On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American politician 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. This is the third and final post this month where we 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)While our country may be able to survive bad Presidents, bad Congress people, and a biased and corrupted free press, one thing that it may not survive is the mountains of debt that American politicians have piled up at all levels of government. At some point, the $34,000,000,000,000 worth of Federal government national debt, a number that grows every second of every day, will crash our economy and our freedoms.
But those in Washington only occasionally pay attention to this ticking time bomb number and never do anything about it. Consider a set of numbers that shows how out of control the debt burden is and how stupid ideas like “taxing the rich” are just that, stupid ideas:
According to the latest analysis by Forbes, the combined wealth of every billionaire in the world is about $14.2 trillion.
To show you how out of control our national debt is, if we could somehow liquidate every asset of every billionaire in the world and magically apply the proceeds to our national debt, we would only be able to pay off about 41% of the Federal government’s debt.
But they would not give up their wealth freely so let’s say we only took 10% a year as a tax on wealth.
Then we would only pay off about 4% of our national debt.
But that number includes every billionaire and I doubt that billionaires in China and England and elsewhere would hand over their billions of dollars in wealth to help pay down our national debt so that 41% number is way too high.
About 40% of the world’s billionaires, according to Forbes, live in this country so that 41% number would really be about 16% of the national debt if all of America’s billionaires had all of their assets confiscated and applied to Washington's debt.
And we only took 10% then you are looking at paying down only about 1.6% of the national debt.
In fact the richest billionaire in the world is not an American, but Frenchman, Bernard Arnault, whose family conglomerate is worth $233 billion, or about .7% of our national debt.
Elon Musk is worth about $193 billion so confiscating his entire fortune would pay off less than the .7% that Arnault and his family would pay off.
Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos is worth about the same as Musk so taking all of his wealth would also pay off less than 1% of the national debt.
You get the idea: Washington politicians have piled up so much debt that even if you confiscated every asset of the billionaires living in the world, or in this country, you would not come close to paying off the debt. And thus, the reason why taxing the rich continues to be a stupid saying and strategy.
The reality is that Americans are not taxed too lightly: politicians simply spend and waste too much.
2)Speaking of high taxes, it has always been our position that the higher the tax burden any government places on their citizens, the worse off the economy is of that government entity. Politicians and government bureaucrats never spend wealth more efficiently or more effectively than private citizens and companies.
Consider more proof our theory:
The latest state level unemployment rates are out.
We have often pointed out that some of the highest taxed states include California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey, states that we believe are likely to be the most likely states to declare bankruptcy in the relatively near future.
And it turns out that these states have some of the highest state unemployment rates in the country with California (50th ranked worst unemployment rate), New Jersey (48th), Illinois (47th), and New York (43rd) following close behind with unemployment rates at their state level being 4.4% or higher.
These are the same states that continue to lose population year over year as their citizens flee to other areas and states where the tax burden is not so onerous.
Bottom line: have high taxes, have high unemployment, have high taxes, lose citizens.
3)It is a fact that the cost of living has skyrocketed under the Biden Presidency. His economic policies have allowed inflation to run rampant, causing prices to rise on just about everything we buy for our lives including eggs, gasoline, clothing, etc. And somehow his economic policies have been so bad that the following numbers are just mind blowing that he could screw up an aspect of our economy this badly in such a short time:
When Biden took office in 2021, in six states a family needed over $100,000 a year in income to afford a middle class, median priced home.
Just three years later, Biden’s failed economic policies have driven that number up to 22 states where a family needs an annual of over $100,000 to afford a middle class home.
This is an almost four fold increase in just over three years.
This analysis by Bankrate starts in January 2020, and takes it to January 2024.
And while their analysis time frame covers the last year of the Trump administration, most of the increase is no doubt occurring as a result of the Biden administration.
Their analysis estimated that a family needed to earn an annual income of $110,871 to afford that median priced house today, up a whopping 46% since 2020.
When Biden took office in January, 2021, the average interest rate on a 30 year fixed mortgage was 2.5%.
As of March, 2024, Bankrate estimates that the average interest for that same type of mortgages was 7.07%, an almost threefold increase.
Biden has proposed some window dressing programs to address this situation but providing a two year, $5,000 tax credit to home buyers and other such token moves will do nothing when the mortgage rate has increased almost threefold under his Presidency. His proposed tax credit programs show, again, that he and Washington have no idea on how to fix what they broke in three short years.
That will do it for today’s Numbers: Biden broke the home ownership dreams of millions and millions of Americans, have high taxes get high unemployment, and taxing the rich still makes no sense as long as Washington politicians have no restraint when it comes to overspending their tax revenue stream.
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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:
https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom
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