I'm sure readers are as fed up as I am with the bleating cries of politicians wanting more stimulus spending, more taxes on the rich, and more entitlement spending. I thought it might be instructive to take a look at the cold, hard reality of where our Government spending is right now.
These graphs from the Heritage Foundation all use official economic statistics - there's nothing made up or guessed at. They give a true picture of our financial situation in all its grimness. I've only used four of them. There are many more at the link. Highly recommended reading.
First, let's look at the growth in Federal government spending versus the growth in US household income since 1970.
Clearly, such growth is absolutely unsustainable. Even present levels of expenditure are causing real harm to US taxpayers, forced to pay for them willy-nilly.
If Federal expenditure continues to grow, there will be a couple of really disastrous consequences.
Unless we radically change direction, that's what's staring us in the face right now. If those deficits and debt levels come to pass, they'll make our present economic woes seem like a Sunday school picnic by comparison.
Given those realities, what about cries that the 'rich' should 'pay their share', and that tax breaks should be given to the middle class, but not to the rich? Let's look at who pays what in current taxation, shall we?
In other words, the 'rich' are already paying through the nose for our Government's profligacy. If they're made to pay even more . . . how long, do you think, will it be before many of those 'rich' people decide that they'd rather earn less, and keep more of what they earn? Or, failing that, how many of them will take their capital and invest it - and themselves - overseas, in countries that value their economic contribution sufficiently highly to allow them to keep more of it for themselves, without trying to tax to death 'the goose that lays the golden eggs'?
Next time someone tells you that we aren't taxing the rich enough, show them that graph. Next time someone calls for more Government stimulus spending, add it to the levels of indebtedness already incurred, and ask them how that's going to help us in the long run. It can't, of course - it's a recipe for disaster . . . but far too many of our politicians seem to ignore that reality.
Remember in November. If any of your elected politicians supported the policies that have got us into this mess, vote the bastards out! And make sure that when you elect others, who promise to fix this mess, you hold their feet to the fire and make sure they act on their promises!
There's simply no way in the world that our current major entitlement programs - Social Security and Medicare - can survive in their present form. We don't have the money to pay for them (see above). If you're relying on them to secure your future, you need to be making alternate plans, right now.
Peter
7 comments:
Who is John Galt?
More importantly, WHERE is John Galt???
He's over at johngaltfla.com, heh, heh, heh.
And has been screaming his head off about this on-comimg freight-train for a couple of yers now.
"Next time someone tells you that we aren't taxing the rich enough, show them that graph."
Anyone that believes our tax system is sustainable as is, or worse, can sustain the further abuse that is surely coming would not have the level of intelligence to understand a fortune cookie, much less a graph.
The last few years I have started preparing my own taxes online. One thing that I noticed right off the bat was that I never actually paid taxes. I am active duty military, so a large portion of my income is non-taxable. The years that I deploy, my family actually falls well below the poverty line even. What I found interesting was that the less money I had withheld in taxes, the more money I received in my return. Usually to the tune of a few thousand more than what I put in. Instead of me paying taxes to the government each year, the government pays taxes to me!
That is in no way sustainable.
If you go to http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/23408.html You'll find a downloadable Excel file with the latest IRS data (Tax year '08) that you can play with. With a deficit of $1.4 Trillion, you could take every single penny of income from the top 1% of incomes reported and not balance the budget. 100% confiscation is not enough. So this little game with the Bush "tax cuts for the wealthy" is just political theater.
How can that possibly be sustained? We need to be paying down the debt, not increasing it.
Tell me, sir, do you really believe that politicians ignore the reality?
They do not. The politicians are following a plan to ruin the economy and capitalism (or what remains of it), and if you notice, they are making real "progress" on it.
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