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. 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) We have often discussed the fatalistic budget and spending numbers of the Federal government. The Washington political class has run up a national debt that is now over $30 TRILLION. The Congressional Budget office estimates that in addition to this $30 trillion debt load, they predict that the amount of unfunded liabilities, future expenses that the government has no idea how to fund, mostly for future Social Security and Medicare expenses, is over $80 TRILLION.
Consider a few numbers and calculations:
In 2021, the IRS processed about 168 million tax returns from American citizens.
That means each American taxpayer would have to write a check for about $179,000 just to pay off the CURRENT national debt.
In reality, they would have to pay more since every day the Federal government spends more money than it collects.
To pay off the $80 trillion in unfunded future liabilities, each American taxpayer would have to pay about $476,000 more in taxes.
Thus, to dig the Federal government out of its debt hole that the Washington political establishment has created, every American taxpayer would have to lay out $655,000 to pay off the current debt and future unfunded liabilities.
Obviously, that math is not possible, American households have nowhere near that amount of wealth available to pay off the debt. Taxing businesses to pay off the debt and liabilities would also not be feasible since: 1) there is not enough taxable revenue in the American business world to cover that debt and 2) even if there was, for businesses to stay in business to pay that amount of taxes would require them to raise prices to astronomical heights creating runaway inflation.
Taxing the rich, a rallying cry of liberal politicians would not work either. For example, in 2021, according to Forbes, Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame was the richest American with a net worth of about $200 million. If you confiscated, not taxed, his entire wealth then the $200 billion would pay off about .7% of the national debt and about ,25% of the unfunded liabilities. If you only taxed his wealth at say 2% of the total amount, an actual proposal by some liberal Washington politicians, then you would pay off about .01% of the current national debt .005% of the unfunded liabilities.
The bottom line is that the amount of debt being run up by Washington politicians is unsustainable, not possible to be paid off, and will eventually crash our economy and our democracy if changes are not made to government spending.
All of this lead us to the latest, and horrible, numbers that were recently crunched by the Congressional Budget Office:
If nothing changes in Washington, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that the Federal government will be spending over $1 trillion every fiscal year for the foreseeable future beyond what it collects in taxes.
For the next decade, the annual government spending deficit will average $1.6 trillion.
This means that the Federal government will on average spend $43 million a DAY that it cannot cover with current tax collections.
If nothing changes, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that the 2032 annual government spending deficit will be $2.3 trillion.
These deficits over the next ten years are projected to be worth 5.1% of the gross domestic product (GDP), the value of everything the entire U.S. economy produces.
Over the last 50 years, the annual federal deficit has averaged 3.5% of GDP.
These spending deficits are the largest in both actual and percentage of GDP that the Federal government has ever operated at.
The total national debt is projected by CBO to run near 100% of the country’s GDP every year, exceeding the record set by that metric during World War II.
The ratio of federal debt to GDP is more than double what it was in 2000.
You get the idea. The Federal government current and future debt is out of control and outrageously high, it cannot be covered with increased taxation, and current spending trends will make the debt situation that much worse over time. Eventually programs like Social Security and Medicare will be severely cut back in a last ditch attempt by the Federal government to avoid going bankrupt and defaulting on its debt obligations which will cause severe hardships for tens of millions of Americans.
The rest of the world will eventually lose trust in the value of the American dollar, which will contribute \to already skyrocketing inflation. And the current Washington politicians still do not understand the magnitude and depth of the problem as they continue to send money overseas, give their Federal employees free Peloton exercise subscriptions, shower themselves with benefits and high salaries, and make sure their family members, friends and political donors get rich while the country sinks into a sea of red ink. The numbers don't lie.
2) It is certainly no secret that gasoline prices in this country have risen to ridiculous heights since Biden became President. And while he wants us to believe that the Russian/Ukraine conflict is responsible for the gas price increase, that is a ridiculous lie to try to hoist on the American public. Gas prices started rising way before that war broke out.
In fact, gas prices started rising almost the same day that Biden took office. His killing off of the Keystone pipeline, his suspending drilling leases on Federal lands, etc., were his doing, not Putin’s doing or impacts from the Ukraine invasion.
There is a saying that a manager I once worked for had and managed by: “Don’t tell me the seas were rough, just tell me you brought the ship safely into port.” In other words, stop bitching and start acting to remedy the situation. Obviously, Biden had no clue how to execute that saying. Rather than bring the ship into port and eliminate crushing gas prices, he sits around trying to place the blame on others without doing anything to fix the problem.
And it is a big problem and it has happened on his watch:
Gas prices in this country recently hit an all time high, the average price for a gallon of gas hitting $4.60 per gallon.
This average is about a ghastly 92% higher since Biden took office and I would bet that at least half of that increase happened BEFORE Putin invaded Ukraine.
Gas is $.44 more expensive than it was last month.
On Memorial Day 2021, about a year ago, the average price for a gallon of gas was $3.05 which was less than today but was still probably up 50% since the day Biden became President.
Again, if Biden was a leader he would spend less time telling us who is to blame and more time resolving the crisis, “bringing the ship safely into port,” and we all would be better off. But given that Biden was the VP in the Obama administration, an administration that spent eight years blaming everyone and everything else than themselves for their failures, his behavior is no surprise.
What is also very interesting is the numbers that occur at the state level for
average price for a gallon of gas:
Arizona: $4.95 a gallon
California: $6.15 a gallon
Hawaii: $5.44 a gallon
Illinois: $5.00 a gallon
Maine: $4.77 a gallon
Nevada: $5.30 a gallon
New York: $4.93 a gallon
Oregon: $5.20 a gallon
Washington: $5.23 a gallon
These states currently have the highest priced gas in the country. I find it interesting that states with the highest gas prices are those states that have a long tradition of being run by liberal politicians/Democrats: Washington, Oregon, New York, Maine, Illinois, Hawaii, and California.
I would bet on a closer look that these states also have the highest state gas taxes in the country, a double whammy on those residents in those states: high taxes on everything else, property, sales, , etc., and also gas taxes which makes the gas burden that much worse in those political blue states.
Bad times for Americans’ transportation needs and an administration and President that are clueless on how to resolve it even though two short years ago this was not even close to being a crisis for American drivers.
3) I debated whether to put the following piece of political idiocy in this “by the numbers” post or save it for our next “political class insanity" post. I decided to go with it here since the single number it has is really a doozy:
London Breed is the mayor of San Francisco.
Her city has a tremendous homeless problem which manifests itself in public defecation, public urination, public use of illegal drugs, drug overdoses, violence, etc.
Her solution: spend an additional $6.5 million over five years to remedy the situation or at least alleviate it to some degree.
The problem: she wants the money to only alleviate homelessness of transgender people.
Forget helping the homeless elderly who cannot find a place to live because of Biden’s inflationary policies.
Forget the homeless veterans who may be suffering any number of maladies from their service and combat experiences.
Forget the families who may be homeless because the breadwinner lost his or her job.
Nope, Breed wants to spend the money only on transgender homeless people, which number only about 400, in a city with thousands and thousands of homeless people.
Specifically: "Transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming San Franciscans are eighteen times more likely to experience homelessness compared to the general population, and we know that the rates are even higher for our minority trans communities. With one of the largest TGNC populations in the country, we not only must ensure that all San Franciscans have access to housing and essential resources through continued investments, but we can show the country that we continue to be a leader on supporting and protecting our trans communities."
$6.5 million for only a certain type of citizen. Any number of problems wrong with this stupidity:
First off, it is probably illegal to use taxpayer money for only a certain segment of the population.
This approach is so easy to game, anyone could claim they are transgender to get a peice of the $6.5 million, it is not as if you can say a transgender person has a certain skin color, a certain ethnic background, a certain DNA, a person would just be able to claim their are transgender.
If you do the math of $6.5 million over 5 years to serve only 400 people, it turns out that the city will theoretically be spending about $9 a day to help a homeless transgender person.
I doubt you can feed and shelter a person for $9 a day, about $270 a month in a high priced city like San Francisco and that assumes the $6.5 million goes directly to the homeless transgender people.
Once you take overhead costs out of the the $6.5 million along with government incompetence and fraud, that $9 a day goes down dramatically.
I have no idea how to handle the large and growing homeless problem in this country. But I am pretty sure helping one a small minority of those that are homeless, whatever the criteria is, does not resolve the bigger problem affecting people of all sexual orientations, genders, education backgrounds, etc. Another stupid government program as proven by some simple numbers.
Stupid spending in San Francisco, stupid and overwhelming debt driven spending in D.C., and the inability to manage an inflationary economy by Biden. The numbers don't lie even if politicians do.
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