Ecomonics 101, or: Why We are Pretty Much Screwed

Unemployment is over 10%. In actuality, the rate is about 15%.

Federal debt for each person stands at $40,000 and rising.

Our current load of debt is greater than the total economies of the United Kingdom, Australia, and China. Combined.

Combined Federal tax rate over all income ranges: approximately 22%

Combined ACTUAL tax rate, including excise taxes, previous sales taxes paid by end consumers, state and local taxes, governmental fees and property taxes: 58%

Let's look at what that number means for a moment: Say you are in the top 5 percent of income earners as a Senator (yes, those Senators railing against those evil rich people are among them). That means that your income of $162,200 has actual buying power, after taxes, of $68,124. But most likely you are not in those upper income brackets, so lets say you make $40,000 a year as a desk jockey. Total spending power? $16,800. Swirl that around in your mouth for a second to see how that tastes and then spit it out and tell me how we need more taxes.

The truth is that the numbers above are an average, and the ones at the top are paying closer to 70% all total. Make a cool million? Try $300,000. And those are the people who sign our paychecks.

What taxes really are amounts to lost opportunity, the amount of money we ourselves could be using to make our lives better. Now I am not saying that the effective tax rate should be zero, there are things which our society requires of all of us. Things like roads to get goods from point A to point B. There is the judicial system to apply simple laws to make certain no person or entity can behave in a predatory way towards us. A military and police force to keep us safe and see to it that all obey the rule of those simple laws. But other than that it is a scheme to take from one and give to another. And that other has not earned what you worked for.

And yet even at these tax rates, we cannot feed the beast enough to make ends meet. We are currently sitting upon a 12.3 Trillion dollar deficit, or to break that down to individual liability, just over $40,000 per man, woman, and child in the United States. With interest added in, try on $177,000 per person.

Think that sounds crushing? Just wait...

The total deficit when you take into account unfunded "entitlements" such as Social Security, Medicare, and the prescription drug benefits we have extended to our people, total debt obligation stands at $107.2 Trillion dollars. To put that in perspective, let's say we sold off everything in America today for market price to pay everything we currently owe and all those liabilities. That would leave us with about $32.4 Trillion dollars. In the hole.

That's right, if we sold off ALL the assets of the U.S. we would still be on the line for $32 trillion. And at our current GDP the entire weight of our economy, every dollar made in it, it would still take 100% tax rates almost 20 years to pay it off. Too bad for us we can't survive that long without buying food.

If you want to check the numbers on this, go wild. Just head to http://www.usdebtclock.org/ ,though by the time you see it, the numbers will be even worse. The site is not partisan, drawing from The Treasury Department, Fed, Census Bureau, and other official State organizations.

Remember this next time a modern liberal says taxes are not high enough, that we all are not "doing our fair share". Or the next time a politician tells you oh-so-suavely that we "need" another program. Ask that politician or talking head what their plans to pay for the ones we have are.

One of the elegantly beautiful things about true conservatism is that is costs so very little money. If you cannot do it alone, you rely upon your family, your friends, and your contacts built up through a lifetime of good behavior and honest dealings. The government doesn't pay a cent for it. If you choose to be a prick, to burn bridges or cheat people, you soon find yourself starving. It's a built in cultural safety mechanism that forces you to act in an upright and kind way to your fellow man.

Contrast that to today.

If you are a person from a poor background you have the option to completely disown yourself from your community, to treat everyone as a stepping stone or as a source for a possible handout. No genuine concern needed for your family or the people around you whatsoever. But after destroying all your options through your own selfish behavior, you can always apply to the State and sit around for a check on the 1st.

If you come from a well heeled segment of society, you can cheat others with impunity, treat your business partners and your customers like walking ATM's with no concern for their well being nor the damage your actions might cause others. And when that house of cards falls, when those tricky investments fall through and the people who depended on you for their livelihood have come with torches and pitchforks to your gates, don't you worry either. The State can come to your aid too, with millions or even billions of dollars to bail you out. Just tack it onto the bill we already couldn't afford (even if we sold off everything in the entire nation).

At this point one of two things can happen. Option one is that the people as a whole, or at least a majority, will see what they have done in voting themselves an ever larger slice of the pie and say, for the lives of their children and grandchildren, "No More." It would be hard. There would be an actual body-count as those who fall off the public trough and have severed their societal ties cannot make ends meet and die horribly. Think hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. Option two, the more likely option, is that we will see the train coming but think that some miracle will save us. We will continue to allow ourselves to be bought by crooked and cynical politicians who have their own re-election, rather than the actual good of the nation, in mind. There, as well, would be an actual body-count as our entire system falls apart and even people who did right and responsible things by their community are swept up in the times that follow. Think tens of millions.

This is not some end-times calamity rant, just taking lessons from history and applying the current facts. And the facts are not comforting. If anyone out there has any other options, I am all ears.