Wordless Wednesday
Author Archives: Dick
Happy New Year – Here’s the Check
SANDERS PLAN: RAISE (U.S.) TAXES!*
SANDERS BACKS GREECE’S ‘NO’ (NEW TAXES) VOTE!**
Feel the Bern but also Feel the Pain.
It’s a pain that will come no matter whom we elect this year.
“Things are going ‘so well’ with the truth of how our system works that we are bankrupting ourselves,” wrote a concerned citizen.
Every politician since the wicked Nimrod has lied to us. Oh, some told little white lies but they lied to us nonetheless. “We know how to fix it!” they all say.
“We are not Greece, we are not Portugal,” Mr. Obama said in 2011 as Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s prepared to downgrade America’s top credit status.
Yeah, they fixed it alright.
According to a new report by Kotlikoff and Michel, U.S. government debt stands at $210 trillion, not at the official $13.1 trillion nor the almost $18.9 trillion of the US Debt Clock nor the $86.8 trillion calculated by Cox and Archer.
Even using the make believe $13.1 trillion debt, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the debt will be well over 100% of GDP by 2039. When CBO incorporates its estimates of the impact of the continuing large federal deficits on the nation’s economy, it estimates that the accumulated debt held by the public will reach 180% of GDP by 2039.
For homework, try to find out if any member of Congress or the President has ever read these CBO reports.
The Feds will tell you every man, woman, and child of the 326,387,900 people now alive in the U.S. owes “only” $40,136.29 of that debt.
The reality is far different. The real debt load works out to $643,406.20 per person in the United States, 16 times higher than the current official level and 2-1/2 times our total net worth.
In 2014 the net worth of all U.S. citizens was pegged at $80.7 trillion. Wealth is commonly measured in terms of net worth, which is the quite simple sum of all assets (what you have in the bank, the market value of real estate, like your home, any stocks and stuff you own) minus what you owe on all of that. which accountants call “liabilities.”
(Including human capital such as skills, the United Nations estimated the total wealth of the United States in 2008 to be $118 trillion. The United Nations has never been good at accounting or science.)
$210 trillion in debt <==> $80 trillion in assets.
Yeah, they fixed it alright.
Mr. Sanders isn’t the only financial nincompoop. He’s just the most obvious among the economic geniuses we’ve elected.
A record Federal Reserve “reverse repo” auction on the last day of business means credit markets and mutual funds are in trouble. Like the “credit swaps” and off-balance-sheet financing that caused the Great Recession, the financial markets are again playing with numbers none of the geniuses understands.
“It is government’s fault for offering a housing finance program without making an effort to maintain underwriting standards,” then-Rep. Barny Frank (D-MA) said of the Housing Crisis.
That would be the same Barny Frank who imposed “affordable housing” requirements on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Before he did that, the government lenders had been required to buy only prime mortgages. Mr. Frank forced Fannie and Freddie to meet a government quota for bad loans to borrowers who could never repay them.
Yeah, they fixed it alright.
The Dow fell 450 points this morning, on its way to the worst opening day in 84 years. The Fed figures it can’t head off or even contain the coming financial crises.
Meanwhile China’s government-managed stock market tanked again today, too. Looks like China’s politicians are about as good at this financial stuff as ours.
And none of this helps rein in the stampeding public debt.
The Demorat’s answer to the National Debt is “there is no national debt but we’ll raise taxes anyway so we can spend more.” The Repuglican’s answer to the National Debt is “there is some national debt so we need to raise taxes so we can spend more.”
“We know how to fix it!”
Yeah, they’ll fix us right up.
How to Avoid Bankruptcy — For Dummies tells us:
- Get your financial house in order by spending less than you take in.
- Sell your assets.
- Take over a large foreign country with lots of natural resources and land.
OK, I added the last one but, hey! It worked for Genghis Khan, Rome, Great Britain, and Google, right?
* Let’s get specific. How high would Bernard Sanders go on tax rates?
“We haven’t come up with an exact number yet, but it will not be as high as … 90%.”
** “I applaud the people of Greece for saying ‘no’ to more austerity..
“In a world of massive wealth and income inequality, Europe must support Greece’s efforts” to loot the real European economies which create jobs and income.
Happy New Year
Unaffordable Care Act Unaffordable
And now an unseemly I told you so to end the year.
A Robert Wood Johnson Foundation study found the “Affordable Care Act” hasn’t made health care affordable.
Wotta surprise.
I’ve mentioned how bad this law is before.
The Unaffordable Care Act was passed based on per capita health care costs of $7,825 under the Bush Administration. Obamacare promised to save us money. So far, per capita health care has cost $8,054 in $2009, $8,299 in 2010, $8,553 in 2011, $8,845 in 2012, $9,146 in 2013, and it is expected to come in at $9,458 in 2014 and $9,800 in 2015, all under the Obama Administration.
Lib’ruls who can’t do math promised that when government runs this market your premiums would decrease. Mr. Obama promised a $2,500 a year drop.
How’d that work out for you?
And now the Unaffordable Care Act’s bait and switch has left consumers scrambling in 2016. Again.
I really really wish I had been wrong.
2015
At the end of each year, we tot up the people who died and I wonder if, years from now, if there will be any people of accomplishment whom we mourn. This year, we lost:
NASA’s Alberto Behar.
Batmobile creator George Barris
Civil rights activist Grace Lee Boggs
Physicist Val Fitch
Medical researcher Alfred Gilman
Activist and Nearly an Astronaut Jane Hart
American chemist Richard Heck
Mathematician John Nash
Actress Maureen O’Hara
Marine aviator Frank Petersen
So what noteworthy, prize-winning event or invention or legislation happened this year?
It became illegal to pose for a selfie with a tiger in New York.
The Far Green got the largest city in the U.S. to ban polystyrene foam simply because the Far Green is determined to cut down our forests. Want to save the environment? Political “science” isn’t real. Study real science.
We caught Mr. Obama in 1,157 lies, starting with his first State of the Union and most recently with “I will give up vacations” which he did again this week.
!@#$%^Comcast earned its name, at least as far as “Asshole Brown,” “Super Bitch” Bauer, and “Bitch Dog” Govan are concerned. The company’s CEO, Brian “Dummy Whore” Roberts, approved.
Toyota sold a Partial Zero Emission Vehicle.
Say what?
In California.
Figures.
A federal judge ruled that Boardwalk Pizza here in the Keys didn’t infringe on the Garden State Parkway’s trademark, basically ruling the Parkway’s lawsuit half-baked.
Miami-Dade Animal Services removed 42 Chihuahuas from a Miami-Dade home. There was no abuse; Animal Services cited “uncontrolled breeding.”
A 61-year old postal carrier managed to land his flying bicycle on the Capitol lawn.
The Marathon, Florida, Home Depot has ice scrapers for sale in the heart of the Florida Keys.
Texas A&M Professor Irwin Horwitz called his Strategic Management students “a disgrace to the school” for cheating and other academic dishonor. Then he flunked every last one of them. Results of today’s search of Texas A&M Faculty for Mr. Horwitz: “No matches found.”
We discovered that the same people in the First World who would fire Mr. Horwitz believe they can change the climate but not one of them could make it rain in California to end the drought there.
People nearly went on strike to return to the hyperinflation of the go-go 80s. A huge swath of American lib’ruls are too young to remember those extraordinary days of 15-21% mortgage interest.
Having learned how by stealing General Motors from stockholders like thee and me, Mr. Obama did the same to the coal industry: he broke it and handed it to George Soros.
Vermont’s plans for a statewide amnesty day made the news. “Drivers!” Billy Mays might have shouted, “get your suspended license reinstated for the low, low cost of just $20 per ticket.” It was a one day only deal! Until the next time.
Vermont Health Connect went offline for another software upgrade. The website went dark so the latest, newest, greatest, most perfect software could be uploaded. Again.
City residents in Plattsburgh NY learned that they will be fined if they don’t clear the snow off their own property.
Fortunately it pretty much hasn’t snowed in Plattsburgh NY or North Puffin since last spring.
We had the best pope and the worst politicians. I predickted that the 2016 general election would be Trump v. Sanders.
There was some light in 2015.
“Stephen Hawking dead”: After the Brief History of Time author was killed by an Internet death hoax, we found that he is, fortunately, still very much alive.
je suis Charlie came to life around the world after an horrific religious murder in Paris.
NASA found evidence of water on Mars.
Astronomers discovered “Fat Jupiter” which got kicked out of the solar system, twin planets that could host life, and a host of other findings about our galactic neighbors.
UNC researchers discovered “Q-carbon,” a new phase of carbon that makes it possible to create a diamond at room temperature and atmospheric pressure.
Scientists discovered 211 new species in the Eastern Himalayas.
3D-Printing moved into medicine to make a sternum and ribs for a cancer patient and prosthetic limbs for pets.
Nest Labs opened a new engineering center inside Google’s Kirkland campus to “enable other people to do it.”
Welcome back! Blue Origin test-launched its New Shepard rocket to the edge of space and then brought it home land in Texas. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at Cape Canaveral with a payload of eleven satellites. The rocket returned to land upright.
It is hard, after decades of tying shoelaces the same way day-after-day to learn a new trick but it can be done.