I don’t make a habit of posting about American politics because every one else is doing it but hey, some things just catch my eye.  When a budget comes swooping in at $3.55 Trillion for instance, that gets my head cocked to one side.  Because I like to crunch simple numbers, I figured I would find out how much that is per citizen of the USA and it comes out to over $11,000.

Know what the median individual income in the United States was in 2006 for people aged over 14?  Just a tad over $26,000.  Now does anyone else find it incredible that in a nation with a median income hovering around the $26,000 mark that this year’s budget will average $11,000 per person?  Take out people aged under 14 and the cost rises to somewhere in the neighbourhood of $13,000 per person living in the United States.  Freaky.

I read a very cool statistic.  Its not a good and cheery statistic wearing a smiley face mask or anything but it’s still pretty cool.  Before the insane collapse of the German mark, the socialist government there had increased spending to such an incredible degree that less than 1% (one percent) of government spending was actually covered by tax revenue.  The rest of the government’s spending was actually covered by printing more money which is just more and more borrowing.  Before too long, the German mark collapsed and was devalued to such an incredible degree that a single American penny could buy you about 45 billion German marks.

Now a lot of people blame the collapse of the mark on treaty requirements that placed incredible obligations on the German state after WWI.  I used to be of the same mind because hey, having to hand over billions of marks and things like coal and steel would dive bomb anyone’s economy right?  Absolutely right but agreeing to a ridiculous treaty that basically had Germany hand over everything of substance that the nation had was not Germany’s only problem.  The gutless government of the day also saw fit to solve its problem of massive debt and obligations by printing money non stop and without any consideration to the possibility of causing massive inflation.

the Treaty of Versailles was a problem so far as hyperinflation was concerned yes, but not the only problem and I would say not the biggest problem.

The United States has been in a deficit spending position for years now and the last time they actually had a budget surplus was under former president Bill Clinton.  In fact, at one point they were in a position to actually pay off their debt within a decade.  That seems to no longer be the case.

$3.55 trillion is a big basket of cash and this kind of spending is frankly not responsible.  It’s been tried in the past and it’s failed in the past.  It will fail again.