". . . a republic, if you can keep it."
Lawmakers on Friday were handed the official score card on President Obama’s proposed budget for 2013.
The Congressional Budget Office concluded that the president’s budget would add less to the country’s debt than if lawmakers simply extend a number of favored policies, such as the Bush-era tax cuts. It would also shrink annual deficits to the point where they no longer are growing faster than the economy.
(Read more)
Great lecture by a great speaker, Tom Woods:
$77.1 billion from 1995-2010
1995 $2,934,905,729
1996 $2,119,059,177
1997 $2,906,300,158
1998 $5,064,623,703
1999 $7,567,377,481
2000 $8,058,490,168
2001 $5,982,553,435
2002 $2,498,438,680
2003 $3,439,944,865
2004 $5,308,631,480
2005 $10,138,944,101
2006 $5,796,967,433
2007 $3,805,912,131
2008 $4,194,188,347
2009 $3,787,926,179
2010 $3,519,507,154
#1 During fiscal year 2011, the U.S. government spent 3.7 trillion dollars but it only brought in 2.4 trillion dollars.
#2 When Ronald Reagan took office, the U.S. national debt was less than 1 trillion dollars. Today, the U.S. national debt is over 15.2 trillion dollars.
#3 During 2011, U.S. debt surpassed 100 percent of GDP for the first time ever.
#4 According to Wikipedia, the monetary base “consists of coins, paper money (both as bank vault cash and as currency circulating in the public), and commercial banks’ reserves with the central bank.” Currently the U.S. monetary base is sitting somewhere around 2.7 trillion dollars. So if you went out and gathered all of that money up it would only make a small dent in our national debt. But afterwards there would be no currency for anyone to use.
#5 The U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt during fiscal 2011.
#6 The U.S. government has total assets of 2.7 trillion dollars and has total liabilities of 17.5 trillion dollars. The liabilities do not even count 4.7 trillion dollars of intragovernmental debt that is currently outstanding.
#7 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.
#8 It is being projected that the U.S. national debt will surpass 23 trillion dollars in 2015.
#9 According to the GAO, the U.S. government is facing 34 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities for social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare. These are obligations that we have already committed ourselves to but that we do not have any money for.
#10 Others estimate that the unfunded liabilities of the U.S. government now total over 117 trillion dollars.
#11 According to the GAO, the ratio of debt held by the public to GDP is projected to reach 287 percent of GDP by 2086.
#12 Others are much less optimistic. A recently revised IMF policy paper entitled “An Analysis of U.S. Fiscal and Generational Imbalances: Who Will Pay and How?” projects that U.S. government debt will rise to about 400 percent of GDP by the year 2050.
#13 The United States government is responsible for more than a third of all the government debt in the entire world.
#14 If you divide up the national debt equally among all U.S. taxpayers, each taxpayer would owe approximately $134,685.
#15 Mandatory federal spending surpassed total federal revenue for the first time ever in fiscal 2011. That was not supposed to happen until 50 years from now.
#16 Between 2007 and 2010, U.S. GDP grew by only 4.26%, but the U.S. national debt soared by 61% during that same time period.
#17 During Barack Obama’s first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.
#18 When you add up all spending by the federal government, state governments and local governments, it comes to 46.6% of GDP.
#19 Our nation is more addicted to government checks than ever before. In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for 18.4% of all income.
#20 U.S. households are now actually receiving more money directly from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes.
#21 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.
#22 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#23 In 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers. According to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are now only 1.75 full-time private sector workers for each person that is receiving Social Security benefits in the United States.
#24 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than they were projecting just last year.
#25 Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.
#26 If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion each and every year.
#27 If you were alive when Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now. But this year alone the U.S. government is going to add more than a trillion dollars to the national debt.
#28 If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.
#29 A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the globe more than 380 times. That amount of money would still not be enough to pay off the U.S. national debt.
#30 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 470,000 years to pay off the national debt.
#31 If Bill Gates gave every penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.
#32 According to Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, the U.S. is facing a “fiscal gap” of over 200 trillion dollars in the future. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article that he did for CNN….
The government’s total indebtedness – its fiscal gap – now stands at $211 trillion, by my arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the difference, measured in present value, between all projected future spending obligations – including our huge defense expenditures and massive entitlement programs, as well as making interest and principal payments on the official debt – and all projected future taxes.
#33 If you add up all forms of debt in the United States (government, business and consumer), it comes to more than 56 trillion dollars. That is more than $683,000 per family. Unfortunately, the average amount of savings per family in the U.S. is only about $4,735.
#34 The U.S. national debt is now more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913. (Read more)
Main stream writer “discovers” what libertarians have been saying all along:
The public is in a foul mood over increasing college costs and student debt burdens. Talk of a “higher education bubble” is common on the contrarian right, while the Occupy Wall Street crowd is calling for a strike in which in which ex-students refuse to pay off their loans.
This week, President Barack Obama held a summit with a dozen higher-education leaders “to discuss rising college costs and strategies to reduce these costs while improving quality.” The administration plans to introduce some policy proposals in the run-up to the presidential campaign.
Any serious policy reform has to start by considering a heretical idea: Federal subsidies intended to make college more affordable may have encouraged rapidly rising tuitions.
It’s not as crazy as it might sound.
As veteran education-policy consultant Arthur M. Hauptman notes in a recent essay: “There is a strong correlation over time between student and parent loan availability and rapidly rising tuitions. Common sense suggests that growing availability of student loans at reasonable rates has made it easier for many institutions to raise their prices, just as the mortgage interest deduction contributes to higher housing prices.” (Read more)
Perhaps the illustrious author encountered Peter Schiff’s videos, one of which I posted and summarized here.
What is really amazing to me is not this debacle, but the fact that so many seemingly intelligent people really believe that government keeps our food safe.
How did we get to the point that bureaucrats in Washington DC are telling the rest of us what is or is not a vegetable?
Congress passed a revised agriculture appropriations bill last week, essentially making it easier to count pizza sauce as a serving of vegetables. The move has drawn widespread outrage from consumer advocates and pundits, who see “pizza is a vegetable.” as outlandish.
There’s just one little misperception: Congress didn’t declare pizza to be a vegetable. And, from a strictly nutritional standpoint, there’s decent evidence that lawmakers didn’t exactly bungle this decision.
Let’s revisit the facts: Despite what one might expect from the headlines, if you scour the agriculture appropriations bill, referenced in numerous stories, you won’t find a single mention of the word “pizza,” or even “vegetable,” for that matter.
This is not a fight over pizza. It is, instead, a fight about tomato paste. Specifically, it’s a fight about how much of the product counts as one serving of vegetables.
Right now, tomato paste gets a sort of special treatment under school lunch regulations. Just “an eighth of a cup of tomato paste is credited with as much nutritional value as half a cup of vegetables,” my colleague Dina ElBoghdady explained last week. (Read more)
Happy Thanksgiving!
This year, I feel thankful for having discovered the Austrian School of Economics and the true meaning of liberty.
It frees me from thinking, for example, that the national debt,
$15,051,852,998,637.98 as of November 23, 2011
is my fault or my problem. It is not. It is the fault of psychopathic politicians and the problem of the millions of people who’ve become depended on their handouts and their brutality.
It is only my problem to the extent that our politicians will try to steal as much as they can from me to delay the consequences of their irresponsibility.
Knowing the rules of the game feels empowering. I can proceed honestly and without delusion. I can make more honest calculations about risk and reward.
Historical Debt Outstanding – Annual 1950 – 1999
The first fiscal year for the U.S. Government started Jan. 1, 1789. Congress changed the beginning of the fiscal year from Jan. 1 to Jul. 1 in 1842, and finally from Jul. 1 to Oct. 1 in 1977 where it remains today.
To find more historical information, visit The Public Debt Historical Information archives.
09/30/1999 5,656,270,901,615.43
09/30/1998 5,526,193,008,897.62
09/30/1997 5,413,146,011,397.34
09/30/1996 5,224,810,939,135.73
09/29/1995 4,973,982,900,709.39
09/30/1994 4,692,749,910,013.32
09/30/1993 4,411,488,883,139.38
09/30/1992 4,064,620,655,521.66
09/30/1991 3,665,303,351,697.03
09/28/1990 3,233,313,451,777.25
09/29/1989 2,857,430,960,187.32
09/30/1988 2,602,337,712,041.16
09/30/1987 2,350,276,890,953.00
09/30/1986 2,125,302,616,658.42
09/30/1985 * 1,823,103,000,000.00
09/30/1984 * 1,572,266,000,000.00
09/30/1983 * 1,377,210,000,000.00
09/30/1982 * 1,142,034,000,000.00
09/30/1981 * 997,855,000,000.00
09/30/1980 * 907,701,000,000.00
09/30/1979 * 826,519,000,000.00
09/30/1978 * 771,544,000,000.00
09/30/1977 * 698,840,000,000.00
06/30/1976 * 620,433,000,000.00
06/30/1975 * 533,189,000,000.00
06/30/1974 475,059,815,731.55
06/30/1973 458,141,605,312.09
06/30/1972 427,260,460,940.50
06/30/1971 398,129,744,455.54
06/30/1970 370,918,706,949.93
06/30/1969 353,720,253,841.41
06/30/1968 347,578,406,425.88
06/30/1967 326,220,937,794.54
06/30/1966 319,907,087,795.48
06/30/1965 317,273,898,983.64
06/30/1964 311,712,899,257.30
06/30/1963 305,859,632,996.41
06/30/1962 298,200,822,720.87
06/30/1961 288,970,938,610.05
06/30/1960 286,330,760,848.37
06/30/1959 284,705,907,078.22
06/30/1958 276,343,217,745.81
06/30/1957 270,527,171,896.43
06/30/1956 272,750,813,649.32
06/30/1955 274,374,222,802.62
06/30/1954 271,259,599,108.46
06/30/1953 266,071,061,638.57
06/30/1952 259,105,178,785.43
06/29/1951 255,221,976,814.93
06/30/1950 257,357,352,351.04
From www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo4.htm
tories of eye-popping waste and abuse of power among Greece’s bureaucrats are legion, including officials who hire their wives, and managers who submit $38,000 bills for office curtains.
The work force in Greece’s Parliament is so bloated, according to a local press investigation, that some employees do not even bother to come to work because there are not enough places for all of them to sit.
But as Europe looks for any sign of hope that Greece is on the road to reform, there are growing concerns about its ability — and willingness — to trim its payroll, a crucial element in bringing expenses under control enough to win continued international financing. (Read more)
I’m pleasantly surprised to see this reported on. Usually, anybody who calls for cuts is condemned as a right wing fascist nut job.
Robert Higgs is author of Crisis and Leviathan
If this man wins the primary, I’m going to have rethink my portfolio. I’d be thrilled to do that.
At 7:40 he announces that as president, he wouldn’t accept a salary higher than the median U.S. income: $39k.
Moscow on the Hudson because people are surrounded by impressive monuments and incompetent government.
Praise God that Hurricane Irene didn’t pound New York City nearly as severely as the State and its media threatened it would!
No church this morning: since the City shut down the subways and buses, congregants can’t assemble. Mayor “Nanny” Bloomberg advised us all to sleep late, as if neither the Lord nor His day of worship exist. And yet Christians support the State.
Meanwhile, the storm graphically proved the superiority of freedom and the market: while Our silly Rulers cowered and quavered, bars and restaurants posted placards: “Pre-Hurricane Party! C’mon in!” The tax-supported library didn’t even bother opening yesterday though we enjoyed a fine lunch of shrimp chow fon and chicken with cashews right next door. The City ordered everyone to stay home, and tried to force obedience by pulling the plug on public transit, but workers valiantly struggled to reach their jobs. A friend told me over our chow fon that he’d gone to his office that morning without knowing whether he’d gain access to the building or not: the staff that unlocks its doors might have stayed home since the subways were closing before their shift ended. In fact, when he arrived, not only did the porter admit him, he was on the phone with his replacement, asking whether he should pull a double shift or if the guy would find a way in from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Yep, Mr. Replacement said, he’d be there.
The State: utterly useless. The market: brave, inspiring, dedicated, dependable — and even providing delicious dinners and open offices despite impending rain. (Read more from lewrockwell.com)