Epic Debt Fail

I am fascinated by the concept that our government is going in the hole for $4 billion USD each day (see "Lady Liberty - Debt Whore").  This is what I would call an "epic fail" that, like the image at the right demonstrates, is the result of those in charge failing to do their jobs properly.

Now each day there are 86,400 seconds.

So that means our government is spending $46,296.00 USD or so each and every second.

And borrowing $19,444.00 USD each second.

Or borrowing about one US Dollar each 50 microseconds (a millisecond = 1/1,000th of a second, a microsecond = 1/1,000,000 of a second).

Now the average US income is around $50,000 USD - very close to the $46,296.00 being spent by the government each second.

Now it just so happens that the US debit (recorded as opposed to unfunded obligations like social security) is equal to taking the average US salary away from each and every citizen for one year or

   $50,000 USD x 310,000,000 people = $15 trillion USD.

SO each and every one of us is in debt for about $50,000 USD.

And that's only as of April 18th, 2011.

By the end of the year we will have spent an additional $4 billion x 8 months x 30 days or one trillion or so additional dollars - another 6.5%.

That $38 billion dollar savings just negotiated by our leaders amounts to a whopping 3.8% savings.

Our leaders have turned Lady Liberty into a debt whore.

Like the old jokes about a $2 whore Lady Liberty gets the job done in 100 microseconds for $2.

I am quite certain that no one in charge would admit to creating or sustaining this situation... yet here it is.

Our present debt is about 20% of the entire world GDP for one year.

(Our unfunded debt, i.e., future social security and other obligations is equal to the entire GDP of the world for one year or about $74 trillion USD.)

And like any addict there are only excuses and we just keep borrowing.

"No, no, there isn't time to fix the problem...  I promise we'll do it later...  in the mean time could you up my credit limit temporarily?" - Love, The US Government.

Epic fail.

Why are we doing this?

Why is this acceptable?

I discuss this with my mother who is in her eighties.

She says "but Sally down the hall won't have her meals on wheels if there are cut backs..."

I try to explain that we should be helping Sally and not spending money on things like these (for example, the US Government buying $100,000,000 of travel tickets over six years and not using them and not getting refunds).  But unfortunately we can't and should not be helping Sally right now because we are flat busted broke.

Is it a good thing to promise some you are going to help them and simply not have the means to follow through?

Gosh!  I thought that was called lying!

Epic fail.

Our leaders must be accountable for what they have done to people like Sally.

Promising to do one thing and in fact acting recklessly and endangering the people they promised to help instead.

And simply confiscating all income about $100,000 or so from every taxpayer in a given year will still not be enough to cover the shortfall...

So don't talk about raising taxes!