Are
you smart enough to vote?
By Mencken’s Ghost
March 17, 2012
To be smart
enough to vote, you should at least know the basics about deficits and debt.
Here are two questions to determine if you’re smart enough:
Imagine
that you and your family have $22,000 in annual income but spend $38,000. What is your deficit for the year?
Answer: $16,000
($38,000 - $22,000)
Now
imagine that you made up the difference between what you earned and what
you spent by borrowing the $16,000. The
$16,000 is in addition to $142,000 that you have already borrowed to pay
off deficits from previous years. And in addition to the $16,000 and
$142,000, there is $500,000 that you have promised in writing to pay to
other creditors.
What is your total debt?
Answer: $158,000
($16,000 + $142,000)
You are probably saying “Whoa!” at this
point as you wonder why the $500,000 hasn’t been added to the $158,000 to get a
grand total of $658,000 of debt. After all, the proper arithmetic is as
follows:
$16,000
(deficit for the year)
$142,000
(debt for prior years’ deficits)
$500,000 (other
obligations)
$658,000
(total debt)
Well, according to our great federal
government, which has a huge Department of Education
that monitors national test scores in arithmetic, the proper calculation is to
ignore the $500,000. Why? Well, there is no arithmetic or ethical reason for
doing so--in fact it is crooked and immoral to do so, but this is what the
federal government does when calculating its own debt, so it must be okay.
Let me explain with actual numbers for the
federal government.
First, I’ll add eight zeroes to the
numbers listed above. I’m doing this because the listed numbers are an
approximation of the federal deficit and debt but with eight zeroes left off
the figures. When the eight zeroes are added back, the numbers are as follows:
$1,600,000,000,000
(current federal deficit)
$14,200,000,000,000
(federal debt for prior years’ deficits)
$50,000,000,000,000 (other
obligations of federal government)
$65,800,000,000,000
(total federal debt)
As you can see, the total federal debt is
$65.8 trillion, or $66 trillion in rounded numbers. But federal bureaucrats,
members of Congress, the president, and the crackerjack American media report
the debt as $16 trillion, in rounded numbers, not $66 trillion. In other words,
the lying sacks of crap don’t count the other $50 trillion that the federal
government owes.
What makes up the $50 trillion? The lion’s share is the difference between what the
government owes in Social Security and Medicare obligations to present and
future retirees and what is left in the Social Security Trust
Fund, which politicians have been using as a piggybank for decades to buy votes
by giving voters free stuff. Essentially, politicians took money from workers’
paychecks to fund Social Security and Medicare and then stole the money to fund
other spending. (Note: There are
also massive shortfalls in funding for public-sector pensions at the state and
municipal levels of government.)
Again, the national debt is actually $66
trillion, not $16 trillion, when the missing $50 trillion is added back in. To put this number in perspective, the total debt is
about 440% of the annual gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States.
To compare, the debt of the Greek
government is about 140% of Greece’s
GDP.
Having looked at the real numbers, let’s
return to the opening question: Are you smart enough to vote?
The answer is
a definite no if you hear politicians say that the national debt is $16
trillion instead of $66 trillion and then you vote for them instead of
guffawing in their faces and calling them lying sacks of crap.
___________________
Mencken’s Ghost is the nom de plume of an
Arizona
writer who can be reached at ccan2@aol.com or ghost@menckensghost.com.
