I have written under this headline before but in the interim I have been gathering more data to pass along to you. This is scary stuff so I suggest you have a strong cocktail nearby.
These bailouts you keep hearing about? Who is doing the bailing? We are--the taxpayers of the United States. But what are we doing the bailing with? Hot air, that's what.
Here is how it goes:
As of January (let me stress that this is 9 months ago and a lot has happened since then) our national debt was $59 trillion. Do you know how many zeros are in that?
12.
After the nine.
How do I know this big number? Because David Walker said so (and no, I am not talking about Cap'n Dave). David Walker just came off of 15 years as the chief accountant of the Government Accounting Office-he was the comptroller general. He worked during Clinton and Bush at trying to inject some sanity into the whole accounting thing; he is now on the outside and still trying to get some attention.
I'll bet you thought you heard on the news that the deficit is a mere $468 billion? What gives? That number does not include the Social Security/Medicare obligations currently on the books along with some other big stuff. That is just the current cash deficit.
It seems like every time we get into a position where the numbers start saying bad things, the government reworks how the numbers are calculated. Keven Phillips wrote a terse little ditty on just this subject in the May issue of Harper's Magazine entitled "Numbers Racket-Why the Economy is Worse than We Know." www.harpers.org
Well let's consider these basic numbers to see just how many strings there are on our racket. There are roughly 300 million people in the US give or take 10 million or so illegal immigrants. Each household would have to come up with $400,000 to pay off just the Social Security/Medicare debt, Walker says. How much did you pay for your house? Does that put it in perspective?
Walker has done is a nice little video that helps you understand just how big these numbers are.
Check it out at www.youtube.com/watch?v=um0guhNGPPM&feature=related.
Some of the facts included there are:
A billion seconds ago it was 1959. A billion minutes ago Rome had not yet fallen. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
But we are talking trillion, remember-a couple more zeros that mean a lot:
1. (US; modern British & Australian, short scale) A million million: 1 followed by twelve zeros. See Wiktionary.
Meanwhile, we are being ravaged by natural disasters and our infrastructure is crumbling. Oh, and we are in a couple of wars also, lest one forget. Lord knows where they count that stuff.
So you see, we were broke before this bail out nonsense even started. Now we have piled on another couple hundred billion; I guess when you are this far gone what's the big deal?
Something needs to happen fast but this problem is so vast and so complex no one really has a grip on it-aside from David Walker and few guys at the University of Maryland, who seemed to be all over the air today. Oddly, I think they all agree on the issues; as has been pointed out that is a rarity-agreement.
When we were the greatest power on earth we had no debt. Now our debt is being relished by countries with money, like China. They buy up our assets and we end up owing them the farm.
Something basic is going to have to change in our economy. As Wilbur Scott, the very wealthy bankrupt-company-turn-around artist said this week on NPR, an economy is not built on "flipping burgers, trading stocks and suing each other."
Will taxing do it? Just to pay what we already owe on Medicare/Social Security would require cutting the benefits in half and jacking up the payroll taxes and income taxes to twice what they are now and cut purchasing by the federal government altogether and then some.
Which is not even doable.
At all.
For one thing in addition to the income tax and payroll taxes we each pay to the federal government with every paycheck we also pay all of these other taxes at various levels of government, most of which have been invented since the 1930's:
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Tax
Marriage License Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service charge taxes
Road Usage Tax (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges& nbsp;Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Tax
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
The contents may vary, check your local listings.
On top of that, here in Arizona where they can't balance budgets from year to year either, the legislature is raiding funds that are not even derived from taxes in order to meet their expenses.
This from the an article in the Western Farm Press in June:
"The Arizona legislature this spring took more than $550,000 in agricultural funds to help offset a $1.2 billion budget shortfall. Included in that total was $161,400 debited from three agricultural councils funded by grower assessments for commodity research and other programs." These are not even taxes! I heard today that the farmers have filed suit to try and get it back. Sorry, Wilbur, but sometimes suing each other is the only option left.
So as you can see, the pork barrel is not bottomless as our Congress would have us think. And those projects are not just in this country. One of Joe Biden's recent proposals is to expand the Violence Against Women Act to make the International VAWA so we can send money to other countries to teach the men not to punch the women! Quite frankly, I'd like to punch Joe Biden, and all the rest of the greedy people on Wall Street, in Washington, the State capitols and the City councils and everywhere else that got us into this just so they could get elected or rake in cash from not creating anything and trading in commodities lighter than air. It is all about greed and all about me and all about mine and all about now.
Alot has been bandied about lately as to the need for experience to do these government jobs. Well if this is what experience gets you, no thanks. Which brings up another monetary thing that really bothers me; there is never enough money for the goverment programs invented by these politicians in order to get reelected but there is always plenty of money to campaign on. Where does it come from?
The most horrifying part:
If it weren't for these "bail outs" no one would even be mentioning this issue. This is one crisis we can't watch happen and think we are going to clean up afterward. There will be no afterward. Where do you think the United States goes for its bailout?
As I said, the revolution will not be televised.
POST SCRIPT
Just in case you think I am overstating things, right after I wrote this I saw on the news that the Fed (Ben Bernanke and the people who run the US Bank known as the Federal Reserve, an independent body that oversees the money flow in the US and sets the interest rates that banks pay to borrow)is INVITING China to come on over and make some big investments. I am not kidding.
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