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8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 12:38:16 PM   
TheHeretic


Posts: 19100
Joined: 3/25/2007
From: California, USA
Status: offline 		So there is this email making the rounds, from the debt ceiling debate.  It tries to bring the whole thing into numbers we can wrap our heads around, by the simple device of getting rid of some zeroes, and going from this:

U.S. income: $2,170,000,000,000.
Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000.
New debt: $1,650,000,000,000.
Total national debt: $14,271,000,000,000.

To this:

Total annual income for the Jones family: $21,700.
Amount of money the Jones family spent: $38,200.
Amount of new debt added to the credit card: $16,500.
Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710.

Now, if we are going to look at this from a family budget point of view, a bit of clarity should be brought in.  It isn't just the credit card for debt.  We need to see that as representing the mortgage and car payment as well.  We used to have more coming in, but the spouse got laid off, and is only working part-time right now.  We also have some in-laws living in the guest room, since losing their house, and while Mom is still doing ok in her apartment, we are getting stuck with the bills for her groceries. 

With those numbers, it's time for everybody to sit down at the kitchen table, and try to figure out a way to clean the mess up.  Suggestions?

_____________________________

If you lose one sense, your other senses are enhanced.
That's why people with no sense of humor have such an inflated sense of self-importance.

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RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 12:51:44 PM   
Termyn8or


Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
Status: offline 		You and me and a case of beer. One of these days.

And there is no way. I am going to sell my house because I can't afford to keep it. It is paid off. I went from making the equivalent of three grand a month at a part time job (I mean sleep till noon and be off by six, and only four days a week)  to almost nothing because people do not have the money to pay. Tax fucking free, I had it good. In the last couple years it went into the shitter. Maybe I'll bring the beer over there.

It's over, and really I am glad to be old. The older the better. I see the world now, how it really is, and I want off.

How the debt is created, all this what happened, all that shit, let RealO and them debate it. I choose not to waste the time. We can't pay it, so fukum. Do it now while we can still afford bullets. Fukum now.

T^T

(in reply to TheHeretic)
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RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 12:55:23 PM   
Aylee


Posts: 24103
Joined: 10/14/2007
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

With those numbers, it's time for everybody to sit down at the kitchen table, and try to figure out a way to clean the mess up.  Suggestions?


Repeal Obamacare. Implementation will create many new laws and regulations. Health Insurance is a large part of an employees compensation package. Employers are learing of hiring right now because they are unsure what these will be and how it will effect them.

Close the Departments of Labor, Commerce, Agriculture, Energy, Eduacation and HUD, then eliminate three fourths of all regulations.

Close the Environmental Protection Agency.

Repeal the Bush-era Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Repeal last year's Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

How is that for a start?

_____________________________

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam

I don’t always wgah’nagl fhtagn. But when I do, I ph’nglui mglw’nafh R’lyeh.

(in reply to TheHeretic)
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RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 12:56:21 PM   
fmfclwu


Posts: 74
Joined: 5/3/2008
Status: offline 		Well, austerity is failing everywhere it's being tried.  When you cut government spending in a recession, there's no private sector spending waiting to take up the slack.  So all you've done is move the people you've fired (either directly, by laying off workers, or indirectly, by shrinking or bankrupting contractors) into the unemployment line, where you're still paying them, but now you're getting nothing at all in return.

The only solution is to raise the income side - and not by raising taxes, like the Republicans will be forcing at the end of the year*.  The only way to close our short-term deficit is to get the economy back to full capacity again.  But where is the investment going to come from to close the $1 trillion output gap?  It sure isn't going to come from residential investment, with the real estate bubble putting homeowners underwater.  And it's not going to come from private industrial or commercial investment, with no customers around to purchase anything.  The only place the increased investment can come from to get the economy moving again, so that private investment will once again fill the gap, is the government.

Now, wouldn't this make the deficit worse?  Yes and no.  On the one hand, it would increase nominal debt for a couple of years ... but by less than the debt will increase if we continue to pour $1 trillion per year down the drain.  Additionally, the part you've left off the analogy, is that the rate on those credit cards isn't the 30+% some families get hosed with, but 2.1%.  In real dollars, the U.S. government currently is getting paid by investors to run a deficit!

Think of it instead like a struggling business.  One way to reduce expenses would be to fire some of the employees who produce the product the business sells.  That will cut expenses, sure, but what happens when the reduced production hits the bottom line?  At the end of the day, the misguided austerity puts the company further into debt and leaves it in a worse position.  Instead, we have a business with access to, in real terms, free loan money.  The obvious solution is to draw some of that free loan money to expand the product production segment, then use the profits to pay down both the free money borrowed and the original debt.

---

*Wait, I hear you say, the Republicans are forcing a tax increase?  Yup, the Republicans are blocking Democratic attempts to extend the payroll tax cut.  I guess when it comes to taxes that don't have much impact on the rich, Republicans are all for raising them, right?

(in reply to TheHeretic)
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RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 1:04:06 PM   
TheHeretic


Posts: 19100
Joined: 3/25/2007
From: California, USA
Status: offline 		Sorry, Aylee, and Fmf, but I'm going to have to ask you rephrase your answer, reduced to the metaphor we are playing with. 

"Repeal Obamacare," would become, "cancel the health insurance," or maybe, "drop the HMO to a 'catastrophic only' plan."  In the same spirit, "cut welfare" means kicking your spouse's sister and her family out into the streets. 

< Message edited by TheHeretic -- 8/14/2011 1:07:27 PM >

_____________________________

If you lose one sense, your other senses are enhanced.
That's why people with no sense of humor have such an inflated sense of self-importance.


(in reply to Aylee)
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RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 1:11:36 PM   
Termyn8or


Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
Status: offline 		I'm impressed fm. Austerity hits the wrong place almost always. Think of it as a small business ? Let's, mine, well not mine. We need a part for a job. It takes me fifteen minutes to change it, and the job takes an hour at say thirty bucks, a hundred bucks billable. We can get a really good part for sixty bucks, we know it is good, and packed and shipped right and will get there undamaged. But then we can get the part for a half of that. However it might be bad, or damaged. Now that fifteen minutes for me to change it out is now longer, billable at a hundred bucks an hour. Which part do you want ? And add to that if the damn thing is no good we got a customer who is now pissed because his shit ain't done. And get this, the fucking job costs three hundred bucks. Which part do you want ? I have seriously watched, in the last seven years, a business get run into the fucking ground. I don't even want to take over. It is too fucking late.

But that's interesting what you said about "unemploying" people, if I may coin a phrase. We support them anyway, they don't just die off like a house plant that doesn't get watered. It's just that they're now on welfare or whatever they get to lay around the shanty and put a good buzz on instead of working. They don't just drop like flies. And this is the best evidence that our society (US)* is partially socialistic, because if not, they would drop like flies, or be forced into a life of crime or something.

*I didn't perv your profile so I don't know where you are at.

T^T

(in reply to fmfclwu)
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RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 1:17:27 PM   
Termyn8or


Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
Status: offline 		"'catastrophic only' plan"

Sounds like a good idea. YOU become responsible for your fucking health, not me. And the reverse is true.

Want insurance ? Your call. Just like a face lift.

T^T

(in reply to TheHeretic)
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RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 1:17:28 PM   
Aylee


Posts: 24103
Joined: 10/14/2007
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

Sorry, Aylee, and Fmf, but I'm going to have to ask you rephrase your answer, reduced to the metaphor we are playing with. 

"Repeal Obamacare," would become, "cancel the health insurance," or maybe, "drop the HMO to a 'catastrophic only' plan."  In the same spirit, "cut welfare" means kicking your spouse's sister and her family out into the streets. 


Sorry. I thought that the metaphor was just to help understand the numbers. I did not realize that the answer needed to be in the form of a metaphor.

_____________________________

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam

I don’t always wgah’nagl fhtagn. But when I do, I ph’nglui mglw’nafh R’lyeh.

(in reply to TheHeretic)
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RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 1:17:52 PM   
fmfclwu


Posts: 74
Joined: 5/3/2008
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

Sorry, Aylee, and Fmf, but I'm going to have to ask you rephrase your answer, reduced to the metaphor we are playing with. 

"Repeal Obamacare," would become, "cancel the health insurance," or maybe, "drop the HMO to a 'catastrophic only' plan."  In the same spirit, "cut welfare" means kicking your spouse's sister and her family out into the streets. 


Okay, if we have to keep it as the family analogy ...

Austerity would be like quitting your job to save on commuting costs.  You spend less in the short term, but when your paycheck stops, you're just further in the hole.

Stimulus spending would be like hiring a resume and interview coach for your spouse, using money borrowed from a family friend that won't charge you interest.  Sure, it increases your debt short term, but it makes things better once your spouse does land a new job.  In the long run, the borrowing also doesn't cost anything, since your family friend didn't charge any interest.

(in reply to TheHeretic)
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RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 1:24:25 PM   
TheHeretic


Posts: 19100
Joined: 3/25/2007
From: California, USA
Status: offline 		The first thing that comes to my mind when I see these numbers is that our household income needs to go up.  There are two ways to make that happen.  As the primary breadwinner, I take a second job (tax increases), or my spouse is able to find another, better, job, and get back to what she was making before the economy tanked (economic growth, and more taxes being paid).

_____________________________

If you lose one sense, your other senses are enhanced.
That's why people with no sense of humor have such an inflated sense of self-importance.


(in reply to TheHeretic)
Profile   Post #: 10
RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 1:32:41 PM   
TheHeretic


Posts: 19100
Joined: 3/25/2007
From: California, USA
Status: offline 		I'm not entirely sure that austerity is a completely bad thing, Fmf.  Enacting a household electricity policy that the cooler shall not run during the day might finally get that damn brother-in-law off the couch, and down to the recruiting office.

_____________________________

If you lose one sense, your other senses are enhanced.
That's why people with no sense of humor have such an inflated sense of self-importance.


(in reply to fmfclwu)
Profile   Post #: 11
RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 1:39:38 PM   
Termyn8or


Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
Status: offline 		Wow, you are as nuts as I am.

T^T

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RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 1:47:25 PM   
jlf1961


Posts: 14840
Joined: 6/10/2008
From: Somewhere Texas
Status: offline 		I dont know what to say to the Jones' except cut up the damn credit cards.  Since we don't know how many are in the Jones family, there is very little else that can be addressed.

As for the government, cut defense spending by a third.  We will still be spending twice as much as the next government in question, and look at the total savings over ten years.




_____________________________

Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don't you think?

You cannot control who comes into your life, but you can control which airlock you throw them out of.

Paranoid Paramilitary Gun Loving Conspiracy Theorist AND EQUAL OPPORTUNI

(in reply to Termyn8or)
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RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 1:49:44 PM   
fmfclwu


Posts: 74
Joined: 5/3/2008
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

I'm not entirely sure that austerity is a completely bad thing, Fmf.  Enacting a household electricity policy that the cooler shall not run during the day might finally get that damn brother-in-law off the couch, and down to the recruiting office.


No doubt, there's spending that could be cut that won't boomerang back and hurt the economy.  But those spending programs tend to be well-funded and have big lobbyists and donors, so they're not the programs that get cut. 

(in reply to TheHeretic)
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RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 1:50:00 PM   
Sanity


Posts: 22039
Joined: 6/14/2006
From: Nampa, Idaho USA
Status: offline
Tell the only one on the house who is still working to get in their big fat jerk of a bosses face and demand a raise

Say, scream at your employer. Call him every name in the book, put your boot on his throat and threaten him and his family.

Say, slow down at work, and steal everything you can...

Turn your employer in to the EPA, to OSHA, the IRS, the SEC as well, by all logic and reason that should make them give you a raise...


_____________________________

Inside Every Liberal Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out

(in reply to TheHeretic)
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RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 2:01:02 PM   
Sanity


Posts: 22039
Joined: 6/14/2006
From: Nampa, Idaho USA
Status: offline
Cutting defense spending could well be false economy.

Judging by the neighborhood, and especially that really terrible Asian gang living across the street... a wrong move there could prove to be a fatal error.

quote:

ORIGINAL: jlf1961

I dont know what to say to the Jones' except cut up the damn credit cards.  Since we don't know how many are in the Jones family, there is very little else that can be addressed.

As for the government, cut defense spending by a third.  We will still be spending twice as much as the next government in question, and look at the total savings over ten years.





_____________________________

Inside Every Liberal Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out

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RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 2:05:17 PM   
Aylee


Posts: 24103
Joined: 10/14/2007
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

The first thing that comes to my mind when I see these numbers is that our household income needs to go up.  There are two ways to make that happen.  As the primary breadwinner, I take a second job (tax increases), or my spouse is able to find another, better, job, and get back to what she was making before the economy tanked (economic growth, and more taxes being paid).


Sell one of the cars is what came to mind for me.

_____________________________

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam

I don’t always wgah’nagl fhtagn. But when I do, I ph’nglui mglw’nafh R’lyeh.

(in reply to TheHeretic)
Profile   Post #: 17
RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 2:06:56 PM   
TheHeretic


Posts: 19100
Joined: 3/25/2007
From: California, USA
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: jlf1961

I dont know what to say to the Jones' except cut up the damn credit cards.  Since we don't know how many are in the Jones family, there is very little else that can be addressed.

As for the government, cut defense spending by a third.  We will still be spending twice as much as the next government in question, and look at the total savings over ten years.



As I said, this isn't all credit cards, Jlf. 

Defense?  You're going to start buying the dogs that 'collected floor sweepings' generic dog food from the Wal-Mart, and those chicken treats from china that cause liver failure?  This is a bad neighborhood we are living in, you know. 

_____________________________

If you lose one sense, your other senses are enhanced.
That's why people with no sense of humor have such an inflated sense of self-importance.


(in reply to jlf1961)
Profile   Post #: 18
RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 2:53:28 PM   
TheHeretic


Posts: 19100
Joined: 3/25/2007
From: California, USA
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Aylee
Sell one of the cars is what came to mind for me.



That's a pretty severe lifestyle changer, Aylee, and when the spouse gets back to a decent job, are we going to want to have to buy another car immediately? 


_____________________________

If you lose one sense, your other senses are enhanced.
That's why people with no sense of humor have such an inflated sense of self-importance.


(in reply to Aylee)
Profile   Post #: 19
RE: 8 Zeroes - 8/14/2011 3:09:59 PM   
Aylee


Posts: 24103
Joined: 10/14/2007
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quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

quote:

ORIGINAL: Aylee
Sell one of the cars is what came to mind for me.



That's a pretty severe lifestyle changer, Aylee, and when the spouse gets back to a decent job, are we going to want to have to buy another car immediately? 



Maybe, maybe not. You do have the in-laws there, and so they likely have a vehicle. I am not sure if the family has a driving teenager or not. But, with that many adults in the house, I think that some car sharing is in order. Selling the car will save on car-payments and insurance costs for it.

Also, when it does come time to get a replacement car, they can look around for used cars that need minimal work. Saving the car-payment and keeping the insurance costs low.

Of course, we do not know where this family lives. It is possible that a second car would not be needed at all.

_____________________________

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam

I don’t always wgah’nagl fhtagn. But when I do, I ph’nglui mglw’nafh R’lyeh.

(in reply to TheHeretic)
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