jump to navigation

A few bucks here and there? March 13, 2006

Posted by ultor in GWOT, economics.
2 comments

On September 10, 2001, the national debt was $5,773,172,068,291.89.
On March 12, 2006 (today), it’s $8,270,889,116,189.68.
That’s 1,644 days. The national debt has gone up by $1,519,292,608.21 per day since the attacks.

For what?

Good sound common sense. March 8, 2006

Posted by ultor in That's just cool., economics.
add a comment

Warren Buffet is a smart man. Moreover, he has common sense. Here is an excerpt from his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. It’s good. Go read.

Spending like a whole ship full of drunken sailors. March 5, 2006

Posted by ultor in GWOT, economics, politics.
add a comment

President Bush’s budget would increase the federal deficit by $35 billion this year and by more than $1.2 trillion over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office reported on Friday.

The nonpartisan budget office said that Mr. Bush’s tax-cutting proposals would cost about $1.7 trillion over the next 10 years and that his proposals to partly privatize Social Security would cost about $312 billion during that period.

link

$1,200,000,000,000. That’s a lot of money. It’s

  • $4,000 for each and every one of 300 million Americans.
  • $181 for every person in the world.
  • If you paid it off at $1/second, it would take 38,000 years to clear
  • If you stacked it up in $1 bills, it would be 81,000 miles high.
  • It represents 14.5% of the entire national debt.

The Economy is Broken February 21, 2006

Posted by ultor in economics.
add a comment
  • There are 37,000,000 Americans living below the poverty line. That’s 12.7%, more than any other industrialized country.
  • The number of poor has increased by 5,000,000 under the Bush administration.
  • There are 46,000,000 Americans without health insurance.
  • Both those numbers have increased every year since 2000.
  • Save the Children, an organization most Americans probably associate more with Darfur or post-quake Pakistan, operates programs in eastern Kentucky.

It would be really very easy to blame George Bush for this, and more than slightly appropriate. But a better question to ask – especially with an election coming up – is whether the rational response to this information isn’t to reconsider the economic policies we’ve been following instead of pledging “more of the same”?