Tuesday, February 26, 2013

A normal person’s perspective on the Sequester...Or How I Came to Love the Sequester

Flopping Aces ^ | 02-26-13 | Vince


Everett Dirksen famously said “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money.” If his billion here and billion there added up to $44 billion then he’d have been talking about the Sequester that seems to be everywhere in the news today.

For those not familiar with the Sequester, it is the mandatory cut in federal spending set to take place on March 1st. President Obama essentially warned that the country would likely come to a screeching halt if the mandated cuts actually occurred. Among the damage would be: thousands of teachers and firefighters losing their jobs, 800,000 Defense job losses, nursing home cuts, cuts to Medicare, airports close, hundreds of thousands would miss out on flu vaccinations and cancer screening. Apparently the Myans were just off by a couple of months.

Back to the real money… $44 billion is a lot of money. That’s the kind of money Mark Zuckerberg looks at and goes “Wow”. When you imagine that the Sequester is going to cut that much from the federal budget that seems like a lot… until it’s not.

In 2012 the federal government spent $3.538 trillion. If nothing is done and the Sequester kicks in, in 2013 the federal government will spend $3.553… yes, that’s right, $15 billion more! Somehow, President Obama is trying to suggest that if the country does not figure out how to dodge this $44 billion Sequester bullet, the foundations of our society are going to come crumbling down upon our shoulders. (The total 2013 "cut" includes the aforementioned $44 billion plus $41 billion cut in future years but attributed to 2013.)

That simply makes no sense.

To put this in some perspective, imagine that instead of talking about trillion dollar federal budgets here, we use numbers in the form of your paycheck. Let’s imagine that your family had an income of $50,000 in 2012. While it might have been a challenging year, that’s up 15% from the $43,600 you earned in 2009. (Remember, we’re using government spending as the measure here. If we were instead using actual household income numbers, the $43,600 you earned in 2009 would have instead shrunk to $41,500 by 2012 rather than growing to $50,000). In 2013 you are expecting a .4% raise, taking your income up to $50,211.

Given those numbers, are you going to spend a week knocking on your neighbor’s homes telling them they have to demand the homeowner’s association roll back the dues because you only received a $211 raise this year? Are you going to call your relatives and tell them that you are going broke and that you may lose your house because you only got a $211 raise this year? Are you going to go to your boss and tell him that you’re probably going to have to stop working if he doesn’t give you another $500?

Probably not.

(excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...

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