Subject: Our fiscal situation...please watch.
If this video doesn't "make you a little nervous" then god help us. I know many will quibble over the figures but putting an ant on a railroad track doesn't derail a runaway train.
This puts our fiscal situation into real perspective.
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7 comments:
Ok... and?
We have a lot of debt, this is true. Good thing the Republicans voted this week on the perfect plan to fix things: destroy medicare and give huge tax breaks to billionaires!
Mission accomplished!
Amusingly, the CBO slams Obama's 2012 budget for exactly the same reason as Republican proposals -- randomly slashing taxes provides a small short-term spending boost that is overwhelmed by the long-term debt it racks up.
In fact, they say of the two-year extension on Bush tax cuts: [T]he 2010 tax act had the largest impact on the deficit over the projection period. On net, CBO projects that the tax act will reduce revenues by $721 billion and increase outlays by $136 billion through 2020.
Here's the CBO report this video quotes.
I actually agree with the general thrust of the video -- debt certainly isn't good -- but it made me wonder: what if we really did slash all the government programs Tea Partiers are calling for and let people and companies pay for their own health care, roads, and so forth?
If you think the federal debt is huge... well, just check this chart out. The financial sector, households, and other businesses each hold more debt than the government!
RE: the debt chart. Its not surprising that state and local governments have the highest debt numbers. Everytime the federal gov't cuts spending, the burden gets shifted down to states and cities in one way or another. Thanks for the legacy of debt, Ronald Reagan
The national budget doesn't work like your typical home budget, just by the way. The so-called "Deficit Crisis" is this decades Fear Fear Scary Scary booga booga since terrorism has become a tired useless waste of time.
The so-called "debt crisis" is mostly manufactured - yes the nation does have debt, but the ways of "dealing" with it are manufactured - in order to *benefit* the usual suspects: the upper 1%.
And btw, both Soc Sec and Medicare have their own income streams via taxes on income and are NOT part of the US national "debt." Read up on it and question all the various pie charts that you'll be seeing over the next while.
Pete Peterson & his merry band of fatcat brigands have been itching for decades to dismantle Soc Sec in order to force citizens to invest in that great ponzi scheme casino called Wall St. As most know, in the casion, it's the house that always wins.
Be very suspicious of those who wax lyrical about nat'l debt and the various ways to "deal" with it. Most are lies, and most involve cutting taxes - even more - for the super wealthy. Guess why? Guess who benefits from that? One clue: cutting taxes for the mega-wealthy will in no way "improve" the debt. I guarantee it.
100 Percent Tax on Those Earning $500K or More Leaves U.S. With $839B Deficit
Monday, April 18, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey
President Barack Obama smiles during an interview with The Associated Press, Friday, April 15, 2011, in Chicago. (AP photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
In fact, in tax year 2009 (the last year for which IRS has published statistics), the combined gross income of all Americans earning $500,000 per year or more was about $1.03 trillion ($1,029,256,075,000.00) of which these Americans paid $256.7 billion ($256,699,499,000.00) in federal income taxes.
That left this group of Americans about $773 billion ($772,556,576,000.00) in income that the federal government had not taken away in income taxes.
Also during tax year 2009, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt, the national debt increased by $1.61 trillion ($1,611,544,812,899.90).
If the federal government had increased the income-tax rate on Americans earning more than $500,000 to 100 percent in 2009--and seized the remaining $773 billion in income it had not initially taken away from these Americans--that would have closed the federal deficit for the year to $839 billion ($838,988,236,899.90).
After taxing away 100 percent of the income of those earning $500,000 or more in 2009, the Obama administration would still have needed to increase taxes on Americans earning less than $500,000 by a total of $839 billion--just to balance federal accounts for the year.
@ Anon
And?
No one has proposed a 100% tax. The big, terrible, socialistic tax proposed by Obama on the richest 1% is... 39.6%. In other words, the same amount they paid under Reagan, the same amount they paid under Clinton, and well below what they paid for the majority of the 20th century.
The spending amount could be brought down lots of ways: finally end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, trim the bloated defense budget, end oil and agriculture subsidies, stop giving tax rebates to the largest and most profitable companies, etc etc.
Instead, the solution proposed has been this: cut taxes for billionaires and tell old people to fuck off and die.
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