After watching Tea Party candidate Christine O'Donnell raise a little over five percent of her itemized donations from people who could actually vote for her -- that is, from people in Delaware -- we wanted to see how the rest of the Tea Party Senate slate fared.
It turns out that there's not much correlation between where a Tea Party pol got the money and what happened on Election Day. The final, final reports aren't in yet, but the FEC documents so far show that most of them raised a ton of money out of state. Check out the expanded view of all nine.
(Special thanks to our in-house astrophysicist, Summer Ash, for the data-wrangling.)
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Let's see another "Best Graphics Ever": A chart of the first 205 years of nation's National Debt... and then one of its last 29 years since the Reagan Revolution took hold!!!! It's their hero after all, right? There hasn't been a "Clinton Revolution" or "Bush Revolution" and the fiscal ramifications of the Reagan Revolution have only compounded astronomically 20 fold. That would be a "best graphics ever"!!!
Who would have guessed the first 205 years come in at $1.0 Trillion for its entire national debt... and the next 29 years come in at $20 Trillion??? [$13.7 debt principal today PLUS the $7+ Trillion in its carrying cost, Net Interest.
You want to hit America over the head with Big Picture graphics? Start there. And then how about the $8 Trillion in "borrowed prosperity" of the Current Account trade deficits since the Nixon Administration defaulted on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world. What's the "carrying cost" of borrowed prosperity?????
How about charting the cost of Republican's Trillion dollar policies???
PHxKenster: Graph the Impossible Dream, How Much Investment is Needed to Earn Income, to Pay Taxes, to Retire the Nation Debt. This is my guess at proving it is nearly impossible, and possibly irrelevant as impossible tends to be.
National Debt, when do the mortgage foreclosures transactions land on the door step, now that the other shoe has dropped?
Rule of thumb: Apply this rule to huge dollar amounts in the trillions, move the decimal point to the left eight places, and see what the 'average' family owes. A trillion has 12 zeros, the number of working families more than, but about 100 million has 8 zeros, therefore for every family for every trillion, the (12-8=4) zeros for the debt bill is $10,000/family/trillion. Examples: 3.8 Trillion - $38,000/family/2011-Budget, 13.3 Trillion - $133,000/family/National-Debt, $502.5 Billion – $ 5,025/family/2010-TradeDeficit.
Debts such as the above may be better explained by estimating what it takes to earn the additional disposable income to pay the debt off. There is an implicit argument that this is a good idea. Good ideas are often based on bad assumptions as well as unrealistic possibilities, but rather than simply say it’s impossible, it won’t work, it cannot work. I foolishly chose to 'assume' it will work, and then derive the reasons that it won’t work.
Buck the System:
To pay a buck toward the deficit, you have to have a buck. If you don’t have buck, you can’t pay a buck.
To get a buck you have to earn a buck, to earn a buck you have to invest more bucks.
So how many bucks do you need to in invest to earn a buck?
I don’t know exactly, if I assume 20 bucks invested is enough to earn one buck then 20 bucks is the answer.
If take the buck I earned and donate it to the National Debt, does that make me a Patriot?
But that is not enough incentive to bother with.
I have to earn five to ten times that buck, by investing more like 100 or 200 bucks to earn five or ten bucks. And I have to agree to send in the buck to retire the National Debt.
Just to get one buck I have to do what!
Waiting is the answer, wait for the next year, and send another buck, and then the next for the next buck for twenty years.
Three plans: a) 20 bucks earns 1, send it in. b) 100 bucks earns 5, sent 1 in. c) 200 bucks earns 10, sent 1 in. Based on a 5% return on investment, and a marginal tax rate of 10% to 20% and twenty years to pay, all I have to do is choose a plan a, b or c.
Plan A seems impractical, unless it solves the problem the first year, otherwise being Patriotic is not enough incentive. Plan C, seems more real, except it may not emphasize the urgency, but after the election who going to care. Plan B, seems possible if the value of doing so really produces benefits.
Earning a trillion even at 10,000/family at time is unreal, because it reduces the huge scary amounts to abnormal averages and assumes it’s going to be done by every working family. The math just does not make the emotional point, not sustain the spirit beyond the reading of this prognostication. Try another way.
If you worked for 40 years and managed to only save 25% with compounding off set by inflation, and earning offset by fees and losses and unexpected expenses off set by lottery winnings. You’d have 10 years saved to retire on, now follow and play along.
But if the entire economy retired, and last year's income was equal to the national debt, then paying off the national debt would leave you with 9 years to retire on. This is just math, leaving out the clear thought that whatever you’d saved couldn’t be spent because nothing is produced for your consumption (the entire economy retired!).
This should bring to your attention a question about what in fact did you fact save all those years. If all you saved was money you would have a problem, nothing to buy. If you survived that, you'd have to adjust to an 18th century life style. But, you may have planned ahead and used the group plan to build up a community to share the work you be better off, but then there’s the same problem, with everyone retired, there no work being done, there's no workers. The 'save the money and no workers' plan is not working for you, you need to 'save' enough of the dynamic qualities of society to sustain production to feed the workers, and enough to support your infirm body and more for repairs, replacements and the need to grow. Don’t forget the fact that you may have to reproduce, form a community, interact socially, communicate, educate, make rules, enforce laws, or the fact that living, isolated, alone, responsible and self reliant is myth that is better off forgotten. It is impossible to be responsible to only for your-self, it cannot be done in an emotional world where math does not make the rules, infact trying such a life style is irresponsible, because it assumes no interaction with society, a society that cannot be excluded.
Applying the rule, move decimals 8 to the left to the next year's budget plus the national debt. You would have to earn $172,500/family to pay this total. How many years will take to pay this (additional) amount? How much has to be invested to earn this (additional) amount. As national economic advisor how would propose to determine the capital requirements that need to be activated (idle capacity) plus the additional capital requirements that have to generated? What types of businesses would you support, that could generate (additional) growth in the economy, assuming that we reduce the $502.5 billion/year we are spending for imported oil and other goods?
It should be clear (by just the math alone) that worrying about a dysfunctional economic system, as artificial as it is, is not going to work, without new thinking, you will not make any progress if you just put Humpty Dumpty back together again. You will need new thinkers, who look and act rational and as intelligent as possible.
(4%, 10 years, 17.25 Trillion earned from 74 Trillion in capital)
(4%, 20 years, 17.25 Trillion earned from 37 Trillion in capital)
(4%, 10 years, 17.25 Trillion after 20% tax earned from 370 Trillion in capital)
(4%, 20 years, 17.25 Trillion after 20% tax earned from 183 Trillion in capital)
The Nation Debt, Budget Deficit, Spending together or separately appears as a simple problem of capitalization. The solution to problem will not come from looking at the numbers, which at best provide an estimate the current size of the economy. It easier to wish the entire problem into the corn field, than it is to double the size of the economy in a decade, or imagine that capitalization equal to the entire net worth of the nation is going to appear from nowhere.
Back to Topic: Remember if money is free speech and taxing free speech is unconstitutional, then taxing money is also unconstitutional.
Or, Rich, you/we could just roll-back, not just the Bush tax cuts, but the delusional Reagan tax cuts as well... or maybe bettter yet, to those "good ole days" of the 1950's under Ike, that so many conservatives yearn for and lament as the swell years forever lost. Or do the math and calculate a graduated income tax structure that actually amortizes down all the vast borrowing and mortgaged futures of our nation's national debt. How novel, pencil and paper and math. Or chart the wealth held by each ten percent block on the income distribution spectrum chart and get blown away at its reality hitting you in the face and how we all became so bambozzled to let the wealthest privatize the profits and had the debt socialized to the rest of us... where we eat the costs, the burdens, and they fly off with all the wealth of the nation. How about that???
They've also privatized public officials, buying them re-elections, and legislation on retainer. It really pretty simple if properly charted and laid out for all to see. It's the Big Picture.
And the point was that either we have underestimated the size of the national debt/deficit problem; not knowing how to lead the economy to actually produce this result in 10 or 20 years. Or there is lot of unseen capital floating around the world in hedge fund and derivative credit swaps, the only place where you see such numbers is (ISDA). However unless we come up with a real figure for actual total worth of the all the assets of the country we will not know how to utilize those resource properly. For example the cost of oil imported to the USA, is upwards of $300 Billion/Year is matched dollar for dollar with the portion of the Military budget for the Naval forces protecting the Middle East Oil Countries $300 Billion/Year. This corresponds to the true cost of a gallon of gasoline being $5.98/Gal but we are paying only $2.99 at the pump. The USA taxpayer in effect is paying a 100% subsidy for Oil energy. Just to compare (big numbers) I have estimated that it would take about $300 Billion/Year for the next 40 years to rebuild the US Nuclear Industry and site 100 new plants in the 25 or so locations suitable for such a large plant. The unfortunately the problem is that most of the Nuclear Industry is now in China and Toshiba/Japan currently owns Westinghouse Nuclear, the US produced no reactors. Also the USA has little capacity to build Deep Well Drilling Platforms, like the one built in Korea that sank. To drill the Gulf of Mexico dry, we need about 50 rigs at a billion each.
There not, in my opinion, enough capital, on the table to finance energy independence, given that there is more money to be made in the existing private industry, subsidized at 100%, than the proceeds from alternate energy investments. This only means that the system will have to go bust, to change the political climate, and not before, a climate change only science believes.
Alternately we can invest in brainwashing that says stop investing we can afford it anymore, it might not work but it will be tried.
There has been a massive run-up of national debt costs and principal of a whopping $20 Trillion the last 29 years, after just a total of $1.0 Trillion our first 205 yrs as a nation, 1776 - 1981. And $100 Billion per month is being added to the national debt each month. It costs over $30 Billion per month in interest costs to "carry" this debt forward to our children... as our legacy "gift" to them.
What part of Obama's wanting to make permanant the Bush tax cuts to 98% of all Americans isn't alarming to ALL Americans, given this stark reality??
So you began to care about your children in about January, 2009? What stopped you from doing it before then?
As Bush went from a surplus to glaring deficits for eight full years you didn't notice or you didn't care? No leader in the history of the world that I know of has ever started wars and continued to give tax breaks at the same time. Maybe he should have readjusted?
It is true that during WW II and the Depression, nobody worried about the debt. But we are currently in TWO wars and a Great Recession (which shows every sign of being a depression to me) and somehow you think we are experiencing a normal economy and must make a sharp adjustment?
Once we get out of the ditch the Republicans put us in and the actual DOMESTIC GDP, based on things we sell to others not derivatives trading profits, is normal again, then by all means it will be time to attend to that deficit...and make the rich pay the same tax rate that Eisenhower had them pay in the 1950s.
That spurred the biggest economic growth in our country's history. I'll listen to the advice Eisenhower left us with not Bush, thank you very much.
I assume these charts don't take into account any of the Rove-style PAC money and the Citizen's United foreign donations that don't have to be reported or the donors disclosed?
So all that these red columns pertain to are "official" Teabagger money from the Koch Brothers and their other billionaire friends and Swiftboaters? These people certainly know how to gamble with their money. Didn't spend a dime on the dingbats, did they?
So why couldn't these greedy bastards and their Wall Street hedge fund buddies have gambled more responsibly with our 401k money before the meltdown? What are they doing with it now?
Doesn't this chart need a key or a legend? What does red mean and what does blue mean?
Chris, look at the expanded view - red is out of state and blue is in state.
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/TVNews/MSNBC%20TV/Maddow/Blog/2010/11/money.png
Who said anything about "beginning to care in January, 2009"??
Reagan whipping out the national credit card, after Jimmy Carter's Paul Volcker killed off inflation via Fed action for him and us, started the headlines and cover stories of "Monsterous Deficits". Nearly 25 -30 years ago a sane person would have thought this insanity couldn't last. !!! Billion dollar deficit levels now reach Trillion dollar deficit levels, YEARLY. Caring should have kicked in 25 - 30 years ago when it was OBVIOUS America was driving itself into a ditch. But a near unlimited credit supply kept the insanity going, financing the wealthy via tax cut savings... who needed them least. Insane.
Raise taxes, massive stimulus, and Quantative Easing 2 by the Fed at the same time... to replenish a massive drain on the money supply that's been happening since 2008. Or Japan's 15 years for all of us. Republican voters just insured two years of that march toward serfdom.
Glad to hear Summer Ash is still around.
I, myself, did send money to several out-of-state Democratic candidates; but no where near the individual limit. Unfortunately, only one (Betty Sutton in Ohio) prevailed. But I was praying for a Bachmann loss and willing to put a few bucks on it.
Why do liberals like more taxes and government ruling their lives? It's crazy
"Ruling" their lives? Man-up and live your own and quit your whining about government ruining yours. Pick yourself up by your bootstraps and quit blaming government for your own boot on your own throat.
And taxes are what pay the bills to keep the roads lit at night... not to mention "carrying" the sea of red ink republicans are drowning the country in. What else is going to pay the interest on the debt?
The Repulican Leadership have surely read Hitler's "Mein Kampf' and orther documents (Speeches) by this right wing maniac. They have learned well to lead there constituents - LEMMINGS off the edge. Republic means only the rich or ultra friends of the rich know what is best for there country. They have they're own version of the constitution. If a republican says something then a lemming knows they are speaking the truth without question.
Mitch McConnells of the country, be wary.
As if this country's super elite do not support the Democrats? Both parties are rotten, and you Red are a fool for arguing on behalf of the elites, who hide behind the poor and minority populations. By the way, Hitler was a national SOCIALIST. If you think nationalism always means right-wing, I guess you never heard of Stalin and Mao.
The amazing thing is Rand Paul is a libertarian, announced his candidacy on Rachel's Show, and has alot more common ground with liberals than the Republican establishment. But like good puppets, MSNBC hosts attack tea-party candidates with more vitriol than George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove! It's as if they would prefer neocons to grassroots liberty-minded conservatives! PLEASE EXPLAIN!
Good idea. We know so little about the reality of our economic history. And simple clean definitive graphs can help where no amount of verbiage can. Thn hammer it home again and again and again by showing the same graph again and again.
We tend to show something once and think it is done.
We humans are dense. Thanks for the intelligent helpful response...M