It still amazes me how very easy it is to look at the writings of history, and apply them to current events. Somewhere along the line, we have forgotten this message of forty or fifty years ago.
For today’s lesson we turn once again to the wisdom of Barkley. In clear and concise terms, Barkley explains socialism in a nutshell and provides you with his opinion of socialist politicians. Go Read it.
Over at MHI, Larry has been letting the creative juices flow. As a result, he has a theory that he hopes is wrong. The scary thing about his theory is that it is one of many plausible scenarios.
The RentenDollar: A conspiracy theory OR Please tell me where I’m wrong. « Monster Hunter Nation.
I have been trying to stay way from Presidential politics since the election. I haven’t been 100% successful but, the goal was to provide some opportunity for the administration to find their way. Set forth a plan that perpetuated the values that this country was founded on.
Unfortunately, we have (and continue) to see:
a.) Missteps from the executive branch
b.) Exploitation from the Congressional branch
c.) Degradation in the principles, and values that helped this nation achieve an unparalleled level of success and way of life.
It is time to weigh in on some of these issues. It is time to start swaying opinions, and start preparing for the next set of elections. Many of the folks in office today are not seeing the reality of life, or the consequences of their actions. Why is it that so many on the outside are able to quickly point out the risks and issues inherent in the proposals on the table.
Road Trip!!
Somehow it was funnier in Animal House…I want to stay home.
Recently Scott Adams took a cursory look at the economics of Nuclear Energy in the US, and he rasied some great points. Ultimately the issue is much larger than just building plants, and disposing of the waste material. Go take a look here. The best thing about Scott’s posts are the discussion that it generates. There are a lot of intelligent folks that get opinionated in the comments section.
Gotta love the conclusion though:
The U.S. nuclear power debate usually gets characterized as a wrestling match between irrational scaredy cats and clear-headed rationalists, refereed by a comically incompetent government. The only thing I know for sure is that no one can understand the economics of a 40-year investment.
I was just looking for .45 ACP at Midway for grins…0 in stock. Incredible!
So, I recently wrote a post about one possible redirection of the bailout funds. In it I tried to put some scale to the numbers that we are talking about. Then I reposted some work that was done to help put the physical prescence of the dollars that we are talking about into context.
Today, I present to you this picture to help put things in greater context.
President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s.
This has been making the blogging and e-mail rounds for a while now. But, it is always a good perspective.
A billion here, a billion there. Pretty soon we’re talking real money =-)
A billion dollars…
A hundred billion dollars…
Eight hundred billion dollars….
One TRILLION dollars…
What does that look like? I mean, these various numbers are tossed around like so many doggie treats, so I thought I’d take Google Sketchup out for a test drive and try to get a sense of what exactly a trillion dollars looks like.
We’ll start with a $100 dollar bill, currently the largest U.S. denomination in general circulation. Most everyone has seen them, slightly fewer have owned them; guaranteed to make friends wherever they go.
A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2″ thick and contains $10,000. Fits in your pocket easily and is more than enough for week or two of shamefully decadent fun.
Believe it or not, this next little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it.
While a measly $1 million looked a little unimpressive, $100 million is a little more respectable. It fits neatly on a standard pallet…
And $1 BILLION dollars… now we’re really getting somewhere…
Next we’ll look at ONE TRILLION dollars. This is that number we’ve been hearing so much about. What is a trillion dollars? Well, it’s a million-million. It’s a thousand billion. It’s a one followed by 12 zeros.
You ready for this?
It’s pretty surprising.
Go ahead…
Scroll down…
Ladies and gentlemen… I give you $1 trillion dollars…
Notice those pallets are double-stacked, and the little guy (That’d be you and me, the lowly taxpayer!) in the left corner is still there for “perspective.”
So the next time you hear someone toss around the phrase “a trillion dollars”… that’s what they’re talking about.
So let’s take this idea and explore and validate it:
Dear Mr. President,
Patriotic Retirement: There’s about 40 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them $1 million dollars apiece Severance Pay with these stipulations
1) They leave their jobs. Forty million job openings – Unemployment fixed.
2) They buy NEW American cars. Forty million cars ordered – Auto Industry fixed.
3) They either buy a house or pay off their mortgage - Housing Crisis fixed.
I am below this age cutoff but that’s ok. So I take my household, spending levels, saving levels etc. Keeping the numbers round… let’s say I spend 100K a year (really it is much less). I payoff the mortgage, buy a new car for cash, and save the balance. So let’s say that’s 800K in the bank. My annual spending has dropped, I am retired so my savings “expense” is gone. So let’s say that I am down to about 65K yr in spending now.
At the same time, I start a small home based business to keep from going insane and generate 30K / yr from that. In addition I earn 5% return annually on my 800K investment. Between the two I am back to 70K in spending money for the year which covers my expenses.
If I ask my wife to go back to work, and she winds up making 50% of her pre-kids salary. Let’s call that 40K / yr. Nice chunk of change to put in the college fund for the kids, but the important part is that we now have health and dental insurance.
So, simple example and yeah I think it could be a valid solution. So let’s do the math:
40 Million individuals x 1,000,000 USD = 40 million spent. Versus how many trillion in stimulus????
Let’s even be more generous. Let’s expand the age range and say we were able to attract 50 million takers. Additionally, we increase the allowance to 10 million per person. By my math, if I do not earn (but not lose) any thing on investments (just keep the cash under the mattress) I could spend 200K / yr and not run out of money for 50 yrs.
So to summarize, I and my family could live well with in our means and in an improved lifestyle if we wanted and probably not run out cash in my lifetime. If the government were to say, I have 500 million dollars to give away to 50 million people that meet these criteria. In order to receive this stimulus you must:
A. Quit your current job and not take a job at another employer. However, you may start a new business if you like.
B. Purchase a new vehicle from a specified list of automakers and vehicles. The criteria for the list is that over 50% of the vehicle and it’s components must be fabricated and assembled in the United States.
C. You either payoff your current mortage or if you do not have a mortgage you must purchase either a second home or a replacement home.
At the end of this effort the government has put forth 500 million USD in stimulus to individuals who will in turn generate market forces in industries that have been directly impacted by the current economic “crisis”. Corollary forces will come into play as these families purchase private health insurance, and increased consumer spending across several sectors takes place. Additionally, jobs that were held by these individuals are opened up for other individuals to fill either through promotions or through new hires. Bottom line, the unemployment market is suddenly impacted by a huge opportunity sweeping through multiple sectors. In turn, businesses will have an opportunity to fill the open positions with (possibly) less expensive employees. This will be particularly true in unionized industries where the experience and tenure scales will be shifted.
$500 million vs. How many trillion??? Just to put this in perspective we could run 2000 of these stimulus packages for $1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion) dollars.
Somewhere the math (and direction) in DC has lost it’s perspective in reality.
Or maybe it’s my math that’s off.
