Politicians know all about lying with statistics. But it’s more effective to lie with anecdotes — using stories to ignore the biggest Statistic in the Room.
President Barack Obama delivered his constitutionally obligatory State of the Union address to Congress last night. He told a lot of stories, and most of them may have been mostly true, for all I know. But what we do know for sure is that these stories distracted us from the one statistic that matters.
You know, to the actual state of the union.
Which is not sound.
The rising level of debt is putting the finances of the union in grave jeopardy. Politicians have promised too much — delivered too much — courtesy of borrowing from future tax revenues. The current debt is larger than the nation’s annual GDP. (That’s the stat that matters.) The federal government owes more than all of us, together, earn in a year.
This, of course, is unsustainable.
And yet the president is doing precious little to curb this unhappy meeting with destiny. Deficits are down a tad. He took credit for that. He didn’t credit the Republicans, his recalcitrant enemies.
But, in a State of the Union address filled with programs to expand and goals to “guarantee,” he didn’t offer to cut anything, did he? (Other than promise, yet again, to close Guantanamo.)
Indeed, in Obama’s most recent bickering “negotiation” with the House had his bid for extending unemployment benefits met with an ask price of an offsetting cut elsewhere in the budget. The prez balked.
Our “state”? In a deep debt hole, oblivious, and still digging.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
6 replies on “The State of the Union of the States”
Mr. Obama sought to give hope, but proposed no change.
This is not leadership, unless you are a fan of the tactics or the ostrich.
A State of the Union address is not obligatory. A State of the Union report is. Presidents just can’t avoid an opportunity to take the spotlight.
Of course e debt is unsustainable! The highest marginal tax rate should immediately be raised to 70% for any income over $2,000,000 and the estate tax should be raised to 80% for any value over $10,000,000 both without ANY deductions or exclusions. In addition capital gains and all such other income should be taxed as ordinary income. Doing these things would bring the national income into immediate balance and we could then move on to REALLY solving the problems of health care and the rising inequality between the lowest/average worker and the obscene incomes of the very rich.
I tweeted a very similar message last night while watching the address. I don’t know what Union he was speechifying about. It was certainly some Utopia of Pres Obama’s state of mind. I didn’t recognize it as the state of this union I reside in. I found many of his statements frightening as well, alluding to turning in your neighbors so they could be fined if they didn’t sign up for Obama Care. And as per James J. Kovalcin’s statements, WOW! You do that & all the wealthy, entrepreneurs & job creators leave USA for some favorable tax environment. You are 1 of those thinkers that believe that people are not allowed to have money & should be punished by a government out of control.
“The current debt is larger than the nation’s annual GDP.”
True, but it’s actually much larger if you include all government promises/obligations. Estimates of this range from $56 trillion to $222 trillion. That is not only more than we all make in a year, it’s also more than everything we and the US government own.
For the financially technical, this is the net present value of our debts, minus the net present value of government obligations. In other words, they’ve already spent all our money. The question is, who will get the shaft. I expect they will cut Medicare and Social Security first, as these promises can be changed by a simple vote of Congress. I also expect they’ll print a lot of money.
Link to website showing estimates of how much our government owes: http://reason.com/archives/2014/01/23/americas-crushing-fiscal-gap