Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.
Milton Friedman
[It is predicted the Federal budget deficit will reach $1.65 trillion this year with a $14.1 trillion debt and about $2.1 trillion in income. Yet the House cannot reach agreement on spending cuts. The House Republicans want to only cut $60 billion in spending and the Democrats only want to cut spending $6.5 billion. If you were to scale this down into numbers people might be able to relate to it would look like the following.
If your family income were $50,000 then:
- Family debt is $335,700
- Family deficit is $39,300 (spending is $89,300/year)
- The head of household wants to cut $1,430 in yearly spending
- The spouse wants to cut $154.80 in yearly spending
The children should cut up the credit cards and sell everything that isn’t the bare minimum needed for food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and communication. If the debt still isn’t being paid down they should consider selling their parents organs.—Joe]
Judging by Pelosi’s liquor bill, their organs are already ruined, otherwise, that’d be a great plan.
Why wait? Sell off their organs NOW! 🙂
I like the scaling done here. It does a good job in putting things into perspective. It also shows that we’re a lot worse off than I imagined!
With all these budgetary issues talking about trillions and billions and millions, I discussed an example with my 5-year-old daughter. I don’t know if she understood, but it certainly put things into perspective for me!
Start with a marble. Put ten of those in a row. Then put ten rows in a square–that’s 100. Stack ten of those squares–that’s a thousand marbles. The result would fit in a nice little box.
Repeat, only with cubes of 1000: ten cubes in a row, ten rows in a square, ten squares stacked on top of each other. That’s a million marbles. It would probably fit on the kitchen table.
Repeat, only with cubes of one million. That’s a billion marbles. It would fit in a house.
Repeat again, with cubes of a billion. That’s a trillion marbles. It would take up a block, and be ten stories high.
When applied to the deficit, we’re talking about taking off a story of a fourteen-story building, vs taking out a “six-house” chunk. Either way, our view of the beautiful landscape is still hopelessly blocked!