Insanity

A few numbers to begin with:

The Size of the National Debt: $10,728,600,293,949.76

The Number of American Households: 105,480,101

National Debt Per American Household: $101,704.66

Non-Interest Federal Expenditures 2008: $2,641,000,000,000

Avg. Yearly Federal Obligation Per Household: $25,037.90

Let's assume, as a nation, we actually wanted to reduced the national debt to $0, over 30 years. At an interest rate of 5%, that would mean payments of $6,616.03 per year, per household. When you add that to our $25,037.90 per family federal budget obligation, that would mean every American family would have to come up with an average of:

$31,653.93--Annually.

Of course, the averages are a little bit more depressing--if that is possible--when you consider that the federal income tax burden falls differently on different families. Most families pay social security withholding tax through their paychecks, but as many as 38% of American families pay no federal income tax at all.

Well, if we don't want to create an international economic catastrophe, we have to pay the debt, interest and principle, but the other figure--the $25,037.90 per family per year--consists of $10,807 which is called "discretionary." The Federal Workers at the Security and Exchange Commission, for example, got about a billion of that last year. (You remember the S.E.C.? They were the well-paid federal civil servants who couldn't stop a $50 billion dollar bandit? Bernard Madoff?) $324 billion dollars went to welfare and unemployment programs, but, wait that's not even included in the "discretionary" category. That is considered "mandatory" spending.

The bottom line is that both Republicans and Democrats have presided over a system that transfers money from net tax-payers to net tax-takers, and now, our elected representatives have the gall to say that another trillion dollars of this will "stimulate" the economy.



Another way of putting it: the private sector--which foots this entire bill--is having financial trouble, so..naturally..increasing its debt service will--what?-- "stimulate it" to work harder? Picture two working parents--dad runs a family business and mom cuts hair at a beauty salon. They take home $75,000 a year. The federal government is saying, "heah--folks--between you and me--Barney Frank and his Freddie MAC purchased votes on the banking committee have crashed the real estate market and created world-wide financial havoc. We want to solve that by obligating you to pay for more federal salaries and entitlement payments. Does that work for you? It works for us. You have just two votes between you and these ACORN guys (another Federal subsidy) can register as many as 100 dead people to vote--just in your precinct, so no hard feelings, okay? It's just a numbers issue."

At the root of this--very simply--is human greed, but it's not the human greed of well-paid corporate CEOs. (I'm not talking about the ones who took a bonus with TARP money.) Getting mad at talented, and well-compensated corporate executives is something like getting mad at Kobe Bryant for being good at basketball. If we don't pay talented people well, they will take their talents elsewhere. International corporations have already begun to poach Wall Street talent. The redistributive "economic justice" of demagogues promising to put a chicken in every pot is the real culprit, and the slothful greed of the American people is the root disease.



SIN, in other words, is the problem. If we look to our political leaders to "sock it to someone else," so that we can have the goodies, we are announcing, in effect, that we are too lazy, and too ignorant, to provide for ourselves.

It's a spiritual issue, but did you hear a sermon on that today?

Probably not--unless you're still reading.