“Sports Reporters”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/business/media/24sportswriters.html?th&emc=th

The fact that the debt grew from $5.7 trillion to $10 trillion doesn’t mean anything unless it is placed in context of the size of the economy. Think of it this way, if my mortgage increases from $75,000 to $200,000, on the face of it, that sounds sort of bad. However, if my annual income increased from $50,000 to $150,000 over that time period, I have not necessarily been foolish with my money.

It’s funny, I was talking to an old friend of mine from college, he’s a computer whiz guy and also a young man who rediscovered his Christian faith (originally from the Bay Area in California), and he now lives in Italy. (He’s Italian-American so I guess that helped things out.)

The subject of the $9 trillion plus US National Debt came up, and he pointed out to me that the consequences of the Debt are going to be extremely ugly– our Treasury Bills “horizon” in about 10-15 years which means that, by around 2020, the “bill” on the debt comes due. Which means that all of us are going to have to pay it, and if you’re still in the USA at that time, it means that the average US household, by a *conservative* estimate, is going to owe close to $250,000 to pay off the debt!! Not even including personal debt such as college tuition!

That’s in fact one of the reasons my friend Mike has effectively emigrated to Italy, married there and is raising his kids there. If you’re stuck in the States when the National Debt Bill comes due, *you* will be paying for it! Apparently Europe, at least Continental Europe is finding its Christian heart again, much more than I thought, so Mike was perfectly comfortable there. Also, he’s earning a salary in Euros, much more valuable than dollars and a massive help financially for anyone in a technical and/or professional field! The only hassle he said was learning Italian in his case (as well as some German which seems to be a kind of Euro common language these days), which apparently wasn’t that hard after he moved. (Apparently, Britain or Australia is not an option– their debt is even worse than USA, and the UK especially is overcrowded.)

I wonder if I could do the same, I’m mostly Scotch-Irish though I guess there’s a German or Dutch great-grandfather in there somewhere, maybe could give me a pass to work in Germany if I could actually learn German. Which I’ve never been very good at doing.

It struck me the other day how all this is debt and taxes seems related to the Stamp Tax in our nation’s history. Great Britain was struggling to pay for their military occupation in the colonies where they were trying to “protect” the colonies. In order to pay the price, they taxed the colonists. The colonists reviled the supporters of the Stamp Tax and refused to pay it. They wanted to defend themselves, which is much more affordable and fair. It would be better for the British soldiers’ families and more affordable for their citizens to limit their relationship with the colonists to free trade without restrictions.

I’m not an economics professor, but I do understand the whole “clinton surplus” thing. It was a surplus, depending on how deceptive you want to be with the income and the outgo. A little procedure called “unified budgeting”. Here’s the deal:

Suppose you have a job that pays $60,000.00 per year. Suppose that you have a debt of $200,000.00 that MUST be repaid in ten years. Because of that debt, you work a second job and collect an additional $10,000.00 this year, presumably to have additional funds to put towards retiring that debt when the note is called.

Now, let’s say your standard of living requires $65,000.00 per year. You know, only making $60,000.00, that you won’t be able to do everything you need to do. In fact, your inability to live within your means is the reason you have the $200,000.00 debt. Anyway, you know you’re going to show a deficit on paper, and in reality, and you don’t want your wife to know this. You pull a little maneuver called “unified budgeting”, where you show the income from your second job ($10,000.00) as regular income, while not showing the obligation to repay the $200,000.00 debt as a liability, or a debit. Suddenly, on paper, you have a $5000.00 “surplus”. Of course, as you and I both know, you are just deferring the deficit until the ten year period is up, when you will be flat broke. In business accounting, you aren’t allowed to do this. Heck, even the IRS doesn’t let you do this. You can be “cash method”, or “accrual”, but not BOTH. The government is breaking a fundamental rule of accounting, one that you or I could pay fines and do time for breaking. If you are going to show the income towards debt service as true income, then you MUST show the debt also, not pretend it doesn’t exist.

This is what the whole “Lockbox” thing was about back in 2000. There was a movement to take this fake surplus (FICA receipts), and put it where the President and Congress couldn’t get their boogery fingers on it. Unfortunately, that has not happened.

Anyway, in our analogy, the $60,000.00 is basic income tax and other general monies the government will collect. The $10,000.00 part time job is Social Security (FICA) monies that the government extorts from all of us who work. The $200,000.00 debt is the looming obligation of paying Social Security back to all those who it was taken from in the first place. The scary part is that there isn’t anything there. AT ALL…

As far as the amount of the surplus that Clinton bragged about when he left office, it was PROJECTED. In fact, it was projected on a model of growth that was even faster than during the dot-com boom, which, as we now know (and many of us did, even then), cannot be sustained, and wasn’t even real to begin with. (I’m pretty sure that last sentence is the most grammatically incorrect thing I’ve ever typed…). Anyway, to put it plain and simple:

THE BOOKS WERE COOKED. COOKED IN A WAY THAT MAKES ENRON LOOK LIKE LITTLE BO PEEP IN COMPARISON.

This is not just Klintoon’s fault, though. Congress is guilty, Bush is guilty, everyone in Washington is guilty. Heck, WE ARE GUILTY for letting them get away with it.

Sorry for the length of the reply…i’m out…

Actually read the search responses you will get from Google, to find out how the budget “surplus” was fake (as I described above). Budgeting for a surplus and having a surplus are two totally different things. I can project that next year, I will take in $100,000.00, and only spend $90,000.00. If, in actuality, I take in that $100,000.00 and, in a fit of money-drunken madness, spend the $10,000.00 surplus and then some, then I never had a surplus. A surplus is something that stays there. If we truly had a surplus, the debt would have been reduced, and it wasn’t. The government was still borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars a year during the Clinton administration, even up until the end.

Oh, and do you really want to discuss the “unified” budget that showed a surplus? Showing Social Security receipts as income, while completely ignoring that they must be paid back (and then some) at some point in the future. Talk about a financial lie that would land any private businessman in jail for the rest of his life…

Those of you who are so concerned with our massive federal debt should also be against our massive federal social spending, because it is, after defense, the single largest part of our massive federal budget. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.

But, like so many things I’ve read on this blog (at least in the comments) before: anything Clinton did was good, and Bush is evil. Don’t let the facts get in the way of your ideology.

And before you start slamming me as a Bushie, I think he’s a terrible president, too.

By the way, I know the playbook by heart. You folks are about to trash me, pretend I’m stupid and ignorant, and then claim that I have been harsh. Sorry, but I’m not one of the groupies…

Perhaps the answer lies within the two. If we could find a way to channel some of the exhorbitant amount of money invested in our athletic endeavors we could have our national debt under control in no time.

It doesn’t surprise me that this is how our discussion ends. I have found it to be typical of the blame America crowd. 1. Spit out a bunch of talking points as fact. 2. Attack the messenger not the message of disagreement. 3. Refuse to actually have a discussion by, claiming the intellectual high ground, with a “you just don’t know”, “if you were more learned”, “better read”, “knew how to discuss while on the internet” etc. 4. End with I ‘m not going to waste my time anymore.

I thank SG for her much more eloquent way of getting to the point than I was able to do. I love my Country, I know it has faults but it is one of the few in existence that allows citizens an oppurtunity to air grievances and actually bring about change. I do get offended when people bash the US without any acknowledgement of the good it has done.

I’m sorry that my typing and internet debate skills are not up to your level but it still doesn’t mean the points I raise or the questions I ask are not valid. Signing off now.

Jeff W,
I think I speak for scarecrows everywhere. Stop using their rae as an intellectual slur. It’s not nice.

I never want to be said that I am on the opposite side of an argument than Larry James and Mike Cope so let me clarify my “position” here.

When I was 8, my family and I were followed through a market place in Juarez, Mexico for an hour by a women trying to sell us her baby girl. Towards the end of the hour, she even offered to give us the baby. She was eventually chased away by the merchants who told us she was just a beggar. I will never forget her face or her pleas for us to take her baby to America. No matter what your feelings are about the US government, if you live in America, you are blessed. (And no God does not JUST bless America, or bless us more than others, but he has blessed this nation.)

The US has made many mistakes through out history. I have no doubt that some in the government knew exactly what they were doing at the time of these mistakes. I in no way want to imply that the government is beyond reproach or that those who voice their opinions against the government are wrong. However, I do love this country and feel blessed, yes BLESSED, to have been born a US citizen. As bad as some people think the United Stares is, it has been, and still is a safe haven for many in this world. Living here gives many a chance at a better life while here on Earth.

Of course our eternal citizenship trumps any earthly one, but it does not mean we can not love and appreciate what we have. The US is a very wealthy country in many ways. For those which much is given, much is expected. The US has a great responsibility to the world. I just do not feel Christians should always look to the government to solve problems or to help the people we should be helping. I also think many in these comments use the government as a scapegoat. That is just my opinion.

I apologize for voicing my frustrations with the anti-US mindset that frequents these comments, especially on this post. My feeling really had nothing to do with the federal deficit or Rick Reily leaving SI. Sorry if I riled anyone un-necessarily. Just write me off as a venting housewife and carry on with your lives…