The following is excerpted from an article by David Fischer, entitled Monkeying Around With our Debt Can Be Golden, Accredited Members magazine, Issue 3, 2011. I found it a very interesting way to understand the financial mess we are in as a nation as well as globally.
“The number that the government throws around is, for most people, hard to comprehend, so I thought I would put it into simplistic terms. The U.S. Congress sets a federal budget every year in the trillions of dollars. I created a breakdown of federal spending, so let’s put the 2011 federal budget into perspective:
U.S. Income - $2,170,000,000,000
Federal budget - $3,820,000,000,000
New Debt – 1,650,000,000,000
National debt - $14,271,000,000,000
Recent budget cut - $38,500,000,000
It helps to think about these numbers in terms that we can relate to. Therefore, let’s remove eight zeros (00,000,000) from these numbers and pretend that this is the household budget for the fictitious Jones family:
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 credit card - $142,710
Amount cut from the budget - $385
After reviewing the Jones’ budget, ask yourself … would you lend this family money or trust them with credit? Well, this is just what happened recently when Democrats and Republicans Finally agreed to cut the budget.”
Mr. Fischer makes this financial mess easy for anyone who has never ran a business, or had to balance a budget to understand. Yet our elected “leaders”, both republican and democrat, who are supposedly the “brightest and best” continue to exacerbate this mess. I think the majority of the general public can understand this example and the situation it puts us in as a country.
So, why do we continue to elect the same leaders or even tolerate the “choices” which are presented on the ballots? Ross Perot was a past example of a candidate not condoned by the establishment, and Ron Paul is a current example. Why do we not give these people a chance to lead the country instead of assuming that the candidates espoused by the major parties (Republican and Democrat) and the main stream media (CNN, ABC, NBC, etc.) or the current administration will lead us in a different direction?
We all have the opportunity to write in a candidate of our choice. Many of us have the opportunity to vote for Ron Paul directly. Think about this simple budget example and then ask yourself whether you really believe the mainstream Republican candidates or the current administration really understand this mess, given their past record.
Vote accordingly.
H. Court Young
