We know the national debt is approaching 16 Trillion (with a capital “T”) and we know that the Federal government continues to print and spend like drunken sailors on extended shore leave but please take a moment to review this excellent piece of writing which puts all this spending in some context that we might be able to appreciate.
Fact of the matter is that the government is spending our money (remember, the government has NO money of its own) at the rate of $120,000 per (wait for it) second. Yes…you read correctly…per second.
So in the time it took us to prepare and type these two paragraphs…roughly 2 minutes…the government spent $14,400,000. Woops…by the time we typed that number, another million just slipped away. There goes another…and another. This is lunacy.
Check it out, if you dare.
http://thestrangestbrew.com/?p=377
If this link does not work perfectly, go to thestrangestbrew.com and look for $120,000 under featured articles. It will be worth your while.
So let’s think about this for a moment and try to figure out how we can continue to race along at $120,000 per second.
According to the IRS, the number of people with adjusted gross incomes exceeding $1,000,000 in 2009 was around 350,000 out of a total of 140,000,000 tax filers (0.08%).
Let’s say we taxed all those horrible millionaires at say….100%…yes, we’ll show those rich fat cats who’s the boss. Of course, some will make more than $1mill but for the sake of argument, we’ll collect $1mill from each of them…you know…as a one time, public spirited act of charity to eliminate the debt. They all have plenty of money..they’ll barely miss it.
Examining the math, it looks like:
350,000 fat cats x $1,000,000 = $350,000,000,000 (a nice tidy sum)
$350,000,000,000 / 120,000 = 2,916,667 seconds
2,916,667 seconds / 60 = 48,611 minutes
48,611 minutes / 60 = 810 hours
810 hours / 24 = 33.75 days
So, even if we taxed all those dastardly millionaires a million bucks each, we would only raise enough stolen funds to keep the government going for just over one month.
OK…let’s go after the corporations as well…they have lots and lots of money and we know how greedy they are.
We’ll take a look at one of our Craven Capital Fortress Portfolio favorites, Exxon Mobil, for example.
In 2011, ExxonMobil’s total tax bill was an $104.52 billion. Breaking that down in reverse, that works out to $286 million in taxes every day, $11.9 million in taxes every hour and $200,000 every minute. A lot of money to you and us but chicken feed when you need more than half of that every second. Ouch.
The point of this story is that the spending…and therefore the debt…is unsustainable.
Check out this link for one retired accountant’s view of our debt dilemma. Unlike politicians, numbers don’t lie.
Remember, the government has no money of its own. It can only take from others. As Margaret Thatcher once famously stated…
“The problem with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people’s money!”
We suspect that we may well run out sooner than we think. Invest accordingly.
