I have tried to boil down the numbers on national debt and the size of work force to the individual so that we can all understand it a little better. I had to paw thru a lot of numbers to get to the final conclusion. I am not here going to reproduce all the starting data. If you don't trust my numbers, then go get your own. This is one that you can not discount out of hand unless you have also done your home work. Here is what I found.
I found the debt for each year since 1950 as well as the size of the workforce for those same years. I then calculated the amount of increase in the national debt for periods 1990 to 2000 and 2000 to 2010 and then for 2010 to 2011. I then divided the figures by the number of workers for those same periods and if it were a 10 year period, I divided that number by 10 to get the change per person per year. With me so far? Once I had the change figures per year per worker, I divided that amount by the average 2000 hours worked per year. This gave me the amount that each worker should have paid extra in tax per hour worked to off set the increase in national debt. Whether you agree or not, we were all getting some kind of benefit that was supposed to be paid for with our taxes, but we were not paying all the tax that was need for those benefits. You might disagree that you did not get any special benefits, but you are part of this democracy and that is how it works. Our government borrowed the money that we all should have been paying in so that we got the benefits without having to pay 100% for them. I know that a lot of you paid a lot of tax and some paid "none". That is only part of the problem. We all ate the steak dinners and we did not pay for the steak. Now let's look at the figures.
For the period between 1990 and 2000, to pay our way, all of us would have had to pay $0.90 per hour in tax for the full year of 2000 hours. Now for the period from 2000 to 2010 to cover our steak dinner, we would have had to pay $2.38 per hour in tax. It would be like some guy in China put an extra $2.38 per hour in your pay envelope as a "gift". Now for the period from 2010 to 2011, the number jumps to $4.49 per hour.
We don't have the numbers for 2011 to 2012, but we all know that it will be much more. My guess is that the number will be some where between $7.00 and $8.00 per hour. If these numbers do not get your attention, I do not know what will. We have debt going up at an exponential rate while at the same time the size of our work force is going down. Add to that the fact that we have already spent our future earnings and that of our children in the form of home loans that we can't pay back. Are you starting to see why cutting government spending to the bone is so critical. As I have blogged in the past, we can error on either of two sides. Cut too little or cut too much. If we cut too little, the game might be over and there will not be a "do over". If we cut too much, we will survive and have the option of increasing spending. Isn't that the way smart logical families do it? Then why not our government? If these numbers don't wake you up, I do not know what will!!!!
PS----
Notice that these figures do not include paying off the national debit. They just keep it from going up. Any ideas about how we are going to pay back the money that we have borrowed? If you are not upto the job, I am sure your kids and mine are not either.
