By The Numbers, Part 2: Obama's Numbers Sink Further, Poverty Numbers Rises Despite Trillions of Dollars And More

This is our second post in a three part series themed, “by the numbers.” In this series, we look at the reality of the numbers facing our country, whether they are polling numbers, government statistics, or from other sources. By looking at the numbers, it is easier to determine the reality of our world and the issues that we face rather than using the hatred, prejudices and lies of our political class. Their purpose is not to resolve issues using reality but to ensure their perpetual reelection chances by stoking emotions rather than understanding the numbers. 

So let’s continue our analysis today using the real world’s numbers to determine our real world situation, a situation driven by our politicians’ bad decisions and selfishness.

1) According to reputable sources, we have previously discussed the fact that all levels of government within the country spend about a trillion dollars a year to help the less advantaged in this country, a spending level that has been increasing steadily over the years. At this level of expenditures, you would think that our politicians would have eliminated poverty long ago.

And you would be so wrong, at least according to a recent analysis by the U.S. Census Bureau. According to their analysis, over one in five kids in the U.S. today are living in poverty. In 2012, there were 15,437,000 children under 18 years old, or 21.3%, who were classified in the “below poverty” threshold, according to the Census and a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report entitled, Poverty in the United States: 2012.

When President Johnson declared “war on poverty” back in 1964, the percentage of American kids living in poverty was 22.7%. Fifty years and $22 TRILLION later, the American politician class has only been able to reduce the level of kids living in poverty from that 22.7% to the current 21.3%. And even though the percentage has decreased slightly, I would bet that the absolute number of kids living in poverty is much higher today than in 1964 given that the population of the United States is so much more 50 years later.

Einstein once said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. After 50 years and TRILLIONS of dollars with no substantial improvement in the number of kids in poverty, I would say that our politicians fit that definition quite well. Insane. 

2) Consider what the we spend for national defense in this country, as estimated by the Cato Institute:

• On average, every American spends about $1,900 every year for national defense.
• $1,900 figure is roughly four and a half times more than what the average person in other NATO countries spends on defense even though these countries boast a collective GDP of approximately $19 trillion, 18 percent higher than the United States. 
• South Koreans spend about a third as much on national defense than Americans even though we spend billions of dollars every year protecting that nation from its northern neighbor.
• Americans also outspend people in Japan by more than four to one even though we have troops and military assets posted in that country to help with its defense.
• Thus, despite having a national debt that is fast approaching $18 TRILLION, we continue to pay for the defense of our allies as if the Cold War never ended.
• While the United States spends 16.8% of the budget on the military, Japan spends a measly 2.4%. 
• South Korea’s share of military spending is only 11% of their GDP, and they having a crazed and hostile regime on their northern border. 

As Cato points out very well: “The U.S. Constitution stipulates that the federal government should provide for the “common defence.” But the document never talks about providing for the defense of other nations. We could have revisited our alliances after the end of the Cold war. We could have paid more attention to the culture of dependency we created among our allies. Instead we continued to spend vast sums on the military, discouraging others from developing their capabilities, and removing their will to use their militaries in ways that could have advanced both their and our security. Today, our wealthy allies are little more than wards of Uncle Sam’s unending dole, and they will remain militarily irrelevant so long as we continue along our present path.”

Well said, we are providing military welfare for allies that are more than capable of paying their own way while many in this country suffer for the exporting of wealth to wealthy and underpaying allies around the world.

3) Where do logical people want to live? Most of then tend to migrate to areas within the country where they get to keep more of their hard earned wealth and income. Usually, this means living and working in states where there are lower and fewer taxes, as shown by the following graphic from the website www.howmoneywalks.com:

















The states with the highest income taxes have had a net loss in taxpayer Adjusted Gross Income of $107 billion, and the states with no income tax have had a net gain of $146 billion. In other words, there’s been an exodus from high tax states to those with no taxes. 

Thus, even though the politicians in those red states above thought they could get more state government revenue by having a higher tax burden, on average those states shrunk their tax base by about $12 billion per state in the past 15 years, probably wiping out any benefit of raising taxes on a continually shrinking tax base. Back to Einstein's insanity observation.

4) According to a recent Fox News poll, the country’s citizens do not have a really good feeling about Obama’s performance in office relative to his predecessors:

• A majority of those polled say the Obama administration is less competent than Bill Clinton's administration. 
• And in what has to be an ego deflating finding, a plurality of those polled say it is less competent than George W. Bush’s administration.
• Sixty-eight percent say the Obama administration is less competent that the Clinton administration. 
• Forty-eight percent say it is less competent than Bush's, compared to 42 percent who say it is more competent. 
• Seven percent judge Obama's and Bush's administrations the same.
• Fifty-five percent say that the Obama administration has made the country weaker; 35 percent say his administration has made it stronger.

Now I am sure some of my liberal friends will dismiss the findings out of hand since they saw the word “Fox” associated with the poll. That’s fine but understand that this is not the only poll out there or that we have discussed that shows how poorly Obama’s performance is being perceived. Just yesterday we showed that according to a CNN poll, he receives approval ratings for major issues that never exceed fifty percent on any of those issues, a finding consistent with this Fox polling. 

That will do it for today. But we will need one more day to do our “by the numbers” analysis to show that we are living with the worse and most inept set of politicians in our history, as measured by the numbers. That is our reality, politicians that do the same thing over and over at every increasing spending levels but never resolve any major issue of our time.

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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.robertringer.com/
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