we changed out every incumbent politician who cared more about our citizens than themselves or those in ….Swaziland.
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:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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