Posted on 05/24/2012 10:07:34 AM PDT by RobinMasters
What would happen if Congress had to apply the regulations in Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, and other corporate accounting law to its own balance sheets? Instead of talking about trillion-dollar deficits, USA Today reports from its analysis, we’d be talking about five times that amount:
The typical American household would have paid nearly all of its income in taxes last year to balance the budget if the government used standard accounting rules to compute the deficit, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
Under those accounting practices, the government ran red ink last year equal to $42,054 per household — nearly four times the official number reported under unique rules set by Congress.
A U.S. household’s median income is $49,445, the Census reports.
The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
That’s quite a lot of money
Bad news for us.
MUCH worse news for children not yet born, whose parents may not even be born yet.
Will they piss on our graves? At a minimum.
Literally, high treason.
Literally, high treason.
Trillion is the new Billion
Is there a good, simple way to explain to laypersons why/how federal debt negatively effects our private economy?
IMHO, the GOP can’t win the argument if they can’t make it simple enough for anyone to understand and why they should care.
Giving comparisons of family budgets is not very useful because families cannot just print more money to cover a short fall and government uses accounting tricks not available to anyone but government and that would be illegal if used by anyone else.
I think your tagline says it perfectly. I just think that a lot of Americans don’t care. You and I have serious concerns for the future. We love our country and what it stands for. We do not want to impoverish our children and grandchildren to live it up today. But, in my opinion, there is a significant portion of the population who would milk every cent out of the system and could care less who foots the bill or even if it leads to financial collapse. The Democrats, of course, exploit this attitude.
“Is there a good, simple way to explain to laypersons why/how federal debt negatively effects our private economy?”
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Thanks to the truly criminal and traitorous activity of the federal government and the Federal Reserve, I don’t think the enormous, historically unprecedented US debt actually is affecting the prvate sector economy, just yet.
As long as the government keeps dollars flowing into the system the underlying and looming catastrophe remains hidden.
For apathetic laypersons how about these very simple analogies:
It is a lot of fun to spend money at the mall. It is not so fun paying off the resultant credit card bill.
The Communists in DC are not only NOT paying even the minimum payment on that bill, they are, in addition to the interest on that debt, accelerating the base amount that is due.
Ask them it they did that for even 1 year, where they think it would lead?
If they still don’t get it, direct them to this sobering jaw dropper:
- Ask them how they would feel if that was a pictorial representation of their personal debt.
- Note that the overall US debt increases at a rate of about 1 million dollars every minute.
- Also, point to other modules on the chart, such as their personal, individual liability in this oncoming inevitable cataclysm
We can't wrap our minds around trillions. It's like trying to view all the stars in the sky at once.
“One death is a tragedy, one million deaths is a statistic.” - Joseph Stalin
“families cannot just print more money to cover a short fall”
If the folks you discuss this with consider printing money as a real solution, then you should explain how that inflates prices and lowers the value of their dollars.
egg-zackly.now we're getting somewhere. Romney needs this with a 60 second explanation short enough and clear enough for everyone to understand.
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