Fun With Numbers

One Thousand $1,000
One Million $1,000,000
One Billion $1,000,000,000
One Trillion $1,000,000,000,000

How often to you see one trillion dollars displayed with all of the zeros? Why don’t you see it more often?

Two reasons, and one is not to save ink.

1. Written out, it is an unfathomable number.
2. “They” don’t want you to see it...and fathom it.

If you could actual relate to what a trillion, or even a billion, dollars is, you would be astounded that these numbers have been thrown around recently in the news and by politicians like it is a normal, every day number.

The most recent figures report that there are 138.5M workers that make up the US economy. That is 138,500,000 taxpayers (we will assume that they are all taxpayers for the sake of this argument). That is everything from trash men to corporate CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies. All of them make up the essential infrastructure that makes our economy work.

Right now people are up in arms over the AIG bonuses being given to as many as 75 CEO’s. Right now, it appears that there is a minimum of $165,000,000 distributed among them. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that it is $200,000,000 since they seem to think that the number is higher than the firm figure we’ve been throwing around. That is an average of $2,666,666 for each executive. Not a small sum of money since an individual with an average salary of $55,000 per year would take 48.5 years to accumulate that, assuming that they had no taxes taken out or had to pay for food, housing, etc. That means that the AIG executives, on average, made $7,305 per day. You can certainly see where average earners are upset with the “bailout” money being distributed that way. They make $150 per day.

That’s a lot of money and it is consuming the attention of all of the major news organizations. You literally cannot go 5 minutes on any news channel or program without hearing something about these executives and this outrageous waste of the taxpayers’ money. That must be huge to gain that much attention. In terms of tax dollars, we each paid these executives to run a failing company $1.44 last year.

But let’s talk about another figure that is a little harder to comprehend. Congress just passed a “stimulus” bill worth $787,000,000,000. That is $787 billion. I know it’s hard for your eyes to take in that many zeros. Of course, this is the number out of which those AIG executives were paid. This money was intended to get the banks offering loans and extending credit again to the American people and get the economy going again, and to save jobs. What this is essentially saying is that you as an American taxpayer gave $5,682 to failing businesses, to get the opportunity to borrow money from them.

When Obama went on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Leno asked the President, “where’s the money?” He said that the money went to these organizations months ago, and the banks still aren’t extending credit to American consumers. Why is that?

Obama’s answer?

OBAMA: Well, what's happening is a lot of these banks are keeping it in the bank because their balance sheets had gotten so bad that they decided, you know what, for us to stay solvent we need to maintain certain capital ratios; we've got to have a certain amount of capital in the bank -- and they haven't started lending it yet. And that's why what we've got to do -- right now what we're doing is essentially doing a diagnostic test -- trying to use some auto language here so you -- (laughter) -- we're doing a diagnostic on each of the banks, figuring out what are their capital levels? Can they sustain lending? And then I think we're going to separate out -- those banks that are in good shape, we're going to say to them, all right, you're on your own; go start lending again. Those banks that still have problems, we'll do a little more intervention to try to clean some of those toxic assets off their books.

But I actually have confidence that we'll get that done. In the meantime, we're taking a lot of steps to, for example, opening up -- open up separate credit lines outside of banks for small businesses so that they can get credit -- because there are a lot of small businesses out here who are just barely hanging on. Their credit lines are starting to be cut. We're trying to set up a securitized market for student loans and auto loans outside of the banking system. So there are other ways of getting credit flowing again.

!$%^@*%$!!!

Don’t miss that! “We’ll do a little more intervention to clean some of those toxic assets off their books.”!!!!! (Another stimulus package). Then he says that the money we just put into the banks and are about to put into them is for nothing because we are not going to rely on the banks for the loans anymore! The government wants to give the loans and bypass the banks completely. Is that what governments do?

Furthermore, Obama just signed a $410,000,000,000 ($410 B) budget for the Federal government next year saying that there was much work to be done, so a quadrupling of the previous budget was necessary. That means that for your government to work next year, you will be paying an additional $2,960. That does not include your State or local governments, where you are actually pay for your police, fire, schools, courts, and other civil services. This is for your military and Federal programs (as yet to be determined).

Now I know what you are thinking. If that is quadruple what I paid last year, why did I have to pay so much in taxes because I sure as heck paid more than $3,000! Yes, you did. Because not all of the 138,500,000 pay the same taxes as you. In fact, many of them did not pay last year at all because they fall below the “poverty line”. Many of those (not all...please don’t take it as all) could work, but select not to. Why should they? If they can get paid to stay in their government subsidized housing watching their big screen TV all day, why should they work? They are included in the number that are in the work force, but are “currently unemployed”. Also, because of our sliding scale, most of the people reading this are going to be in the higher tax brackets, and now you are starting to understand how the rule of thumb starts to play into just about everything: 20% of the people fund 80% of the budget. So, do those numbers make a little more sense?

So this means that the average salary earner of $55,000 is paying $8,642 in federal income tax and tacked on stimulus bill this year. That brings his new salary to $46,385. Remember, no school yet. No fire or police force. That’s in a much smaller pool in which you are a much larger fish. You’ll pay for those services along with your local community out of this remaining.

Let’s get back on track. AIG execs: $1.44 for a year. Obama: $8,640 this year (please note that I removed the amount going to the AIG execs for you purists).

Now let’s talk about a new number. Stay with me here. 10 Trillion dollars. ($10,000,000,000,000.) That is the number that Obama has committed us to over the next decade if he gets everything he wants.

You pay $72,202. But that’s not a fair figure. What was the multiplier when we figured out the difference between the computed figure you should have paid last year in federal taxes and the actual? Now apply that, but not so quickly. You see, you make more than $39,000, which was a number that Obama referred to in the election as the “average salary”. You will now be responsible for more of the pie, you see.

What if all else failed and you were solely responsible for the debt that will be incurred from this president? Let’s give you a really good salary of...how about $2,666,666 annual income. You will have your house, food, and all other necessities taken care of, but you have pay off the $10 trillion yourself. It will take you 3,750,000 years. You just made what the AIG execs made, and it is still going to take you three million, seven hundred and fifty THOUSAND years to pay off what this president is costing us right now.

Can we please focus on the real money wasters here and rein in these outrageous spenders in this administration and Congress?

The Ericator