February, 2015, Part 1: By The Numbers: Military Overreach, Ecnomic Under Perfromance, and More

On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American political tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.

Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. Today, and at least tomorrow, we will look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us.

1) Politicians at all levels of American government, local, state, and Federal, have a lot to say about how our kids are educated. Unfortunately, despite spending trillions and trillions of dollars over the past few decades to educate our kids, the bottom line is that America does a horrible job at education. Our kids constantly fall below the academic performance of many other countries on standardized testing.

Which brings us to our first set of numbers today: what states do the most efficient job of educating our kids with the right combination of expense vs. performance, i.e. most bang for the taxpayer education bucks being spent? There are four combinations to this question, three of which are not optimal:

1. Spend a moderate amount and give kids a great education, the preferred route.
2. Spend a lot and give kids a great education. Not bad but not getting the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars spent.
3. Spend a moderate amount and not optimize the education experience. Taxpayers might be happy but the kids are underserved.
4. Spend a lot and not optimize the education experience. The worst combination, taxpayers pay a lot for little in return.

The National Center For Education Statistic recently put together a state by state index analysis of how well each state fell into each category above. Their findings range all of the map:

• The state of Utah spends its education dollars the most efficiently, scoring 86 points in the index analysis despite spending only $6,441 per pupil, on average, less than every other state in the country. Despite the lowest spending, the Utah’s kids reading and math scores beat 20 other states. Thus, Utah falls into the first category listed above, moderate expense and great education.
• Compare Utah to New York which got only 28 points vs. Utah’s 86 points in the index analysis despite spending a whopping $19,396 per pupil per year, about three times per student that Utah spends with far worse results, falling into the fourth category above: spending a lot and getting very little education bang in return.
• The District of Columbia is even worse than New York, with an analysis value of only 26 despite spending more than even New York per student per year, $19,847.
• Massachusetts is also interesting in that their kids are the most educated in the country but they spend a lot to get that level, generating only 39 points in the analysis, a little more than half as effective as Utah.

In general, as we see in the U.S. map below, states outside of the northeast get much better bang for their education dollars. Unfortunately, there are a lot of kids in the northeast so there are a lot of U.S. kids not getting a good education despite the large amount of money being spent on them on a relative basis.

The bottom line is that some states across the country are getting the best of both worlds: efficiently spending of taxpayer dollars but still getting good to great education results. If the Federal government was doing its job, it would be collecting the best practices from the blue states above and disseminating those best practices across the country. 


But as in most cases, the Federal government bureaucracy, specifically the Department of Education, is not doing its job relative to the rest of the world’s kids. We as a nation end up in the fourth category above, high cost of education with low results.

2) One budget number from Obama's recent Federal budget submittal to Congress stands out. That number is 2.3%, the assumed annual economic growth in our economy in the future. And that number might be optimistic, according to the Congressional Budget Office who foresees an annual economic growth for the country of between 2.1 and 2.2%.

Why are these depressing numbers? Since the end of World War II, annual economic growth in the United States has averaged 3.3%. But since 2007, the annual average growth has been only 1.5%, less than half of the long term trend. 

According to Douglas Holtz-Eakin of the American Action Forum and former Congressional Budget Office Director, if the country does not attain at least an average annual 3% growth per year than the economy will underperform to the tune of NOT producing 1.2 million new jobs and long term will depress average household income by over $4,000.

But the Obama administration does not think we can do any better than a weak 2.3% annual growth. That is how unimaginative their thinking and abilities are. If we agree with their status quo approach, than the economic reach, freedom, and wealth of all Americans will be lower than any time since the end of the Great Depression.

But it does not have to be that way, as we pointed out with many suggestions in our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government:”

• Simplify the tax code, with an emphasis on overall tax reduction, so that it promotes growth and injects capital into the private sector of the economy where it can be used more efficiently than wasted by the Federal bureaucracy.
• Reduce Federal government spending by 10% a year for five years to get the deficit spending and national debt burden under control to reduce the amount of wealth that the country has to devote for debt payments and interest on the national debt.
• Reduce the ridiculous amount of over regulation of business in this country so that business owners can focus on growing their business and the economy and not on complying with inane Federal regulations.
• Finally come up with a strategic national energy plan that reduces the outflow American wealth to oil exporting countries and reducing the economic burden of energy costs for businesses and consumers, freeing up more money for economic growth.
• Fix the problem of escalating healthcare costs once and for all, something that Obama Care comes nowhere close to doing, in order to free up more wealth for economic growth.

It is possible to return the country to robust economic status. It is just the current set of Washington politicians are not capable of doing the job, otherwise they would have done it already.

3) One last set of distressing numbers for today. According to a recent Huffington Post article:

• During the fiscal year 2014, the Federal government had deployed U.S. Special Operations military personnel into 133 countries around the world.
• Thus, we have military personnel in 70% of the world’s nations.
• These numbers in the article supposedly come from Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bockholt who is a public affairs officer with the U.S. Special operations Command (SPOCOM).
• At some time over the past three years, our Special Forces were in a staggering 150 different countries.
• Their missions ranged from training to kill or capture military raids.

I get it that we need to protect the country and our citizens from terrorists that might be anywhere in the world. But do we really need to be in 150 countries? Is that a cost effective way to spend our military budget dollars? Is that a good diplomacy approach to build good relations with other countries and their citizens, sticking U.S. special Forces in 150 different countries? I would love to see a cost benefit analysis of such a world wide interference and/or presence in so many countries but I doubt that it exists. 

Maybe, just maybe, these deployment numbers are why the Defense Department budget is so high, regard for America is so low, and our safety from terrorists attacks seems to get weaker and weaker every day.

That will do it for today’s numbers:

• Military personnel and the supporting budget deployed in well over a hundred different countries.
• A political class that has no clue how to grow the economy to at least historical standards and is planning for anemic growth in the future.
• We continue to spend education dollars in record numbers for minimal results despite some states that have found ways to spend a moderate amount of money for outstanding educational results.

More depressing numbers tomorrow as we continue to prove that we are living through an inept and unimaginative set of politicians whose inability to lead and create is depressing our wallets, our freedoms, and our futures. The numbers prove it.

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.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.com

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Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w