annual taxes $2.17 trillion
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annual debt $1.65 trillion
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cuts $0.04 trillion
-

.
better also show the actual
current budget deficit
$14.29 trillion
$14,290,000,000,000
divide by 100,000,000
$142,900
which i guess is what we’re trying to
pay down with the “cuts” above
and according to the premise
would be the family’s total debt
looks like this
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— — —

.
did i get that right?
oy
.

What’s the difference between leaving your grandkids monetary debt later and cutting their education now while not spending on any home maintenance? Well, you leave them with a broken, falling apart house that they’re too stupid to know how to fix.

Future: “Congratulations on eliminating the deficit. Now we just have a nation of stupid people and broken outdated infrastructure.”

Obviously I can’t use this example to find a solution to the problem, but I can use it to visualize the magnitude of the problem.

Un-obfuscated pie chart here shows the military consumes 54%.

Oh, lots of people would die and be homeless. Medicare+Social Security are big parts of the Federal Budget.

More food for corvids!

I may not be a libertarian, but you can’t complain about “life liberty and property.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFJdUJg4wOk

FORENSIC ECONOMICS 101

Private equity firms/leveraged buyout firms manage and oversee the bulk of the largest pension funds (superannuation funds) out there, including most union funds. They leverage these funds to destroy unions and future union employment, while structuring them with credit derivatives which profit themselves but end up destroying those funds.

With the destruction of those funds, which must either be bailed out or allowed to default, comes the further destruction of local governments as they are usually heavily invested (through their bond issues) in those pension funds. Thus allowing the super-rich to go in and pick up new assets at bargain basement values.
This would be considered the optimal asset stripping.

U.S. foreign aid (US taxpayer assisted) is well known to be directed to countries which will then purchase weapons systems from defense contractors, but what is less known is what the greater slice of that foreign aid goes to.

The bulk of it is managed and manipulated by American-based multinationals to build foreign factories, production facilities, R&D labs, worker training, etc., to which the multinationals then offshore American jobs to, and create new jobs at. Extreme examples of this were the two “free trade agreements” supported and passed during the Bush administration, lobbied on behalf of by former president, Bill Clinton (in the pay of the jobs offshoring industry), involving Jordan and Oman.

Foreign aid established factories in those two countries, which then imported the cheapest labor they could from Bangladesh and the Philippines, chiefly benefitting the American-based multinationals who exported those jobs to the factories, and the small number of wealthy and connected managers and owners in Jordan and Oman who managed those factories.

The co-opting of the conservation lobby (Nature Conservancy, League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club, etc.) and the environmental lobby (those entities duped into supporting cap-and-trade) by Wall Street (corporate and individual land monopolists and oil/energy corporations).

For example, when a volunteer group works to set aside a tract of land for conservation purposes, etc., and they don’t continuously track the final result, they are unaware that some, or all, of the tract is eventually sold for pennies on the dollar to foreign corporations, either in a quid pro quo deal, or which is owned through circuitously laddered holding companies by an American-based multinational.

Also, various conservation groups will lobby on behalf of tax cuts and benefits for set aside lands, unaware they are working – for free – on behalf of those super-rich land monopolists.

The controlled, compromised and highly manipulated tax code which chiefly exists to benefit the one percent, the speculator class.

A traditionally popular example of this is the “Louis B. Mayer clause” dating back to 1954, where Mayer’s tax attorneys bribed the usual congressmen to insert a special clause in the tax section to allow Mayer to avoid paying taxes on his fortune when he retired. This clause specified that only the special pre-existing tax situation (i.e., exactly targeting only Mayer’s situation) existing prior to the date of that clause was allowed – the complete antithesis of all legal foundation, i.e., a law is normally passed to be in effect which affects everyone after the passage of said law!

A recent example is the “Blackstone Group clause” – essentially the Blackstone Group bought some congress critters to allow them to continue paying the same capital gains tax rate after they went public, when by law they should have begun paying the higher corporate tax rate. Some law professors (Davidoff comes readily to mind) would claim this was “deft tax law.”

No, it is simply absolute corruption.

“All money is hierarchically controlled as an asset to private sector institutions and elite capital holders who have the ability to call in their chips, i.e., your bank digits, where as it’s an interest-bearing debt to governments and the people.” — Damon Vrabel

“A good investment is to own a senator, but a great investment is to own the US Treasury.” — Anon

If fiscal conservatives have real arguments about why current levels of government deficit spending are bad, they should make those arguments.

If fiscal conservatives can’t make their argument without assuming the federal government is something it isn’t (a family with credit card debt), then they have no arguments.

In good faith, I assume they do and anxiously await the time when we can debate this issue in a honest way.

Of course, that didn’t stop him from borrowing a whole bunch of money to pay off Junior’s debts went he went on that week-long coke-fueled bender in Amsterdam after getting his MBA. But then again, Dad’s never been able to say know to Junior.

And let’s not get started on Dad’s endless hunting trips. He keep going out and buying new guns and gear every week on credit.

Not like Mom’s doing much better. She’s been footing the bill for Grandma’s house and living expenses and medical expenses for a long time now, no questions asked. Grandma’s been to the doctor six times this week for all kinds of unneeded procedures, and Mom just pays them off without blinking an eye.

Maybe it’s time I got emancipated from these two…

A better model for simplifying the exercise might be:
Water = debt
Cup = what we can afford

We have a 21oz cup that we are trying to fill with 38oz of water. Our leaders took an eyedropper and removed 1 drop of water from the cup to make room for the 17oz of water that won’t fit into our cup.

It’s completely irrelevant where the water comes from, what it’s used for and who needs it. The simple fact is, at this moment in time our cup is only so big and we have a certain amount of water that we have to carry.

Liberals want a bigger cup.
Conservatives want less water.

If we assume there will be some inflation, then paying back the debt with inflated dollars is one way around this. If we can jumpstart the economy and have a bigger tax base, this is another way to solve the problem. Raising taxes (or at least not cutting them) on the wealthy seems like another way to reduce the deficit.

I long for reasonable debate on this but so long as politicians assume you are stupid enough to fall for their platitudes and finger pointing then no one will be accountable and focused on fixing the problem in a reasonable manner that doesn;t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Until that happens I’d rather have the Dems in charge. They seem less greedy.