Now, I really try hard to try and figure out what the bunch of idiots in DC are attempting to accomplish and really try hard to make some sense as to what each party is attempting to do and see through the bullshit.
But this has to be one of the single worst "hey look how hard a stance I'm taking!" I have ever seen.
To put it in a much easier to see perspective I made a cool graph using Excel. Numbers are in Billions (of USD, obviously)
So what exactly am I trying to say with this silly chart? Oh nothing, but the fact that these losers in DC can't seem to get a clue that's all.
The Green represents what the government takes in, and spends while the red represents what the government has to borrow to spend. Now before you say what the fuck, we are spending almost twice as much as we are taking in! Yes we are. Lets take a look at what all those zero's are getting us.
So well you take a look at that and break the numbers down you have about
954 Billion for Defense spending (doesn't even include R&D spending, but includes foreign aid)
878 Billion for Health (Medicare, Medicaid, etc.)
801 Billion for Pensions (includes social security)
496 Billion for Welfare (food stamps, unemployment, housing, etc.)
687 billion for the rest, which would include, federal jails, transportation, fbi, atf, education, epa, water, and lots of other crap
To give you an idea of how fucked we are with this deficit spending, the cost of 10 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan (taken from http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf ) was "only" 1.3 trillion
from that site:
If the FY2011 war request is approved, total war-related funding would reach almost $1.3 trillion,
including $802 billion for Iraq, $455 billion for Afghanistan, $29 billion for enhanced security, and $6
billion that cannot be allocated.
Good to know that we just happened to lose 6 billion dollars in there for no apparent reason, not like we could have used that for something useful like high speed rail right?
These wars need to stop. Period. The entitlements must be reformed. There is no way that we can sustain this out of control borrowing for much longer. In fact, someone even made a nice chart for me.
Something must be done NOW, because we are so fucked it isn't even funny. Good to see that the government will be out of money a good 5 years before I plan to retire... maybe I'll be able to have enough money by then to move to another country that isn't ran by fucking idiots who only care about their own pocketbooks and power than the good of the people. Fat chance, right?
Some possible band-aid solutions
1) Ending overseas wars and foreign aid. - Spend that money here at home, instead of pissing it away overseas. The amount of money we spend on this crap that we don't even need is absolutely insane. Especially since most of these countries don't even want our help in the first place. Remember during Clinton's presidency, we had one of the longest peace times in our history, and look at how successful we were in managing our budget and look at how successfully the monetary growth was? Employment was high, taxes were relatively lower, economic growth was rampant. It was great! The old fashioned way of "warring and borrowing our way to economic recovery " is no longer going to work, especially with the way the world economic markets work now and the fact that we don't manufacture as much stuff here in the US as we did during a total war.
2) Real reform of the health care system. - I don't have an answer to this but all I know is that Socialized medicine sucks, and so does our currently confusing system. Something in between (besides insurance companies, and massive government intrusion) might be a good solution.
3) End the marijuana wars, legalize pot - This could be a cash crop for the US, and a great source of agriculture and industrial growth. As you may or may not know, hemp can be used for more than just recreational purposes, and if you could tax the "freedom" its a win win situation is it not? Especially if it will reduce the nearly $15 billion dollars that we spend on the "war on drugs", its about as winnable as a "war on terror".
4) Privatize Some aspects of Social Security - Allow younger people to allocate a smaller percentage of their income to social security (with less benefit) over time and allow people incentive to, save money on their own, while reducing the future liability time bomb down the road.
5) Fix the foodstamps ridiculousness - There is no reason we should have such an abundant foodstamps program in this country where 33% of adults are obese. I do not have a problem giving assistance to the less fortunate but there is a problem when over 1 in 8 American adults and 1 in 4 kids is on foodstamps and 50% of those on foodstamps being obese! The fact that this program encourages government dependence and drives up the cost of food for everyone (including those that now need to get on food stamps because they can't afford food!) and promotes self destructive irresponsible behavior for the benefit of corporations and big banks is reprehensible.
Get this... JP Morgan is the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States. JP Morgan has contracted to provide food stamp debit cards in 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. JP Morgan is paid for each case that it handles, so that means that the more Americans that go on food stamps, the more profits JP Morgan makes. Yes, you read that correctly. When the number of Americans on food stamps goes up, JP Morgan makes more money.
Don't believe me? Watch this video straight from the horses mouth
And on that note, I am going to call it a day. More to come on this pathetic politcal behavior in the next week.
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