This puts our budget deficit in perspective

This really puts the national budget deficit into perspective for us folks.

U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent budget cut: $38,500,000,000

Let's remove 8 zeros and pretend it's a household budget:

Annual family income: $21,700
Money the family spent: $38,200
New debt on the credit card: $16,500
Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
Total budget cuts: $385.

JerryF

The deficit is easy to fix, put people to work and your "Household income" number goes up (Fed's collect more taxes). Social Security is easily fixed by raising the limit paid in by 10% and it will be solvent until 2070 or so. There are easy "fixes" for the problem, but those "fixes" are not politically acceptable in today's world. Please note I am not blaming either party, both are at fault.

With that I expect this thread to get closed, and apologize in advance.

Frank

I completely agree there is no single party responsible here. Every administration has "passed the bill" to the next administration and it's been happening for years.


...three times I typed out and then deleted a pretty lengthy rant on a lot of things, but this forum isn't the place to post stuff like that.


Suffice it to say that some of us are better off than others, and able to afford things many cannot. All I'm asking is that those of you who who are financially set peek out of the blinders once in a while.


Millions of us don't have the same rosy outlook and could not afford a 10% increase in anything but income.


I personally have not had a pay raise in almost 5 years now, and my employer has cut hours by 40%. We're struggling to get by, but nobody is hiring. So how is it that people are to be put back to work? If the government hires people our taxes go up to cover the salaries, insurances, ect. which most of us cannot afford.


Not so simple my friend...

Our infrastructure is crumbling around us, that is one area the government could invest in to generate jobs. On a personal note, my brother-in-law is in charge of a department that is responsible for certifying (verifying?) that bridges are safe. He refuses to drive across ANY bridges in the North East.

Frank, I agree for most part. Bridge and road repair I thought was supposed to be a big part of the "stimulus" so what happened to all those shovel ready jobs? Infrastructure repair would have gone a long way to moving out of work construction workers back into homes...work and jobs make more jobs and work. Head hurts thinking about it.. For th 28 years I worked in the field there was often more than 10% taken from my wage package for pensions, now, I'm glad I have the 2 pensions I was forced to pay for cause that's all I will have soon.

Bureaucracy

How about if every single person and company that gets money from the government takes a 1% cut? That's everyone from the current President to the past Presidents to retired congressmen to grandma to Farmer John and his subsidies? It'd probably pay off the deficit. And before you jump on me, all of our income comes from the government and we'd be more than willing to give up 1% if it went toward paying off the deficit.

Wendy

I think:
1. Stop giving money away each year for the sake of trying to buy friends. BILLIONS of dollars are shipped to countries all over the world and we get nothing real in return. We should cut the total in half, and warn the world the they need to step up and help themselves instead of relying on us. Yes, continue food and medicine relief to third world nations that are desperate, but make sure the food and medicine go to those intended. We ship it in, and deliver it, not that countries government. They can oversee if they wish, but it's our gig. We also need to have some sort of return on our money or they get cut off.
2. Take Congress and the Senate off the posh retirement plans they get without paying a dime into and make them use Social Security like everyone else has to do. I bet some stuff would get fixed real quick there.
3. Flat tax rate. We just need to adopt it. Everyone pays the same percentage of their income regardless of whether it's $10,000 or $10,000,000 per year.
4. Make health car affordable, don't force everyone to have it. That's only part of where Obamacare is wrong, and fire everyone who "voted it in to see what is in the package". That's no way to serve the people who voted you into those offices.
5. Fire the Unions. All of them. They were a God-Send in their day, but we have OSHA, EPA, DOL, and a host of other entities that monitor and force compliance with the appropriate laws. All the unions do now days is drive up the cost of whatever labor group they are managing. I personally know a Shop Foreman in Detroit who told me about a worker with a drinking problem. He comes in drunk every day, sleeps in the cafeteria until he sobers up, works a few hours (not very efficiently) and leaves with everyone else. He draws full pay (in the $25/hr range) and does it every day, but he cannot be fired because he went to the union and reported that he has a drinking problem. The union protects him from being fired even though he isn't even trying to get sober or to attend any meetings.
I could go on, but I'm sure we've all heard the stories.


Also stop the half names. You aren't Afro-American, or Chinese-American, or Spanish-American. You are one or the other. Pick one and move there already. This is supposed to be the big melting pot and by clinging to your half name titles you are not letting America be filled with Americans. No wonder we're all in a hand basket going for a ride. If you feel so strongly about your "Rich Heritage" then maybe you don't belong here.


Oh, and Wendy, how do you figure our income comes from the government? Mine doesn't. They may have printed it, but they don't pay me each week. I work for a private business that has no ties to the government other than taxes and standard regulations for running a business. So NO, my income does not come from the government.

Wendy was referring to her and Mike's situation only, not yours or mine.

Wendy said:

all of our income comes from the government

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Could be read two ways. If I offended, my apologies.


Joe

I was not fishing for answers or fixes but did any of you say to yourself, this puts some real-life every day perspective into these extremely large numbers.  That's why I posted it.

JerryF

It did for me Jerry. I think if those were the numbers my family was dealing with, the first thing we would do is cut up the credit card.

The problem with cutting up the credit card (ie. stop government spending/borrowing) is that at the moment the government can borrow at extremely low rates - practically zero - and to completely stop would be to leave a lot of people - poor and retired - in a world of hurts.

It would be best to take care of our short term recession/depression and help the 20 million unemployed or under employed get back to work so the governments income level increases so it can afford to pay it's bills. Then phase in austerity and phase out excess spending.

I was not fishing for answers or fixes but did any of you say to yourself, this puts some real-life every day perspective into these extremely large numbers.  That's why I posted it.

Click to expand...

Not really, the government is not a family and millions of families futures depend on the decisions our government makes concerning it's spending and borrowing. A family can tighten it's belt and cut up it's credit cards, but when the government stops paying out unemployment, Social Security, Medicare, Military Pay, etc, etc, etc... millions of families are impacted and not just a little. There are long term affects to a middle class family that was saving to send their children to college and suddenly finds themselves homeless and jobless. The earning potential (tax generation potential) of their children is greatly diminished. Multiply that by the 20 million  un/under employed and you have a moral as well as fiscal disaster.

Also, more directly related to your question:

Typical Family

Income - $50,000
Home Mortgage - $250,000
Car(s) - 60,000
Credit Cards - $20,000
Living expenses - 12,000 (food, gas, utiilities, etc.)
... etc.

Many if not most people are much worse off than our government.

BTW: The national debt is financed at a rate that is currently around 0.3% - I bet most of us would LOVE to have our debt at that rate. With any inflation at all you are ahead by owing money...

Frank

Ned said:

Wendy was referring to her and Mike's situation only, not yours or mine.

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What Ned said.

John Chambers was on TV recently.  He's the CEO of Cisco Systems and Cisco has world wide operations.  He said that the tax rate on corporations is too high so Cisco will continue to shelter off shore income in foreign banks until the US tax rate is lowered.  Same tactic is being used by Coke, GE, Google, CAT, and most other global corporations.  They still have huge sales in the US but shelter the income off shore to have a near zero tax rate in the US.

As I listened to John with his multi-million $$ annual salary, complain about the situation, I started wondering what Big John and Cisco would do if they were denied access to the US market as long as they used this loop hole in the tax code to pay little or no taxes here. 

Just sayin', if you can't afford to help fix the stuff here, maybe you don't get to sell your stuff here.  He could surely afford to live in Ireland if he likes the gov't there so much.  There must be a US company somewhere that sells routers and servers and is willing to pay US taxes for the opportunity to operate in the US.

If our family could borrow $$$ at 0.25% interest, we'd borrow as much as we could.  The bigger question is why is anyone willing to loan money to the US Gov't at 0.2% (or less) for AA rated bonds?

I have heard the exact opposite story from other heads of multi-national companies. I think a lot of what they say is self serving. I also think that we should do away with ALL tax loop holes. There should be a progressive tax rate based on income and there should be no exceptions. Of course that will never happen. Tax loop holes/exceptions are politicians way of doing social engineering, and they will never give that up.

Frank

FrankNSharon said:

I have heard the exact opposite story from other heads of multi-national companies. I think a lot of what they say is self serving. Frank

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Other CEO's say the corporate tax rate is too low??  Haven't heard that one, not even once. 

A far more serious problem, IMHO, is discussed in the current issue of BW, page, 26, "The Slow Disappearance of the American Working Man".  As it stands right now, the share of men who have jobs is lower than any time since WWII (and dropping) and wages are back to the levels that existed in the 1950's.     

That's what happens when you go apples and oranges with macro and micro economics.  So if you go into debt I should hope you know to whom to make the check out to if you wanted to become debt free.  Who does the gov't make the check out to?  Is it government's job to make a profit?  If so they have a great monopoly going and can raise their rates until then turn a profit.  Macro vs. micro again.

Other CEO's say the corporate tax rate is too low??

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No, they state that tax rates are just one of many considerations and that they have never made the decision to relocate off shore based solely on tax rate.

Frank