Federal Spending, the Budget and the Deficit (Vanity)

ASB | 03/01/11 | ASB

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

The numbers thrown around when talking about money at the levels spent by the Federal Government are so big, they lose all meaning.

In order to understand it, I will reduce it to a simple household income idea. Let us assume that the Household in question brings home $50,000 a year. That will be the equivalent of the revenue of the U.S. Federal Government. The real number for the revenue of the Federal Government is $2,627,000,000,000. But we are going to peg that to $50,000 for the purposes of this explanation. That means that $1 of our "household" income is equivalent of $52,540,000.

So our "household" makes $50,000 a year. Ok, now what is it expected to spend?

The President has proposed spending of $3,729,000,000,000, or if we convert it, $70,974.50 for our "household".

So our "household" makes $50,000 this year, but will spend $70,974.50 this year. That doesn't seem wise, does it?

But it gets worse. This isn't the first year our "household" has gone into debt. In fact, the current Federal debt (money that we owe people) sits at $14,133,000,000,000, or if we convert it, our "household" owes $268,995.

What! We make $50,000 a year and we have run up $268,995 in credit card debt?!?

Yep.

Well there are some budget cuts being talked about, right? You bet there are. The Republicans want to cut $100,000,000,000 out of our budget. The Democrats are calling it draconian and reckless. But how much is $100,000,000,000 to our "household"?

$1,903.31

Our "household" makes $50,000 a year. It is planning on spending $70,974.50 this year. We already owe $268,995 in credit card debt. And cutting $1,903.31 a year is "draconian and reckless"?

We are overspending by $1,747.88 a month. Cutting $158.61 a month is not enough. And we don't need more income, we just need to learn to live within our means.

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

Today the Whitehouse announced it is open to cuts of $8,000,000,000. To our $50,000 a year "household" that is planning to overspend by $20,974.50 this year, that amounts to a $152.26 cut.

Big numbers confuse people, let's translate it into understood terms.

[NEMDF]

Thank you for sharing this. See if this mods will let you post this EVERY DAY to keep reminding us how bad things are and that we must keep the pressure on the GOP to try to turn the ship around.

[agere_contra]

+1

[Darth Reardon]

I had a lower number for revenue, and used $60,000 as a base income, but our numbers are close. Don't forget our unfunded liabilities, BTW.