Using data to minimize human suffering and optimize life for everyone. A better world through math. 2026-03-21T00:00:00.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/ Mike P. Sinn m@warondisease.org 2009-03-01T02:20:00.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/debt/debt-to-gdp-forecast-chart/ <p>"These are extraordinary times. We can't worry about the national debt now. We'll deal with that later."</p> <p>This is what people defending massive deficit spending say. It sounds reasonable. Who wants to worry about the credit card bill while the house is on fire?</p> <p>Here's the problem: "later" never comes.</p> <p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20111112093221/http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c6/Debt_to_GDP_Forecast_Chart.png/800px-Debt_to_GDP_Forecast_Chart.png"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/640px-Debt_to_GDP_Forecast_Chart.png" alt="Debt to GDP Forecast Chart. Federal Debt Held by the Public - 1940 to 2080"></a></p> <p><em>Graph Source: <a href="http://www.gao.gov/financial_pdfs/citizensguide2008.pdf">Government Accountability Office Citizens Guide 2008</a></em></p> <p>This chart shows federal debt held by the public from 1940 to 2080. The blue line is the baseline scenario. The red line is the "alternative fiscal scenario," which is government-speak for "what actually happens when politicians keep doing what they're doing."</p> <h2>What You're Looking At</h2> <p>In 1940, debt was around 40% of GDP. World War II pushed it to 100% of GDP by 1946. Fighting Nazis costs money, apparently.</p> <p>After the war, debt fell to about 25% of GDP by 1980. Peacetime economies typically don't require selling war bonds to citizens who fear invasion.</p> <p>Then things get interesting. Debt started climbing in the 1980s and never really stopped. By 2008, it was back to 40% of GDP.</p> <p>The red line shows what happens if current policies continue. By 2040, debt reaches 200% of GDP. By 2080, it hits 350% of GDP.</p> <p>That's not a prediction. It's a math problem with one solution: something breaks.</p> <h2>Why "Later" Doesn't Work</h2> <p>Every crisis becomes an excuse to add debt:</p> <ul> <li>Financial crisis? Add debt.</li> <li>Pandemic? Add debt.</li> <li>War? Add debt.</li> <li>Economic slowdown? Add debt.</li> <li>Recovery? Keep the debt, add more.</li> </ul> <p>The pattern is simple. When times are bad, deficit spending is "necessary stimulus." When times are good, deficit spending is "investment in growth." The debt only goes one direction.</p> <p>Politicians have two time horizons: the next election and never. Debt reduction falls into the "never" category.</p> <h2>The Math</h2> <p>Debt as a percentage of GDP works like this:</p> <p><strong>Debt-to-GDP ratio = Total Government Debt / Gross Domestic Product</strong></p> <p>If you earn $50,000 per year and owe $50,000, your debt-to-income ratio is 100%. Banks get nervous around 40%. The government is heading toward 350%.</p> <p>You can fix this ratio two ways:</p> <ol> <li>Reduce debt (spend less than you collect)</li> <li>Increase GDP (grow the economy faster than the debt grows)</li> </ol> <p>Option 1 requires politicians to cut spending or raise taxes. Both are unpopular. Option 2 requires faster economic growth than the rate at which you're adding debt. This is theoretically possible but practically unlikely when you're borrowing trillions per year.</p> <p>Option 3, the one we're currently using, is to ignore the problem and hope math stops working.</p> <h2>How This Usually Ends</h2> <p>Countries with debt-to-GDP ratios above 100% typically experience:</p> <ul> <li>Higher interest rates (lenders want compensation for risk)</li> <li>Inflation (printing money to pay debts)</li> <li>Slower economic growth (resources go to debt service instead of investment)</li> <li>Currency devaluation (nobody wants your money)</li> <li>Austerity (sudden, forced spending cuts when lenders stop lending)</li> </ul> <p>Or they experience economic growth so explosive that it outpaces debt accumulation. This happens approximately never.</p> <hr> <p>Sources: <a href="http://www.gao.gov/financial_pdfs/citizensguide2008.pdf">GAO Financial Report 2008</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget">Wikipedia: United States Federal Budget</a></p> <p><audio class="wp-audio-shortcode" id="audio-6-16" preload="none" style="width: 100%;" controls="controls"><source type="audio/mpeg" src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn002_us_national_debt.mp3?_=16"><a href="http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn002_us_national_debt.mp3">http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn002_us_national_debt.mp3</a></audio></p> <p>Podcast: <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn002_us_national_debt.mp3" title="Play in new window">Play in new window</a> | <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn002_us_national_debt.mp3" title="Download">Download</a></p> 2009-03-01T02:31:00.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/economics/historical-examples-show-government/ <p>This <a href="https://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/SR/SR421.pdf">study</a> by the Federal Reserve examines the effects of government intervention and the absence thereof in two similar financial crises which occurred simultaneously in Chile and Mexico. Chile liquidated the insolvent banks and instituted a new regulatory system to prevent future abuses. Mexico nationalized the entire banking system keeping the insolvent banks on life support at the expense of the taxpayer.</p> <p>Sometimes I wonder if economic experiments are just countries playing Rock, Paper, Scissors with each other's futures.</p> <p>This is what happened. Over the next 25 years, Chile's per capita GDP grew 100% while Mexico has exhibited an impressive 0% growth rate. This means the average Chilean is twice as rich as he was 25 years ago, whereas the average Mexican stayed just as poor as he was before. It's like one country took the stairs and the other took the escalator that was broken and just stood there.</p> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/chile-mexico-recession.jpg"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/chile-mexico-recession-672x458.jpg" alt="Graph Illustrating High GDP Growth in Chile and Flat GDP Growth in Mexico Since 1980. Title: Real GDP per working-age person in Chile and Mexico."></a></p> <p>The lesson is clear. If the government subsidizes bad behavior you get more of it. If the government taxes good behavior you get less of it. This raises the profound question: What if we subsidized good behavior instead? But that would be too simple, wouldn't it?</p> <p>Yet that's exactly what were doing. We're taxing successful, competently run businesses to subsidize irresponsible, poorly run businesses. It's like punishing the kid who did their homework to reward the kid who ate it. Until we realize this simple fact, the previous trend of increased productivity and standards of living will only be a memory.</p> <p><audio class="wp-audio-shortcode" id="audio-7-15" preload="none" style="width: 100%;" controls="controls"><source type="audio/mpeg" src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn005_chile_mexico-government-intervention.mp3?_=15"><a href="http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn005_chile_mexico-government-intervention.mp3">http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn005_chile_mexico-government-intervention.mp3</a></audio></p> <p>Podcast: <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn005_chile_mexico-government-intervention.mp3" title="Play in new window">Play in new window</a> | <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn005_chile_mexico-government-intervention.mp3" title="Download">Download</a></p> 2009-03-08T04:27:00.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/obama-to-cut-deficit-in-half-after/ <p>The Associated Press ran a story titled "Obama plans to slash deficit in half." This is technically true. It's also technically misleading.</p> <h2>The Actual Math</h2> <p>Here's a graph from the Wall Street Journal showing annual federal budget deficits over 30 years:</p> <p><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/NA-AV884_WDEFIC_NS_20090213222641.gif" alt="Graph Showing Federal Budget Surplus/Deficit Since 1980 (30 years)"></p> <p>Bush's worst deficit was less than $500 billion.</p> <p>Obama's first year deficit hit $2 trillion.</p> <p>Four years later, Obama announced he would reduce the deficit to $533 billion.</p> <h2>How to Spin Anything</h2> <p>Step 1: Quadruple the deficit to $2 trillion.</p> <p>Step 2: Reduce it to $533 billion.</p> <p>Step 3: Claim you cut the deficit in half.</p> <p>This is accurate in the same way that setting your house on fire and then putting out half the fire makes you a responsible homeowner.</p> <p>It's also like eating 12 donuts and then only eating 6 donuts the next day and calling yourself a fitness influencer. Technically, you did cut your donut consumption in half. The fire department would like a word, though.</p> <p>$533 billion would still be the largest annual deficit in US history at that time. But the AP framed this as fiscal responsibility.</p> <p>You could also raise the deficit to $10 trillion and then cut it to $5 trillion and claim you "slashed the deficit in half." The math works. The logic doesn't.</p> <p><em>Graph Source: <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123457407865686565">Wall Street Journal</a></em></p> 2009-03-19T05:31:00.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/john-stossel-bailouts-and-bull/ <h2>Toxic Assets</h2> <p>In 2008, Wall Street financial institutions gave loans to people who couldn't pay them back. This is called "bad business." The institutions were going to lose money.</p> <p>They did not want to lose money.</p> <p>Losing money is what happens to regular people when they make bad decisions. For banks, there's a different system. It's called "getting billions of dollars from the government." The two systems are very different, but both are perfectly fair depending on whether you're a bank or not.</p> <h2>Privatizing Gains, Socializing Losses</h2> <p>The solution: have the Federal Reserve print new money and buy the bad loans for way more than they were worth. This process is called quantitative easing (QE).</p> <p><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/quantitative-easing-300x174.png" alt=""></p> <p>Source: <a href="https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-feds-balance-sheet-the-other-exponential-curve/">Visual Capitalist</a></p> <h2>Heads CEOs Win, Tails You Lose</h2> <p>Then the banks used taxpayer money to reward executives for their bad decisions.</p> <p>Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase paid $18 billion in bonuses in 2008. They received $45 billion in taxpayer bailout funds through TARP.</p> <p>They turned $45 billion of your money into $18 billion of executive bonuses. The remaining $27 billion covered the losses from the bad bets they made.</p> <p>This is called "accountability." The executives were held accountable by receiving millions of dollars in bonuses. It's a tough lesson, but someone had to learn it. That someone was you, and the lesson was "you're paying for this."</p> <p><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Largest-Recipients-of-Federal-Reserve-Bailout-Funds-2007-to-2011-300x243.png" alt=""></p> <p>Source: <a href="https://wallstreetonparade.com/">Wall Street on Parade</a></p> <h2>Moral Hazard</h2> <p>The moral of the story for bankers:</p> <p>When you make good investments, you keep all the profits.</p> <p>When you make bad investments, the Fed gives you free money and losses get spread over the entire population.</p> <p>This is called "moral hazard." It means rewarding failure creates more failure.</p> <h2>There's No Inflation, So What's the Harm?</h2> <p>There are two types of inflation:</p> <ol> <li><strong>Monetary Inflation</strong> - increase in total money supply</li> <li><strong>Price Inflation</strong> - increase in cost of goods and services</li> </ol> <p>The Fed created $6 trillion in new money over 12 years. That's monetary inflation.</p> <p><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/federal-reserve-balance-sheet.png" alt=""></p> <p>Source: <a href="https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-feds-balance-sheet-the-other-exponential-curve/">Visual Capitalist</a></p> <p>Annual price inflation has only been about 1.5% over the period. So where did the money go?</p> <p><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Annual-Inflation-Rate-2010-Jun-2020-768x523.png" alt=""></p> <p>It went to asset prices. Stock prices. Real estate prices. The things rich people own went up. The things poor people buy stayed relatively flat.</p> <p>This is how you transfer $6 trillion from everyone to the already wealthy without most people noticing.</p> <p>It's the perfect crime. You print $6 trillion, give it to rich people, their assets go up in value, and poor people can't afford houses anymore. Then you say "inflation is only 1.5%" because bread prices didn't change. Everyone claps. The end.</p> <p><audio class="wp-audio-shortcode" id="audio-9-14" preload="none" style="width: 100%;" controls="controls"><source type="audio/mpeg" src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn006_us_pays_16000_per_worker.mp3?_=14"><a href="http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn006_us_pays_16000_per_worker.mp3">http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn006_us_pays_16000_per_worker.mp3</a></audio></p> <p>Podcast: <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn006_us_pays_16000_per_worker.mp3" title="Play in new window">Play in new window</a> | <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn006_us_pays_16000_per_worker.mp3" title="Download">Download</a></p> 2009-04-13T22:29:00.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/corporate-welfare/what-would-happen-if-we-let-aig-fail/ <p>The average American household paid $2,000 to bail out AIG. Your bill arrived without your consent. You paid it anyway.</p> <p>It's like when someone orders bottle service at the club and then splits the bill evenly, except the someone is an insurance company and the club is the global financial system and you weren't even at the club.</p> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/aig-bailout-infographic.jpg"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/aig-bailout-infographic-672x368.jpg" alt="AIG Bailout Infographic: Total Money Spent More Than $170 Billion"></a></p> <p><em>Source: <a href="http://nicolasrapp.com/">nicolasrapp.com</a></em></p> <h2>What Is A Credit Default Swap?</h2> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/what_is_a_credit_default_swap_infographic.gif"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/what_is_a_credit_default_swap_infographic.gif" alt="Infographic Describing what a Credit Default Swap is"></a></p> <p><em>Image by <a href="http://scottpollack.com/">Scott Pollack</a></em></p> <p>A credit default swap is insurance for financial products. AIG sold this insurance. Then the products failed. Then AIG didn't have the money to pay out.</p> <p>This is what insurance companies call "a problem." It's also what normal people call "not having insurance," but on Wall Street they use fancier words.</p> <p>Think of it like selling flood insurance for every house in Florida and then being surprised when it rains. Except instead of rain it's the entire financial system collapsing, which was definitely impossible to predict if you weren't paying any attention whatsoever.</p> <h2>How AIG Failed</h2> <p>AIG got downgraded from AAA to A credit rating. This triggered provisions requiring AIG to provide billions in collateral to counterparties like Goldman Sachs.</p> <p>AIG didn't have billions in collateral.</p> <h2>The "Loan"</h2> <p>The government loaned AIG $170 billion. This was called a loan. Loans typically get repaid. This one won't.</p> <p>As of 2011, $11.4 billion has been repaid. At this rate, full repayment will occur sometime after the heat death of the universe.</p> <p>The word "loan" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. It's technically a loan in the same way that setting money on fire is technically "outdoor heating."</p> <p>Most of the money went to European banks. American taxpayers paid European banks because an American insurance company sold insurance it couldn't pay out. Capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich.</p> <p>It's a beautiful system. When rich people make bad bets, everyone pays. When poor people make bad bets, they lose their house. This is called "moral hazard," which is Latin for "we can do whatever we want."</p> <h2>The Alternative</h2> <p>Former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg testified to Congress that bankruptcy would have been better for taxpayers.</p> <p>In Chapter 11 bankruptcy, AIGFP would be broken up and sold. Creditors would receive 20-30% of what they were owed.</p> <p>Goldman Sachs received $12.9 billion from the bailout. They spent $18 billion on executive bonuses in 2007. So receiving only $3 billion from bankruptcy would not have destroyed them. It would have merely reduced executive compensation.</p> <h2>The Real Motivation</h2> <p>Congress asked Treasury to explain how AIG's bankruptcy would destroy the financial system.</p> <p>Treasury declined to provide this explanation.</p> <p>Goldman Sachs was Obama's number one campaign contributor. Goldman Sachs spent $43 million on political contributions.</p> <p>They received tens of billions from the AIG bailout.</p> <p>$43 million is a bargain.</p> <h2>Your Bill</h2> <p>$2,000 per household. That's what you paid to protect AIG's counterparties from the consequences of their decisions.</p> <p>If AIG's bets had paid off, you would not have received $2,000.</p> <p>Privatized gains. Socialized losses. The system works exactly as designed.</p> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/AIG-FinancialMessInfographic_4d9624b87ffac.jpg"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/AIG-FinancialMessInfographic_4d9624b87ffac-1038x204.jpg" alt="AIG Financial Mess Infographic"></a></p> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/aig-bailout-timeline.jpg"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/aig-bailout-timeline-672x5350.jpg" alt="Infographic of Timeline of AIG Bailouts"></a></p> <p><em>Source: <a href="http://www.insuranceproviders.com/aig-bailout-timeline/">insuranceproviders.com</a></em></p> <p><audio class="wp-audio-shortcode" id="audio-13-13" preload="none" style="width: 100%;" controls="controls"><source type="audio/mpeg" src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn008_what_if_aig_failed.mp3?_=13"><a href="http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn008_what_if_aig_failed.mp3">http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn008_what_if_aig_failed.mp3</a></audio></p> <p>Podcast: <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn008_what_if_aig_failed.mp3" title="Play in new window">Play in new window</a> | <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn008_what_if_aig_failed.mp3" title="Download">Download</a></p> 2011-02-25T00:47:51.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/debt/debt-swell-top-gop-hopefuls-tax-plans/ <p>Here's a fun game called "Spot the Fiscal Conservative."</p> <p>Three of the four major Republican candidates for president would add trillions to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/running-in-the-red-how-the-us-on-the-road-to-surplus-detoured-to-massive-debt/2011/04/28/AFFU7rNF_story.html">national debt</a> with their <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/romney-obama-release-dueling-tax-overhaul-proposals/2012/02/22/gIQAKOLrTR_story.html">tax policies</a>, according to an independent analysis by U.S. Budget Watch. The fourth candidate would cut $2 trillion from future borrowing. Can you guess which three call themselves "fiscal conservatives"?</p> <p>Texas Rep. Ron Paul pairs big tax cuts with even bigger spending cuts, actually reducing future debt by about $2 trillion.</p> <p>Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum and former House speaker Newt Gingrich would pile trillions onto the debt. They propose sharp tax cuts without identifying where the money comes from. It's like buying a Ferrari on your credit card and calling yourself "financially responsible" because you negotiated 0.9% APR.</p> <h2>The Numbers</h2> <p>By 2021, according to the <a href="http://crfb.org/">Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget</a>:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Santorum's plan</strong>: +$4.5 trillion in debt</li> <li><strong>Gingrich's plan</strong>: +$7 trillion in debt</li> <li><strong>Romney's plan</strong>: +$2.6 trillion in debt</li> <li><strong>Paul's plan</strong>: -$2 trillion in debt</li> </ul> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/debt-by-GOP-presidential-candidate-2012.jpg"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/debt-by-GOP-presidential-candidate-2012-672x387.jpg" alt="Graph of Total Debt by GOP Presidential Candidates 2012"></a></p> <p><em>Graph Source: <a href="http://crfb.org/">http://crfb.org/</a></em></p> <p>Gingrich and Santorum would push debt held by outside investors to over 100% of GDP. That's the financial equivalent of owing more on your credit cards than you earn in a year. Banks call this "a problem." Economists call it "unsustainable." I call it "notable."</p> <h2>Romney: The Moderate Spender</h2> <p>Romney started with $1.35 trillion in tax cuts paired with $1.2 trillion in spending cuts. Close enough, right? Like being "only a little pregnant."</p> <p>Then Wednesday happened. Romney proposed cutting all federal income tax rates by an additional 20%. This would slash revenue by over $2 trillion over 10 years.</p> <p>His economic adviser Glenn Hubbard said they'd recover the lost cash by "closing tax loopholes and boosting economic activity." Which loopholes? How much activity? These questions remain theoretical.</p> <h2>Paul: Actual Math</h2> <p>Paul would cut tax revenue by $5 trillion over the next decade. He'd also cut spending by $7 trillion, including deep reductions in defense and federal health programs.</p> <p>The math works if you don't mind actually cutting things. Most politicians prefer the "cut taxes, promise to cut spending later" approach. It polls better than honesty.</p> <p>Paul campaign spokesman Gary Howard: "It's not a surprise to us the report found that Congressman Paul's plan is the only one that doesn't raise the debt. The critical importance of dealing with our growing debt has been a hallmark issue of Dr. Paul's campaign and his career."</p> <h2>The Responses</h2> <p>Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul argued that Romney is the only candidate to lay out a realistic budget framework "that will jump-start the American economy and bring tax relief to middle-income Americans."</p> <p>The report's authors gave each candidate three scenarios: low-debt (most generous assumptions), intermediate-debt (reasonable assumptions), and high-debt (stringent assumptions). The numbers above use the intermediate scenario, which gives candidates credit for vague promises like "reduce spending by X%."</p> <p>Even with generous assumptions, the math remains third-grade arithmetic. Three candidates want to collect less money and spend the same amount. One candidate wants to collect less money and spend less money. The confusion is notable.</p> <hr> <p>By <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lori-montgomery/2011/03/04/ABffwuN_page.html">Lori Montgomery</a>, Published: February 23 <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/report-debt-will-swell-under-top-gop-hopefuls-tax-plans/2012/02/22/gIQAzAJvUR_story.html?wpisrc=dailypaul">The Washington Post</a></p> 2011-03-07T03:03:00.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/corporate-vs-social-welfare/ <p><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/corporate-welfare-piggy-bank.jpg" alt="Corporate Welfare Piggy Bank"></p> <p>Time Magazine, Vol. 152 No. 19</p> <h5>About <a href="https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/hud/public-housing-rental-subsidies">$59</a> billion is spent on traditional social welfare programs. <a href="http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/corporate-welfare-state-how-federal-government-subsidizes-us-businesses">$92</a> billion is spent on corporate subsidies. So, the government spent nearly 50% more on corporate welfare than it did on food stamps and housing assistance in 2006.</h5> <p><strong><em>Before we look at the details, a heartfelt plea from the Save the CEO's Charitable Trust:</em></strong></p> <p><em>There's so much suffering in the world. It can all get pretty overwhelming sometimes. Consider, for a moment the sorrow in the eyes of a CEO who's just found out that his end-of-year bonus is only going to be a paltry $2.3 million.</em></p> <p><em>Before you judge CEOs, try living on $2.3 million yourself. You can't even buy a small yacht with that. You'd have to settle for a medium-sized yacht, which is basically poverty.</em></p> <p><em>“It felt like a slap in the face. Imagine what it would feel like just before Christmas to find out that you’re going to be forced to scrape by on your standard $8.4 million compensation package alone. Imagine what is was like to have to look into my daughter’s face and tell her that I couldn’t afford to both buy her a dollar sign shaped island and hire someone to chew her food from now on, too. To put her in that situation of having to choose… She’s only a child for God’s sake.”</em></p> <p><em>It doesn’t have to be this way. Thanks to federal subsidies from taxpayers like you, CEO’s like G. Allen Andreas of Archer Daniels Midland was able to take home almost <a href="http://www.aflcio.org/Corporate-Watch/Paywatch-2014">$14 million</a> in executive compensation last year. But he’s one of the lucky ones. There are still corporations out there that actually have to provide goods and services to their consumers in order to survive. They need your help.</em></p> <p><em>For just <a href="https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/tbb-0205-7.pdf">$93 billion</a> a year the federal government is able to provide a better life for these CEO’s and their families. That’s less than the cost of 240 million cups of coffee a day. Won’t you help a needy corporation today?</em></p> <h1>The Traditional Welfare Queen</h1> <h5>Definition: social welfare</h5> <p>n. Financial aid, such as a subsidy, provided by a government to specific individuals.</p> <p>When one thinks about government welfare, the first thing that comes to mind is the proverbial welfare queen sitting atop her majestic throne of government cheese issuing a royal decree to her clamoring throngs of illegitimate babies that they may shut the hell up while she tries to watch Judge Judy. However, many politically well-connected corporations are also parasitically draining their share of fiscal blood from your paycheck before you ever see it. It's called corporate welfare. The intent here is to figure out which presents the greater burden to our federal budget, corporate or social welfare programs.</p> <p>Before you criticize welfare queens, try sitting on a throne of government cheese yourself. It's very uncomfortable. The cheese is not structurally sound. This is why corporations prefer cash subsidies, which are much easier to sit on and also don't attract mice.</p> <p>There are, of course, positive and negative aspects to this spending.The primary negative aspect is that you have to increase taxes to pay for it. Taxing individuals lowers their standard of living.  It reduces people’s ability to afford necessities like medical care, education, and low mileage off-road vehicles.The common usage definition of social welfare includes welfare checks and food stamps. Welfare checks are supplied through a federal program called Temporary Aid for Needy Families. Combined federal and state <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1480174106/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1480174106&linkCode=as2&tag=quant08-20">TANF</a> spending was about <a href="https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/hhs/welfare-spending">$26</a> billion in 2006. In 2009, the federal government will spend about <a href="https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/hud/public-housing-rental-subsidies">$25</a> billion on rental aid for low-income households and about <a href="https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/hud/public-housing-rental-subsidies">$8</a> billion on public housing projects. For some perspective, that’s about <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20090503223422/http://www.whitehouse.gov:80/omb/budget/fy2006/tables.html">3 percent</a> of the total federal budget.</p> <p>Note: I do not consider Medicaid to be included in the term “welfare” as it is used in common parlance.  Typically, if one states that someone is “on welfare”, they mean that the person is receiving direct financial aid from the government.  If we included <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1589019342/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1589019342&linkCode=as2&tag=quant08-20">Medicaid</a> in our definition of social welfare, we would also have to consider any service that the government pays for to be “welfare”.  For instance, public roadways to individuals’ homes would also be considered “welfare” under that expansive definition.</p> <h3>TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families)</h3> <p>Another negative aspect relates to the fact that social welfare programs reduce the incentive for recipients to become productive members of society. However, in 1996, Congress passed a bill enacting limited welfare reform, replacing the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0700608982/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0700608982&linkCode=as2&tag=quant08-20">Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)</a> program with the new Temporary Aid to Needy Families (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TANF">TANF</a>) program. Now, with the recent changes in healthcare including Obamacare tax implications, some states are enacting strict criteria that a family must meet to be eligible for TANF. One key aspect of this reform required recipients to engage in job searches, on the job training, community service work, or other constructive behaviors as a condition for receiving aid. The bill was signed by a man named Bill Clinton, who is much better known for an act of fellatio which, of course, had far greater societal implications. Regardless, the success of this reform was pretty dramatic. <a href="http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/change_time_1.pdf">Caseloads were cut nearly in half</a>. Once individuals were required to work or undertake constructive activities as a condition of receiving aid they left welfare rapidly. Another surprising result was a drop in the child poverty rate. Employment of single mothers increased substantially and the child poverty rate fell sharply from <a href="http://www.heritage.org/research/testimony/means-tested-welfare-spending-past-and-future-growth">20.8 percent in 1995 to 16.3 percent in 2000</a>.</p> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/Child-pov-by-living-arrangements-75-09.jpg"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/Child-pov-by-living-arrangements-75-09-672x504.jpg" alt="Graph of US Child Poverty Rates by Living Arrangements (1975-2009)"></a></p> <p><em>Graph Source: <a href="http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty.html">http://census.gov/hhes/www/poverty.html</a></em></p> <h1>The Corporate Welfare Queen</h1> <p>Now, let’s consider the other kind of welfare.</p> <p><strong>Definition: corporate welfare</strong></p> <p>n. Financial aid, such as a subsidy, provided by a government to corporations or other businesses.</p> <p>The Cato Institute estimated that, in 2002, <a href="https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/tbb-0205-7.pdf">$93 billion</a> were devoted to corporate welfare. This is about <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20120206093930/http://www.gpoaccess.gov:80/usbudget/fy02/browse.html">5 percent</a> of the federal budget.</p> <h5>What is <strong>NOT</strong> considered corporate welfare?</h5> <ol> <li><strong>Government Contracts –</strong> To clarify what is and isn’t corporate welfare, a “no-bid” Iraq contract for the prestigious Halliburton, would not be considered corporate welfare because the government technically directly receives some good or service in exchange for this expenditure. Based on the Pentagon’s Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) findings of <a href="http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/reports/houston2006.pdf">$1.4 billion</a> of overcharging and fraud, I suppose the primary service they provide could be considered to be repeatedly violating the American taxpayer.</li> <li><strong>Tax Breaks</strong> – Tax breaks targeted to benefit specific corporations could also be considered a form of welfare. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471711780/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0471711780&linkCode=as2&tag=quant08-20">Tax loopholes</a> force other businesses and individual taxpayers without the same political clout to pick up the slack and sacrifice a greater share of their hard-earned money to decrease the financial burden on these corporations. However, to simplify matters, we’ve only included financial handouts to companies in our working definition of corporate welfare.</li> </ol> <h5>What IS considered corporate welfare?</h5> <ul> <li><strong>Subsidies</strong> – On the other hand, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005">$15 billion</a> in subsidies contained in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, to the oil, gas, and coal industries, would be considered corporate welfare because no goods or services are directly returned to the government in exchange for these expenditures.</li> </ul> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/energy-subsidies-chart.jpg"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/energy-subsidies-chart-1024x607.jpg" alt="US Energy Subsidies Infographic by GOOD Magazine Deeplocal"></a></p> <p><em>Infographic Source: <a href="https://www.good.is/infographics">http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1012/subsidize-this/flat.html</a></em></p> <p></p> <p>Whenever corporate welfare is presented to voters, it always sounds like a pretty reasonable, well-intended idea. Politicians say that they’re <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0810988399/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0810988399&linkCode=as2&tag=quant08-20">stimulating the economy</a> or helping struggling industries or creating jobs or funding important research. But when you steal money from the paychecks of working people, you hurt the economy by reducing their ability to buy the things they want or need. This decrease in demand damages other industries and puts people out of work.</p> <p>Most of the pigs at the government trough are among the biggest companies in America, including:</p> <ul> <li>The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FNSDEGQ/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00FNSDEGQ&linkCode=as2&tag=quant08-20">Big 3 automakers</a></li> <li>Boeing</li> <li>Archer Daniels Midland</li> <li>Enron</li> </ul> <h3>Farm Subsidies</h3> <p>However, the largest fraction of corporate welfare spending, about 40%, went through the Department of Agriculture, most of it in the form of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005ZH34ZQ/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B005ZH34ZQ&linkCode=as2&tag=quant08-20">farm subsidies</a>. <a href="https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa592.pdf">(Edwards, Corporate Welfare, 2003)</a> Well, that sounds OK. Someone’s got to help struggling family farms stay afloat, right? But in reality, farm subsidies actually tilt the cotton field in favor of the largest industrial farming operations. When it comes to deciding how to dole out the money, the agricultural subsidy system utilizes a process that is essentially the opposite of that used in the social welfare system’s welfare system. In the corporate welfare system, the more money and assets you have, the more government assistance you get. Conversely, social welfare programs are set up so that the more money and assets you have, the less government assistance you get. The result is that the absolute largest 7% of corporate farming operations receive 45% of all subsidies. <a href="https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa515.pdf">(Edwards, Downsizing the Federal Government, 2004)</a> So instead of protecting family farms, these subsidies actually enhance the ability of large industrial operations to shut them out of the market.</p> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/Farm-Subsidies2.jpg"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/Farm-Subsidies2-672x511.jpg" alt="Graph of Direct Government Payments to Farmers (1990-2004)"></a></p> <p><em>Graph Source: <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20150509010540/http://www.ers.usda.gov:80/Data">http://ers.usda.gov/data</a></em></p> <h3>Wal-Mart.  Always high subsidies.  Always.</h3> <p>The same is true in all other industries, too. The government gives tons of favors to the largest corporations, increasing the significant advantage they already have over smaller competing businesses. If, in the court of public opinion, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595580212/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1595580212&linkCode=as2&tag=quant08-20">Wal-Mart</a> has been tried and convicted for the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BTH4K4/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000BTH4K4&linkCode=as2&tag=quant08-20">murder of main street</a>, mom-and-pop America, then the government could easily be found guilty as a willing accomplice. Wal-Mart receives hundreds of millions of dollars of subsidization by local governments throughout the country. These subsidies take the form of bribes by local politicians trying to convince Wal-Mart to come to their town with the dream of significant job creation. Of course, from that follows a larger tax base. For example, a distribution center in Macclenny, Florida received <a href="https://ilsr.org/walmart-distribution-centers-capture-150-million-subsidies/">$9 million</a> in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143038788/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0143038788&linkCode=as2&tag=quant08-20">government subsidies</a> in the form of free land, government-funded recruitment and training of employees, targeted tax breaks, and housing subsidies for employees allowing them to be paid significantly lower wages. A study by Good Jobs First found that 244 Wal-Marts around the country had received over $1 billion in government favors.</p> <h1>The Big Picture</h1> <p>So now let’s look at the big picture. The final totals are <a href="https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/health-and-human-services">$59</a> billion, 3 percent of the total federal budget, for regular welfare and <a href="http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/corporate-welfare-state-how-federal-government-subsidizes-us-businesses">$92</a> billion, 5 percent of the total federal budget, for corporations. So, the government spends roughly 50% more on corporate welfare than it does on these particular public assistance programs.</p> <p>Should we spend less on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/158322033X/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=158322033X&linkCode=as2&tag=quant08-20">corporate welfare</a> and/or social welfare programs? Or should we spend even more? It’s up to you. A bunch of people died horrible deaths to make sure this country remained a democracy, so if you feel strongly about this issue you owe it to them to call or write your congressman and senators and give them a piece of your mind.</p> <h2>Some More Sources:</h2> <p>2013 Budget: <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/budget.pdf">http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/budget.pdf</a></p> <p>Source: Office of Management and Budget, Budget of the United States Government (Washington: Government Publishing Office), various years; and data from the American Association for the Advancement of Science R&D Budget and Policy Program, various years.</p> <p>Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, <a href="http://ers.usda.gov/data-products.aspx#.UzsvUPldV8E">http://www.ers.usda.gov/data</a>.</p> <p>Source:  Export-Import Bank, 2006 Annual Report (Washington: Export-Import Bank, 2007).</p> <p>Source Data from Chris Edwards at Cato:</p> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/Corporate-Welfare-Programs-BY-Agency-21.jpg">Corporate Welfare by Agency</a></p> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/Corporate-Welfare-Programs-BY-Agency1.jpg">Corporate Welfare by Agency 2</a></p> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/Corporate-Welfare-to-Companies.jpg">Corporate Welfare by Company</a></p> <p><em>I am extremely appreciative of any corrections or additional info that I left out.  Please include <strong>hyperlinked</strong> SOURCES.  I want to update this post with more recent numbers and more expansive definitions of both corporate and social welfare.</em></p> <p></p> <p><audio class="wp-audio-shortcode" id="audio-5-12" preload="none" style="width: 100%;" controls="controls"><source type="audio/mpeg" src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn003_corporate_welfare_statistics.mp3?_=12"><a href="http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn003_corporate_welfare_statistics.mp3">http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn003_corporate_welfare_statistics.mp3</a></audio></p> <p>Podcast: <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn003_corporate_welfare_statistics.mp3" title="Play in new window">Play in new window</a> | <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn003_corporate_welfare_statistics.mp3" title="Download">Download</a></p> 2011-08-06T04:57:00.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/healthcare/more-upward-wealth-redistribution-from/ <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Doctor-Ipad-Graph-960x320.jpg"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Doctor-Ipad-Graph-960x320-672x224.jpg" alt="Graph Illustrating Average US Doctor's Salary vs Median Citizen Income"></a></p> <p>The Obama administration allocated <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Information_Technology_for_Economic_and_Clinical_Health_Act">$19.2 billion</a> to help doctors buy iPads. More specifically, they gave up to <a href="http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/07/28/doctors-using-drchronos-ipad-app-can-now-receive-44k-from-the-government/">$44,000</a> per doctor to switch to electronic medical records using apps like Drchrono.</p> <p>The funding came through the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act), which President Obama signed on February 17, 2009 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. An economic stimulus bill that stimulated the top 0.2% of income earners in the world.</p> <p>Here's how this works: Take taxes from administrative staff making $25 per hour. Give that money to doctors in the top 0.2% of global income earners. Watch those doctors use the technology to fire the administrative staff who paid for it. It's wealth redistribution, just in the direction that typically makes economists check their notes twice.</p> <p>Electronic health records are obviously good. Efficiency is good. But it's notable that we funded this by taking money from the people who would lose their jobs from the efficiency gain, and giving it to people who could have afforded an iPad by working for 3.7 hours.</p> <p>The average doctor salary in the US is approximately $200,000. An iPad costs about $500. The government gave them $44,000. The math requires third-grade arithmetic. The policy requires explaining.</p> <p><audio class="wp-audio-shortcode" id="audio-18-11" preload="none" style="width: 100%;" controls="controls"><source type="audio/mpeg" src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn004_ipads-for-doctors.mp3?_=11"><a href="http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn004_ipads-for-doctors.mp3">http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn004_ipads-for-doctors.mp3</a></audio></p> <p>Podcast: <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn004_ipads-for-doctors.mp3" title="Play in new window">Play in new window</a> | <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn004_ipads-for-doctors.mp3" title="Download">Download</a></p> 2011-08-14T04:50:15.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/military/war/posts/ <p>The Iraq War cost $3 trillion. That's enough to end world hunger for 100 years. We chose differently. Here are the numbers.</p> <p>A trillion is a very big number. It's bigger than a billion. I think it's made by adding lots of smaller numbers together until you get tired of counting. We got tired at three trillion, which is how much we spent making Iraq worse.</p> <h2>The Human Cost</h2> <p><strong>100,000+ Iraqi civilians died.</strong> That's 35 September 11th attacks. We respond to one by starting a war that causes 35 more. The math is third-grade level, so the logic is mysterious.</p> <p><strong>4 million Iraqis lost their homes.</strong> That's the entire population of Maine, Idaho, and New Hampshire combined. They cannot all crash on your couch.</p> <p>Liberation means setting someone free. We liberated 4 million Iraqis from their homes. Now they're free to live somewhere else, like a refugee camp or a foreign country that doesn't want them. Freedom is very complicated.</p> <p><strong>4,444 U.S. troops died.</strong> 98% male, 91% non-officers, 54% under age 25. We sent children to die. We call this "supporting the troops."</p> <p><strong>32,051 U.S. troops wounded.</strong> 20% are serious brain or spinal injuries. These don't count psychological injuries, because apparently those don't matter.</p> <p>"Supporting the troops" means sending them to Iraq and then they get shot. I thought "support" meant helping someone, like holding them up so they don't fall down. But in military terms, it means the opposite. We supported them so hard that 4,444 of them died.</p> <h2>The Money We Chose To Spend</h2> <p><strong>$900 billion spent</strong> through November 2010. That's approved spending. The real number is higher.</p> <p><strong>$9 billion just disappeared.</strong> Also 190,000 guns, including 110,000 AK-47 rifles. We shipped them to contractors and nobody knows where they went. This is called "losing track" rather than "theft" because the people who lost track also approve the budgets.</p> <p>I think $9 billion disappeared because money is very small and easy to lose. Like when you lose your keys, except instead of keys it's nine billion dollars. And instead of looking for it, we just printed more money and kept going.</p> <p><strong>$1 billion in equipment missing.</strong> Tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades. All gone. Probably fine.</p> <p><strong>$10 billion mismanaged and wasted.</strong> This is the official number from Congressional hearings, which means the real number is larger.</p> <p>"Mismanaged" means you managed something badly. The opposite would be "well-managed," which is when you don't lose a billion dollars of equipment. We chose the first option because the second option requires paying attention to where things are.</p> <p><strong>$1.4 billion in Halliburton overcharges</strong> deemed "unreasonable and unsupported" by the Pentagon. They paid anyway.</p> <p><strong>$20 billion paid to KBR</strong> (formerly part of Halliburton) for food, fuel, and housing. Pentagon auditors questioned $3.2 billion of this. We paid that too.</p> <p><strong>$5,000 spent per second</strong> in 2008. That's the sound of money burning.</p> <p><strong>$390,000 to deploy one soldier for one year.</strong> We could have paid them $390,000 to stay home and saved money on ammunition.</p> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/three-trillion-dollar-war.jpg"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/three-trillion-dollar-war-1024x601.jpg" alt="Infographic Detailing the Costs of the Iraq War in 10 Steps (Three Trillion Dollars)"></a></p> <p><em>Graph Source: <a href="https://www.good.is/infographics">http://awesome.good.is/transparency/013/transparency013trilliondollarwar.html</a></em></p> <h2>Supporting The Troops By Sending Them To Die</h2> <p><strong>47,000 U.S. troops remained</strong> after all other nations withdrew. Apparently we were the only ones who didn't get the memo.</p> <p><strong>316 non-U.S. troops died.</strong> 179 from the UK. They figured it out faster than we did.</p> <p><strong>30% of returning troops develop serious mental health problems</strong> within 3-4 months. We don't count these as casualties because that would make the numbers look bad.</p> <p><strong>75 military helicopters downed.</strong> At least 36 by enemy fire. Helicopters cost money. People don't, apparently.</p> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/us-troop-strength-in-iraq.jpg"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/us-troop-strength-in-iraq-1024x613.jpg" alt="Graph of US Troop Strength In Iraq"></a></p> <p><em>Graph Source: <a href="http://www.wallstats.com/blog/us-troop-stength-in-iraq-and-other-data/">http://www.wallstats.com/blog/us-troop-stength-in-iraq-and-other-data/</a></em></p> <h2>The People Who Actually Live There</h2> <p><strong>180,000 private contractors</strong> in August 2007. That's more contractors than troops. We privatized war. The invisible hand of the market now holds a gun.</p> <p><strong>146 journalists killed.</strong> 97 murdered, 49 in acts of war, 14 by U.S. forces. Apparently some people didn't want this documented.</p> <p><strong>9,889 Iraqi police and soldiers killed</strong> as of January 2011. We trained them to fight and then they died. This is called "building capacity."</p> <p><strong>100,000+ Iraqi civilians killed</strong> according to secret U.S. government documents released by Wikileaks. The UN says this is "significantly under-reported" and estimates reach 600,000. We're not sure because we didn't count. You don't count things you don't care about.</p> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Yearly-Death-graph-Iraq.gif"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Yearly-Death-graph-Iraq-1024x747.gif" alt="Graph of Iraqi Deaths (2003-2010)"></a></p> <p><em>Graph Source: <a href="http://musingsoniraq.blogspot.nl/2011/01/2010-ends-with-slight-drop-in-iraqi.html">http://musingsoniraq.blogspot.nl/2011/01/2010-ends-with-slight-drop-in-iraqi.html</a></em></p> <p><strong>55,000 insurgents killed.</strong> Roughly estimated, because we're better at killing than counting.</p> <p><strong>572 non-Iraqi contractors and civilian workers killed.</strong> People came from other countries to help and died.</p> <p><strong>306 non-Iraqis kidnapped.</strong> 57 killed, 147 released, 4 escaped, 6 rescued, 89 status unknown. We're not great at keeping track.</p> <h2>The Insurgency We Created</h2> <p><strong>Daily insurgent attacks:</strong></p> <ul> <li>February 2004: 14 attacks per day</li> <li>July 2005: 70 attacks per day</li> <li>May 2007: 163 attacks per day</li> </ul> <p><strong>Insurgency strength:</strong></p> <ul> <li>November 2003: 15,000 fighters</li> <li>October 2006: 20,000-30,000 fighters</li> <li>June 2007: 70,000 fighters</li> </ul> <p>We invaded to fight terrorists. We created more terrorists. The math is simple. The logic is absent.</p> <p>An insurgent is someone who fights against an occupying force. We became the occupying force, so people started fighting against us. Then we called them insurgents. Before we invaded, they were just people living in Iraq. After we invaded, they became insurgents. It's like magic, except instead of pulling a rabbit out of a hat, we pulled 70,000 fighters out of a country we destroyed.</p> <h2>Life in "Liberated" Iraq</h2> <p><strong>2.25 million Iraqis displaced inside their own country</strong> as of May 2007.</p> <p><strong>2.1-2.25 million Iraqi refugees</strong> fled to Syria and Jordan. We freed them from their homes.</p> <p><strong>27-60% unemployment</strong> where curfew isn't in effect. Those are Depression-era numbers. We brought them democracy and unemployment.</p> <p><strong>50% inflation</strong> in 2006. Food costs double. Wages don't. This is called "economic freedom."</p> <p><strong>28% of Iraqi children chronically malnourished</strong> in June 2007. But 72% aren't, so clearly things are going well.</p> <p><strong>40% of professionals left Iraq</strong> since 2003. The smart ones fled.</p> <p><strong>34,000 physicians before the invasion.</strong> <strong>12,000 physicians left after the invasion.</strong> <strong>2,000 physicians murdered since the invasion.</strong></p> <p>We killed the doctors. Then wondered why healthcare got worse.</p> <p>Doctors are people who make sick people better. When you kill the doctors, there's nobody left to make sick people better. So sick people stay sick, and then they die. I'm not sure why we killed the doctors. Maybe we thought Iraqis didn't need healthcare anymore because they were liberated.</p> <p><strong>Baghdad electricity before the war:</strong> 16-24 hours per day <strong>Baghdad electricity after liberation:</strong> 5.6 hours per day</p> <p>We made electricity scarce. This is called "spreading freedom."</p> <p>Electricity is what makes lights work. Before we liberated Iraq, lights worked for 16-24 hours per day. After liberation, lights worked for 5.6 hours per day. So freedom makes lights work less. I always thought freedom meant having more choices, but apparently it means having less electricity.</p> <p><strong>37% of homes connected to sewer systems.</strong> Most people live with raw sewage. We spent $3 trillion on this.</p> <p><strong>70% of Iraqis lack adequate water.</strong> Water doesn't work but at least we brought democracy, which also doesn't work without water.</p> <p><strong>22% of water treatment plants rehabilitated.</strong> We broke the rest. "Rehabilitation" implies they're getting better. They're not.</p> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/iraq-5year.jpg"></a></p> <p><em>Graph Source: <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20090510050913/http://www.foreignpolicy.com:80/story/cms.php?story_id=4228">http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4228</a></em></p> <h2>What Iraqis Think About Being Liberated</h2> <p><strong>82% strongly oppose coalition troops.</strong> We liberated them. They want us to leave. The disconnect is notable.</p> <p><strong>Less than 1% believe coalition forces improved security.</strong> We spent $900 billion. Less than 1% think it helped. The return on investment is poor.</p> <p><strong>67% feel less secure because of occupation.</strong> We made them less safe. While spending money to make them safer. This is either incompetence or lying, and both are bad.</p> <p><strong>72% have no confidence in multinational forces.</strong> Three-quarters of the people we're "helping" don't trust us. This is called "winning hearts and minds."</p> <p><em>Poll taken in Iraq in August 2005 by the British Ministry of Defense (Source: Brookings Institute)</em></p> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/cost_of_-iraq-war_infograph.jpg"></a></p> <p><em>Graph Source: <a href="https://www.good.is/">http://www.good.is</a></em></p> <h2>What You Can Do</h2> <p>The war is over. The lessons aren't learned. Here's how to prevent the next one:</p> <ol> <li><strong>Track military spending</strong> - Check the <a href="https://www.nationalpriorities.org/">National Priorities Project</a> to see current military budgets</li> <li><strong>Follow contractor fraud</strong> - Monitor the <a href="https://www.cpars.gov/">Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System</a></li> <li><strong>Contact representatives</strong> - Use specific numbers from this article when asking questions</li> <li><strong>Remember the math</strong> - $3 trillion could have ended world hunger for 100 years</li> </ol> <p>Data presented as of March 31, 2011, except as indicated.</p> <h2>Sources</h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/23/world/middleeast/23casualties.html">New York Times: Iraq Casualties and WikiLeaks Documents</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090302200.html">Washington Post: Iraq War Costs Analysis</a></li> <li><a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-06-05-iraq-report_N.htm">USA Today: Iraqi Refugees Report</a></li> <li><a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/23/opinion/ed-food23">Los Angeles Times: Ending World Hunger Cost Estimate</a></li> <li><a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/">Congressional Research Service: Military Spending and Iraq War Reports</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/iraq-index/">Brookings Institution: Iraq Index</a></li> <li><a href="https://wikileaks.org/irq/">WikiLeaks: Iraq War Logs</a></li> <li><a href="https://news.un.org/">UN News: Iraqi Civilian Casualties Reports</a></li> <li><a href="http://usliberals.about.com/od/homelandsecurit1/a/IraqNumbers.htm">About.com U.S. Liberals: Comprehensive Iraq War Statistics</a> (original source for many statistics)</li> </ul> <p><audio class="wp-audio-shortcode" id="audio-16-10" preload="none" style="width: 100%;" controls="controls"><source type="audio/mpeg" src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn009_fun_facts_about_iraq.mp3?_=10"><a href="http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn009_fun_facts_about_iraq.mp3">http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn009_fun_facts_about_iraq.mp3</a></audio></p> <p>Podcast: <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn009_fun_facts_about_iraq.mp3" title="Play in new window">Play in new window</a> | <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn009_fun_facts_about_iraq.mp3" title="Download">Download</a></p> 2011-09-02T09:01:19.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/monkey-business/the-kids-today-need-to-learn-their-mathematics-ya-see/ <p>Bill Cosby claimed to be "hip." Mathematics, however, tells a different story. A story involving trigonometric functions and the fundamental impossibility of being both a cosine and a square simultaneously.</p> <p>You see, in mathematics, cos(b) is a trigonometric function. But Cosby said he was "square," which is a shape, not a function. This is what scientists call a "categorical error," or what normal people call "lying about geometry."</p> <p>The problem with claiming to be hip when you're square is that "hip" is also a bone. So technically, Cosby was claiming to be a bone-shaped square that calculates the adjacent side of a right triangle. That's three different things. You can't be three things at once unless you're a Swiss Army knife, and even then you're still mostly knife.</p> <p>Here's your proof that cos(b) is not, in fact, square:</p> <p>If cos(b) were truly square, it would have four equal sides and four right angles. But when you graph cos(b), you get a wave. Waves don't have corners. I checked. I tried to put a wave in a corner once, and it just kept waving. Very disrespectful to geometry.</p> <p>Some people say, "But wait, couldn't cos(b) squared be written as cos²(b)?" To which mathematicians respond: "Yes, but that's completely different. That's SQUARING the cosine, not the cosine BEING square. It's like the difference between cooking a chicken and a chicken who happens to know how to cook. Totally different."</p> <p>The deeper issue here is that Cosby fundamentally misunderstood what it means to "be hip to the times." Hip is an angle, usually 90 degrees when you're standing up straight, which ironically makes your hip a RIGHT angle. So by being "hip," you're actually being "right," not "square." Though if you're trying to be "right on," you'd need to be both hip AND on something, which gets complicated from a physics standpoint.</p> <p>If you ever meet someone who claims to be simultaneously hip, square, AND a trigonometric function, ask them to prove it. They can't. I tried. The math doesn't work out. You'd need at least four dimensions, and most people only have three, or two if they're really boring.</p> <p>In conclusion: cos(b) is emphatically NOT square. This has been a mathematical proof. The kids today need to learn this, ya see, because if they don't, they might grow up thinking they can be any shape they want. And while that's very inspirational, it's terrible geometry.</p> <p><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/tumblr_lqmd964J311r1at80o1_1280.jpg" alt="Bill Cosby"></p> 2011-09-07T03:29:41.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/corporate-welfare/voters-cu-corporate-welfare-programs-as-a-good-place-to-cut-government-spending-rasmussen-reports/ <p><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/socialism-rich.jpg" alt="Socialism for the Rich. Capitalism for the Rest."></p> <h2>What Voters Actually Want</h2> <p>According to Rasmussen Reports, voters have opinions about corporate welfare. Shocking, I know.</p> <p>In a democracy, what the voters want matters. This is why we ask them what they want, write it down carefully, and then do the opposite.</p> <h3>Foreign Military Sales Subsidies</h3> <p>70% of voters oppose giving foreign countries money to buy weapons from US companies.</p> <p>15% support it.</p> <p>15% are still thinking about whether subsidizing weapons sales is a good idea.</p> <p>To be fair to that 15%, it IS a complex question. Should we pay other countries to buy murder equipment from us? Really makes you think. Ideally for less than 30 seconds, because then you might notice we're doing it anyway.</p> <p>The government does it anyway.</p> <h3>Farm Subsidies</h3> <p>The US government gives $20 billion per year to farms.</p> <p>46% of voters think this should stop.</p> <p>37% think it should continue.</p> <p>17% haven't decided if paying farmers not to grow food makes sense.</p> <p>The 17% undecided voters are probably just trying to understand how "paying someone to NOT grow food" works. It's simple: you give them money, and then food doesn't happen. It's like reverse farming, which is apparently something we do now.</p> <p>The government continues giving farmers $20 billion per year.</p> <h3>Export-Import Bank</h3> <p>The Export-Import Bank gives billions in loans and loan guarantees to Boeing and General Electric. The stated purpose is to "sustain American jobs."</p> <p>29% of voters support this.</p> <p>46% oppose it.</p> <p>25% are undecided about whether Boeing needs help from taxpayers.</p> <p>The government continues providing these loans.</p> <h2>The Pattern</h2> <p>In each case, voters oppose corporate subsidies by large margins. In each case, the subsidies continue.</p> <p>This is democracy working exactly as designed. The design just isn't what you were told it was.</p> <p>It's like ordering a pizza and getting a cinder block. Sure, it's not what you asked for, but the delivery system worked perfectly. The cinder block arrived on time and you still have to pay for it.</p> <p>Source: <a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/august_2011/voters_see_these_corporate_welfare_programs_as_a_good_place_to_cut_government_spending">Rasmussen Reports</a></p> <p><audio class="wp-audio-shortcode" id="audio-241-9" preload="none" style="width: 100%;" controls="controls"><source type="audio/mpeg" src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn010_cut_corporate_welfare.mp3?_=9"><a href="http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn010_cut_corporate_welfare.mp3">http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn010_cut_corporate_welfare.mp3</a></audio></p> <p>Podcast: <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn010_cut_corporate_welfare.mp3" title="Play in new window">Play in new window</a> | <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn010_cut_corporate_welfare.mp3" title="Download">Download</a></p> 2011-09-09T03:49:26.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/taxes/a-more-progressive-tax-system-makes-people-happier/ <p><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/SmileyMoneyFace-44x44.jpg" alt="Smiley Money Face"></p> <p>Illustration by The New York Times</p> <p>Here's a thing humans claim to want: happiness. Here's another thing humans do constantly: argue about who should pay what percentage of their papers to the government.</p> <p>Turns out these two things are connected. Who knew.</p> <h2>The Study: 54 Countries, One Obvious Finding</h2> <p>University of Virginia psychologist Shigehiro Oishi and his colleagues did something unusual - they <a href="http://www.sharing.org/information-centre/reports/financing-global-sharing-economy-part-three-1-taxing-financial">asked 59,634 people in 54 nations</a> if they were happy, then checked what kind of tax system their government used. The results were published in Psychological Science.</p> <p>The finding: People in countries with progressive taxation (where richer people pay higher rates) reported being happier than people in countries with flat taxation (where everyone pays the same rate).</p> <p>Not "felt slightly better about abstract concepts of fairness." Actually happier. On a scale of 1 to 10, rating their lives closer to "best possible life." Experiencing more days of smiling and being treated with respect. Fewer days of sadness and shame.</p> <p>The math here requires third-grade arithmetic, so the decades of debate about this are notable.</p> <h2>Why This Works</h2> <p>The happiness wasn't just people feeling warm and fuzzy about fairness. It came from something concrete: satisfaction with public goods like schools, housing, and public transportation.</p> <p>Progressive taxes → better public services → people who use those services are happier.</p> <p>The researchers measured tax progressivity by the gap between the highest and lowest tax rates, accounting for family size and benefits. Then they asked people to rate their life satisfaction and their satisfaction with public services.</p> <p>Countries with bigger gaps between rich and poor tax rates had happier citizens. The citizens specifically said they were more satisfied with the public goods those taxes funded.</p> <h2>The Weird Part</h2> <p>Higher government spending alone didn't make people happier. In fact, there was a slight negative correlation.</p> <p>"That data is kind of weird," Oishi said, displaying the scientific term for "what the hell."</p> <p>His guess: Some countries are terrible at converting tax money into actual services. The U.S., for example, spends more on education and healthcare than most developed countries while ranking poorly in both. It's like using a calculator to hammer nails - expensive and ineffective.</p> <h2>What This Means</h2> <p>If you want happy citizens, tax progressivity appears to matter more than total spending.</p> <p>Not because progressive taxation is morally superior or ideologically correct. Because it empirically correlates with people reporting that their lives are better.</p> <p>You can debate economic theory all you want. The people living in these systems have opinions about their own lives, and they shared those opinions with researchers, who counted them.</p> <p>The U.S. has been reducing tax progressivity for decades. This study suggests that's probably making people less happy, though Americans have many other reasons to be concerned about their choices.</p> <h2>Source</h2> <p><a href="http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/234017.php">Medical News Today - Progressive Taxation Linked to National Happiness</a></p> <p><audio class="wp-audio-shortcode" id="audio-249-8" preload="none" style="width: 100%;" controls="controls"><source type="audio/mpeg" src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn011_taxes_make_us_happy.mp3?_=8"><a href="http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn011_taxes_make_us_happy.mp3">http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn011_taxes_make_us_happy.mp3</a></audio></p> <p>Podcast: <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn011_taxes_make_us_happy.mp3" title="Play in new window">Play in new window</a> | <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn011_taxes_make_us_happy.mp3" title="Download">Download</a></p> 2011-09-26T11:14:32.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/debt/posts-2/ <p><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/House-Bubble-672x783.jpg" alt="Housing Bubble"></p> <p>Image by Ed Hall (halltoons)</p> <p>Americans built <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/2009-02-12-vacancy12_N.htm">14 million houses</a> nobody needed. At a median price of <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Business/ConsumerNews/save-big-buy-foreclosed-house/story?id=13052724">$160,000</a>, that's <a href="http://www.rd.com/money/the-government-is-wasting-your-tax-dollars/">$2 trillion</a> in wasted resources.</p> <p>That's not hindsight talking. These houses are empty. Unoccupied. Abandoned. They exist because the government told the economy to build houses it didn't need.</p> <h2>How to Waste $2 Trillion</h2> <p>Two government policies created the housing bubble:</p> <h3>1. Homeownership Subsidies ($100+ Billion Annually)</h3> <p>The United States spends over $100 billion per year encouraging people to buy houses:</p> <ul> <li>Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac expand the mortgage market</li> <li>Mortgage interest tax deduction</li> <li>Property tax deduction</li> <li>Capital gains exemption on primary residences</li> </ul> <p>This makes buying houses artificially cheaper than renting. When you make something cheaper, people buy more of it. When people buy more houses, prices go up. When prices go up, speculators arrive. When speculators arrive, bubbles form.</p> <h3>2. Artificially Low Interest Rates</h3> <p>After 9/11, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to prevent a recession. Low interest rates make borrowing cheap. Cheap borrowing increases demand for mortgages. More mortgage demand means more house demand. More house demand means higher prices.</p> <p>Politicians like low interest rates because they create short-term economic booms. The crash happens 5 years later, which is someone else's problem. Specifically, your problem.</p> <h2>The Bubble Mechanism</h2> <p>Here's how low interest rates create housing bubbles:</p> <ol> <li><strong>Fed lowers rates</strong> - Mortgages get cheaper</li> <li><strong>People stop renting</strong> - Why rent when mortgages cost less?</li> <li><strong>House demand increases</strong> - More buyers chase the same number of houses</li> <li><strong>Prices rise</strong> - Sellers raise prices because they can</li> <li><strong>Speculators arrive</strong> - "Prices always go up, so I'll buy now and sell later"</li> <li><strong>More demand</strong> - Speculators buy multiple houses</li> <li><strong>Prices rise more</strong> - Even more buyers arrive</li> <li><strong>Repeat until crash</strong></li> </ol> <p>The speculation phase is crucial. When normal people see house prices rising 20% per year, they think "I should buy before prices get higher." When investors see the same thing, they buy multiple houses. This drives prices even higher, attracting more speculators, creating a feedback loop that ends when someone realizes houses aren't actually worth that much.</p> <h2>Free Market Capitalism?</h2> <p>You could blame free market capitalism for this. That would be reasonable if America had free markets.</p> <p>In free markets, prices are determined by supply and demand. Prices signal where resources should go. When population increases, house demand increases, prices rise, and builders build more houses. When population stabilizes, demand stabilizes, prices stabilize, builders build fewer houses.</p> <p>This is how markets coordinate economic activity without central planning. It works pretty well unless someone manipulates the price signals.</p> <p>The Federal Reserve manipulates the price of borrowing money. This sends false signals to workers and investors. Construction workers think "there's high demand for housing" and enter the field. Builders think "we should build more houses" and start projects. Investors think "housing is a great investment" and buy properties.</p> <p>They're all responding rationally to price signals. The problem is the price signals are wrong. The Fed made borrowing artificially cheap, creating artificial demand, which created artificial construction, which created 14 million empty houses.</p> <h2>How Price Signals Work (When Not Manipulated)</h2> <p>Prices coordinate economic behavior without anyone being in charge. When something becomes scarce, its price rises. The higher price tells producers "make more of this" and consumers "use less of this." When something becomes abundant, its price falls, telling producers to make less and consumers they can use more.</p> <p>This system works if prices reflect actual supply and demand. It breaks when the government manipulates prices to achieve political goals like "stimulating the economy" or "making homeownership affordable."</p> <p>The housing bubble wasn't a market failure. It was a government success. The government wanted more homeownership and more economic activity. Mission accomplished. The $2 trillion in wasted resources and the financial crisis were just externalities.</p> <h2>The Current Situation</h2> <p>14 million empty houses represent:</p> <ul> <li>Wasted lumber, concrete, copper, steel</li> <li>Wasted labor (millions of construction workers built houses nobody needed)</li> <li>Wasted land (can't put something useful where an empty house sits)</li> <li>Wasted capital (money spent on houses could have gone to productive investments)</li> </ul> <p>These resources are gone. You can't un-build a house and get the materials back. The bubble didn't just transfer wealth from one group to another. It destroyed wealth by misallocating resources on a massive scale.</p> <p>The economy built 14 million houses instead of things people actually wanted. We can't fix that. We can only avoid doing it again by not manipulating interest rates and not subsidizing particular industries.</p> <p>Or we can keep subsidizing homeownership and manipulating interest rates, then act surprised when it happens again.</p> <hr> <p>Sources: <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/2009-02-12-vacancy12_N.htm">USA Today: Housing Vacancy Data</a>, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Business/ConsumerNews/save-big-buy-foreclosed-house/story?id=13052724">ABC News: Median Home Prices</a></p> 2011-10-05T22:28:48.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/financial-sector/monetary-system-steals-poor-rich/ <p>Required viewing for anyone who does not yet understand the complicated mechanism by which the banking system transfers wealth from those at the bottom to those at the top.</p> <p></p> <iframe loading="lazy" title="Fiat Money" width="580" height="326" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hx16a72j__8?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> 2011-10-21T07:45:18.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/military/fraudulent-defense-contractors-paid-1-trillion/ <p>The Pentagon paid $1.1 trillion over a decade to contractors who defrauded the government. After being convicted of crimes, they got more money. The math requires third-grade arithmetic, so the confusion is notable.</p> <p>Maybe to understand government contracting, we have to look at the word 'fraud' itself. Basically, it's made up of letters that spell something we punish in regular society but reward with billions in the military. It's a mystery, and that's why so are defense contracts.</p> <h2>How It Works</h2> <p>Here's the system:</p> <ol> <li>Defense contractor submits false invoices</li> <li>Gets caught committing fraud</li> <li>Pays fine (usually small)</li> <li>Receives even larger contracts</li> </ol> <p>It's like a dog chasing its tail, if the tail was made of money and the dog was democracy.</p> <p>Fraud works by lying about money. When normal people do this, they go to prison. When defense contractors do it, they get promoted to "trusted partner." This makes the contractors very happy, which is why there's an explosion of fraud.</p> <h2>The Numbers</h2> <p>The Department of Defense, in a report prepared for Senator Bernie Sanders, detailed the following:</p> <ul> <li><strong>$1.1 trillion</strong> paid to 37 companies engaged in fraud over 10 years</li> <li><strong>$573.7 billion</strong> paid to 300+ contractors involved in civil fraud cases</li> <li><strong>$398 billion</strong> of that paid AFTER they were caught</li> <li><strong>$255 million</strong> to contractors convicted of criminal fraud</li> <li><strong>$33 million</strong> paid AFTER criminal convictions</li> </ul> <p>I checked. $1.1 trillion is larger than zero, which is the amount you typically reward criminals.</p> <h2>Case Studies in Rewarding Bad Behavior</h2> <p><strong>Lockheed Martin</strong> paid $10.5 million in 2008 to settle fraud charges for submitting false invoices. The Pentagon responded by giving them $30.2 billion in 2009. More than ever before. Because when someone steals from you, you obviously give them a raise.</p> <p>I think the reason we reward fraud is because "fraud" and "reward" both have the letter "r" in them. The Pentagon probably got confused by the alphabet.</p> <p><strong>Northrop Grumman</strong> paid $62 million in 2005 after "routinely submitting false contract proposals" and concealing inventory problems. The next year, they received $12.9 billion in contracts. That's 16% more than the year before they were caught lying.</p> <p>The pattern is clear: Fraud pays well. Specifically, it pays in government contracts.</p> <p>Maybe if we all just committed fraud against the Pentagon, we'd all be rich. But that would be stealing, which is wrong. Unlike contractor fraud, which is apparently a business model.</p> <h2>The Pentagon's Position</h2> <p>When asked to recommend ways to punish fraudulent contractors, the Pentagon noted that sanctions "already exist" but admitted "it is not clear, however, that these remedies are sufficient to deter and punish fraud."</p> <p>You know your deterrent isn't working when the punished behavior increases by 16%.</p> <p>A deterrent is like a scarecrow for fraud. But instead of scaring the fraud away, we built a scarecrow made entirely of money. Now the fraud lives inside it and has a pension.</p> <h2>What You Can Do</h2> <p>Senator Sanders created a public database tracking contractor fraud. You can check the <a href="https://www.cpars.gov/">Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System</a> to see which companies defraud the government and how much we pay them anyway.</p> <p>Here's how to use this information:</p> <ol> <li>Check which contractors have fraud records</li> <li>Note how much they still receive in contracts</li> <li>Contact your representatives with specific numbers</li> <li>Ask why we're rewarding criminals with tax dollars</li> </ol> <p>The full Pentagon report is available <a href="http://www.sanders.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/102011%20-%20DOD%20Fraud%20Report.pdf">here</a> and the data tables are <a href="http://www.sanders.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/102011%20-%20Combined%20DOD%20Fraud%20Tables.pdf">here</a>.</p> <h2>Sources</h2> <ul> <li>Department of Defense Report to Senator Bernie Sanders, October 2011</li> <li><a href="https://www.cpars.gov/">Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.senate.gov/general/403.htm">Bernie Sanders Senate Press Release</a></li> </ul> 2011-10-21T08:32:19.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/democracy/unrepresentative-democracy-government-by-millionaires-for-millionaires/ <h2>How Democracy Is Supposed to Work</h2> <p>The word "representative" in representative democracy implies that the representatives represent you. Like how a lawyer represents a client, or how a painting represents a landscape, or how those stick figures on bathroom doors represent people.</p> <p>In a functioning representative democracy, the more people want something, the more likely it becomes law.</p> <p><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/image-4-300x255.png" alt=""></p> <p>Makes sense, right? It's almost like that's the entire point of the system.</p> <h2>How It Actually Works</h2> <p>Public support has <a href="https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf">near zero influence</a> on what laws pass. Whether <a href="https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf">0% or 100%</a> of Americans support a policy, it has about a <a href="https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf">30% chance</a> of becoming law.</p> <p><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/image-5-300x255.png" alt=""></p> <p>That's a flat line. The math is showing you something.</p> <p>If you ever feel like your vote doesn't matter, you might be onto something. The data from Princeton suggests your intuition is statistically valid.</p> <h2>Why This Happens</h2> <p>Half the representatives in Congress are millionaires. In the general population, less than 1% are millionaires.</p> <p><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Unrepresentative-Democracy-e1319168693378.jpg" alt="Graph Showing Percentage of Millionaires in Congress Compared to the General Public"></p> <p>When your representatives are 50X wealthier than the people they represent, public policy tends to align with what rich people want. Shocking, I know.</p> <p>They say "representation matters." Turns out they meant representing millionaires. To be fair, millionaires are people too. Very wealthy people, but still technically people.</p> <p>Congress is basically a millionaires' club that occasionally lets non-millionaires join, like how some country clubs have a token middle-class member to show they're not elitist. Except in this case, the country club makes all the laws.</p> <h2>How to Fix This</h2> <p>Buckminster Fuller said when you want to change something, don't fight it. Build something better that makes it obsolete.</p> <p>Buckminster Fuller also designed geodesic domes, which were supposed to revolutionize housing. Now they're mostly used for planetariums and that one eccentric neighbor's greenhouse. But his quote about building better systems is still good.</p> <p>Here's how you do that for resource allocation:</p> <p>Give every citizen a shopping cart showing what their share of public resources gets spent on. Let them adjust the allocation themselves.</p> <p>CodePen Embed Fallback</p> <p>Resources are finite. An increase in one area decreases another. The prototype above shows how this works. Fork it and improve it if you want.</p> <p>The current system lets millionaires decide how to spend your money. This system lets you decide how to spend your money. The math is simple.</p> <p>Will this actually happen? Probably not. But if you ever wonder why democracy doesn't feel very democratic, just remember that it's working exactly as designed. By millionaires. For millionaires.</p> <p><strong>Sources:</strong></p> <ul> <li><a href="https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf">Testing Theories of American Politics - Gilens & Page, Princeton</a></li> </ul> 2011-10-26T16:11:50.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/psychology/myth-free-will/ <p>Your brain decided you would read this sentence 10 seconds before "you" did.</p> <p>Researchers at the Max Planck Institute discovered they could predict which button you'll press before you know you've decided to press it. They used brain scans to watch decisions form, like seeing someone load a gun before they know they're going to fire it.</p> <p>The experiment worked like this: People watched letters scroll across a screen. They were told to press one of two buttons whenever they felt like it. Free choice, right?</p> <p>Wrong. The scientists could see which button you'd pick 10 seconds before you "decided." The prefrontal and parietal cortex lit up with your choice while your conscious mind was still pretending to deliberate.</p> <p>It's quite clever when you think about it. Your brain makes the decision, then waits politely for "you" to catch up and claim credit for it. Like a parent letting a child think they chose their own bedtime.</p> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/free-will-infographic.gif"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/free-will-infographic.gif" alt="Infographic Illustrating Free Will Experiment (Nature Neuroscience)"></a></p> <p><em>Source: <a href="http://www.nature.com/neuro/index.html">Nature Neuroscience</a></em></p> <p>This creates an awkward philosophical problem. You're made of atoms. Atoms follow physics. Physics is deterministic. So where exactly does the "free" part of free will squeeze in?</p> <p>Your brain is essentially a very sophisticated meat computer running on electrical signals and chemicals. The decisions it makes follow from prior states, which follow from prior states, all the way back to causes you definitely didn't control - like your parents having unprotected intercourse, or the Big Bang, depending on how far back you want to get philosophical about it.</p> <p>If I could choose whether to have free will, I'd probably choose to have it. But then again, I suppose I'd have to already have free will to make that choice. It's quite the pickle, really.</p> <p>The good news: You were never in control anyway, so you can stop blaming yourself for eating that entire pizza. The bad news: You also can't take credit for anything good you've done. The weird news: You'll keep acting like you have free will regardless, because that decision was also made by atoms you don't control.</p> <p>It makes you wonder - if we don't have free will, why do we have the illusion of it? Perhaps it's because atoms that think they're making choices are slightly less likely to wander into traffic. Evolution doesn't care if you're right, just if you survive long enough to be wrong reproductively.</p> <iframe loading="lazy" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VQxJi0COTBo" frameborder="0" width="420" height="315"></iframe> <p><em>Study by John-Dylan Haynes et al., Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, published in Nature Neuroscience (April 15, 2008). Original reporting courtesy <a href="http://www.world-science.net/">World Science</a>.</em></p> 2011-11-07T00:52:13.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/spending-cuts-budget-2012-republican-primary-candidates-compared/ <p>GOP Candidate Ron Paul has produced a detailed budget containing over <a href="http://www.campaignforliberty.org/the-issues/ron-paul-plan-to-restore-america/">$1 trillion</a> in first-year reductions. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich have only indicated that they would attempt to repeal Obamacare saving an average of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act#Effect_on_national_spending">$20 billion</a> a year.</p> <h2>Why Do the Candidates’ Budget Plans Matter?</h2> <p>The only way that a president can noticeably affect the everyday lives of <em>all</em> Americans is by raising or lowing their standard of living.  This is accomplished through their influence over the <em>real</em> tax rate.  The <em>real</em> tax rate encompasses all normal forms of taxation, but it also includes a hidden tax known as <em>inflation</em>.</p> <p><em>All</em> of the Republican candidates have detailed plans for modifying the tax code.  But saying you’re going to cut taxes without cutting spending correspondingly is sneaky. If you cut taxes, but maintain the same level of spending, then you have to either borrow or print the resulting budget shortfall.  Borrowing the money is <em>worse</em> than paying with taxes immediately, not only because we’ll have to pay it back in a future when the government’s fiscal situation is predicted to be far worse than is today, but we’ll <em>also</em> have to pay a bunch of interest on top of that.</p> <p>The alternative to <em>borrowing</em> is to have the Federal Reserve fire up the printing press.  The FED creates trillions of new dollars out of thin air and give it to the government through the purchase of treasury bonds.  The effect of this is identical to the effect of criminal counterfeiting.  If one doubles the money supply without a corresponding increase in GDP, the long-term result is that everyone’s paycheck can only buy half as much.</p> <p>So using the magical money machine to pay the bills just shifts the tax burden to an <strong>inflation tax</strong>.  According to the Consumer Price Index, inflation is only about <a href="http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/currentinflation.asp">3.5%</a>. However, the real rate of inflation is currently almost <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20140831034511/http://www.cnbc.com/id/42551209/Inflation_Actually_Near_10_Using_Older_Measure">10%</a>. The inflation tax, while largely ignored, hurts middle-class and low-income Americans the most.  This is because inflation is flat tax which doesn’t tax the poor at a lower rate the way our progressive income tax system does. In fact, it’s somewhat regressive because the loss in value is delayed.  When the new money is initially created, price inflation hasn’t set in yet.  The first people who get to spend the new money are generally giant financial institutions.  By the time it filters down the average Joe, it’s already lost a lot of it’s value.</p> <p>So the only way a president can change the <em>real</em> tax rate is by increasing or decreasing government <strong>spending</strong>.  Therefor, the only thing about a candidate that’s guaranteed to significantly impact your life is not whether they think gay people should have the right to suffer through the institution of marriage. It’s not whether or not their religion’s doctrine includes magic underwear.  It’s not even their tax plan. It is only the candidates’ positions on <strong>spending</strong> that is guaranteed to directly affect your everyday life by increasing or decreasing your standard of living.</p> <h3>But does a president really have any control over spending?</h3> <p>After all, isn’t the level of spending set by the congress?  This is <em>generally</em> true, but the president does have a number of very powerful means of controlling the budget:</p> <ol> <li>The Power to Appoint the Chairman of the Federal Reserve – This power enables the president to choose a chairman who would refuse to monetize the debt.  In this case, the government wouldn’t be able to print new money out of thin air. Then congress couldn’t spend any more than tax revenues or borrowing permits.</li> <li>The Power to Veto – The president has the power to veto bills containing spending which he opposes.  Congress would then have to override this veto with a two-thirds majority both houses.</li> </ol> <h1>The Candidates Compared</h1> <p>We know that President Obama stands shoulder to shoulder with our nation’s drunken sailors on spending, but what about the potential Republican nominees?</p> <p></p> <h1><strong><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Mitt-Romney-Mormobot-5000-Android-Robot-speech2.jpg"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Mitt-Romney-Mormobot-5000-Android-Robot-speech2-238x300.jpg" alt="Picture of Mitt Romney as an Android Robot "></a>Mitt Romney</strong></h1> <h3>(a.k.a. Mormobot 5000)</h3> <h2>Specific Cuts = <strong>$20 Billion</strong></h2> <p>Romney wants to repeal Obamacare (which is very similar to Romneycare aside from the fact that Romneycare covered abortions).  As stated before, this would save <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act#Effect_on_national_spending">$20 billion</a> a year.</p> <p>Other than that, this is the maximum level of specificity from his <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20121014220820/http://www.mittromney.com/issues/fiscal-responsibility">programmers</a>:</p> <p><em>“Mitt Romney will bring fiscal restraint to Washington by placing a hard cap on federal spending to force our government to live within its means and put an end to deficit spending.</em></p> <p><em>Mitt will also curb federal spending by repealing Obamacare, the federal takeover of health care that is scheduled to cost taxpayers one trillion dollars over the next ten years. He will also focus on eliminating wasteful government spending and right-sizing the federal government to save taxpayer dollars. 00010101.”</em></p> <h3>The Romney Record on Spending</h3> <p>If we’ve learned anything from the vast disparity between George W. Bush’s fiscal rhetoric and <a href="https://www.mercatus.org/publication/spending-under-president-george-w-bush">fiscal record</a>, it’s that Romney’s gubernatorial record might be a better indicator of what we could expect from a Romney federal budget. Under Mr. Romney, state spending went from $22.3 billion to $28.1 billion, an annual increase of 6.5 percent.  This is twice as much as the average 2.9% average statewide budget increase.</p> <p>So, if his record is any indication, we shouldn’t expect too much from a Romney presidency in the way of cutting the federal budget.</p> <p></p> <p>Image Source (Below)</p> <h1><a href="http://thestrangestadventures.blogspot.com/2011/06/2012-candidates-ron-paul.html"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ron-paul-Dr-No-150x150.jpg" alt="Ron Paul is Dr. No Comic Book Cover"></a><strong>Ron Paul</strong></h1> <h3>(a.k.a. Dr. No)</h3> <h2>Specific Cuts = <strong>$1 Trillion</strong></h2> <p>From his <a href="http://www.campaignforliberty.org/the-issues/ron-paul-plan-to-restore-america/">complete detailed and itemized budget</a>:</p> <p><</p> <p>p style=”text-align: justify;”><em>“The Plan to Restore America cuts $1 trillion in spending during the first year of Ron Paul’s presidency, eliminating five cabinet departments (Energy, HUD, Commerce, Interior, and Education). It abolishes the Transportation Security Administration and returns responsibility for security to private property owners.  It also abolishes corporate subsidies, stops foreign aid, ends foreign wars, and returns most other spending to 2006 levels.</em></p> <h6><em>CUTTING GOVERNMENT WASTE:</em></h6> <p><em>Makes a 10% reduction in the federal workforce, slashes Congressional pay and perks, and curbs excessive federal travel. To stand with the American People, President Paul will take a salary of $39,336, approximately equal to the median personal income of the American worker.”</em></p> <p><a href="http://thestrangestadventures.blogspot.nl/2011/06/2012-candidates-ron-paul.html">Image Source</a> (Above)</p> <h3>The Paul Record on Spending</h3> <p>Paul’s congressional record consists of a long list of <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20131024012212/http://www.clubforgrowth.org/whitepapers/?subsec=137&id=921">votes</a> against federal spending.</p> <ul> <li>Voted against the Medicare Prescription Drug Act</li> <li>Voted nine out of nine times against raising his own pay</li> <li>Voted against No Child Left Behind</li> <li>Voted against the subsidy-laden 2002 Farm Bill</li> <li>Voted against the 1998 and 2005 Highway bill, only 1 of 9 to vote against the pork-filled 2005 bill</li> <li>Voted against the Stimulus, TARP, auto bailout, and Cash for Clunkers</li> <li>Voted against the Iraq War</li> </ul> <p><em>Note: I tried to write this objectively, so I seriously put a lot of effort into finding any votes by Ron Paul for significant spending increases.  I hoped to find some to add an appearance of increased credibility to the piece but was  unsuccessful.  If you have any examples, please leave them in comments at the bottom.</em></p> <p>Let’s look at how Ron Paul’s plan would affect the individual taxpayer.  He wants to cut <a href="http://www.campaignforliberty.org/the-issues/ron-paul-plan-to-restore-america/">$4,000,000,000,000</a> over his 4-year term. Divide this number by <a href="https://www.irs.gov/static_assets/error/404errorPage.html">142,449,000</a> federal income tax filers and that comes out to an average of <strong>$28,080.23 in savings for each taxpayer</strong>.  Alternatively, the $4 trillion should be divided by 307,006,550, the total US population. This would produce a 4-year savings of $13,029.04 per person.</p> <p></p> <h1><strong><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/gingrich_newt_speech-bubble-fundamentally-profound.jpg"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/gingrich_newt_speech-bubble-fundamentally-profound-300x263.jpg" alt="Newt Gingrich Talking About How Fundamentally Profound He Is"></a></strong></h1> <h1><strong>Newt Gingrich</strong></h1> <p>(a.k.a. Sorry, There’s Nothing Funny About Newt Gingrich)</p> <p>Specific Cuts = <strong>$20 Billion</strong></p> <p>Like Cain and Romney, all his cuts would come from the repeal of Obamacare.</p> <p>Other than that, he’s not too specific.  From his <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20130125140814/http://www.newt.org/solutions/jobs-economy/">website</a>:</p> <p><em>“Balance the budget by growing the economy, controlling spending, implementing money saving reforms, and replacing destructive policies and regulatory agencies with new approaches.”</em></p> <h3>The Gingrich Record on Spending</h3> <p>Gingrich’s fiscal record is mixed. During his time in Congress, he had an exemplary voting record on a lot of the top spending proposals:</p> <ul> <li>Voted NO on the Chrysler bailout in 1979</li> <li>Voted YES on the Gramm-Rudman balanced budget bill in 1985</li> <li>Voted YES on a balanced budget amendment (as part of the “Contract for America” effort that he led) in 1995</li> <li>Led the effort and voted YES to cut $16.4 billion from the budget in 1995.</li> <li>Voted YES on welfare reform in 1996</li> </ul> <p>Gingrich has also been a vocal opponent of most of the big spending habits pushed by the White House and Congress over the past few years.  He opposed the $787 billion stimulus proposal,  the auto bailout,  and Cash for Clunkers.</p> <p>On the other hand, in 2003, when he urged “every conservative member of Congress” to support the Medicare drug benefit bill.  He called it the “most important reorganization of our nation’s healthcare system since the original Medicare Bill of 1965.”  The drug benefit now costs taxpayers over $60 billion a year and has almost $16 <em>trillion</em> in unfunded liabilities.</p> <p>Notably in 2008, he also backed the $700 billion Wall Street bailout.</p> <p>He’s also attacked those who oppose omnibus spending bills.  These bills roll thousands of programs which may not pass on their own into massive one massive all or nothing bill that is more likely pass. In 1998, he derided a group of House conservatives by calling them the “the perfectionist caucus” for opposing a 4,000-page omnibus spending bill, adding that “those of us who have grown up and matured in this process understand after the last four years that we have to work together on big issues.”</p> <p></p> <h1><strong><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Cain-Pizza-noid.jpg"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Cain-Pizza-noid.jpg" alt="Picture of Herman Cain Holding a Pizza Saying, 'Avoid The Noid'"></a></strong></h1> <h1><strong>Herman Cain</strong></h1> <h1>(a.k.a. Pizza Dude)</h1> <h2>Specific Cuts = <strong>$20 Billion</strong></h2> <p>Like all the other candidates, Cain wants to repeal Obamacare which would save <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act#Effect_on_national_spending">$20 billion</a> a year.  But other than that, <a href="http://www.caintv.com/the-issues">this</a> is about as detailed as it gets:</p> <p><em>“Nothing should be off the table. Every federal agency, every government program and expenditure must be reviewed and revised with a keen eye and a red pen.”</em></p> <h3>The Cain Record on Spending</h3> <p>It doesn’t exist.  With no political record, Cain needs to be way more specific for voters to make anything close to an educated decision.</p> <p>What is known is that Cain supported TARP, the government bailout of the financial industry. He even chastised those who opposed it.</p> <p>On the other hand, Cain opposed the Democrats’ stimulus, saying, “The Obama-Reid-Pelosi cure for more national economic pain – more spending, more taxes and more socialism! That’s just more pavement for the road to perpetual debt.”</p> <p>This sounds nice, but without significant specific spending cuts, Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan will actually be a 9-9-9-<strong>9</strong> plan.  A 9% corporate tax, a 9% sales tax, a 9% income tax, and a <strong>hidden 9% inflation tax</strong>.<br> <img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/rick-perry-executioner1.jpg" alt="Cartoon Rick Perry saying, 'Every Man I Execute Creates Another Job!'"></p> <h1><strong>Rick Perry</strong></h1> <p>(a.k.a. The Executioner)</p> <h2>Specific Cuts = <strong>$50 Billion</strong></h2> <h2>From his <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20120211075001/http://www.rickperry.org/cut-balance-and-grow-html/">rock</a>:</h2> <p><em>“Consolidating Department of Education funding for all elementary and secondary programs, reducing it by 50 percent, and returning the rest of the money to the states would save $25 billion in the first year. Reducing the portfolio of investments by government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would save $26.5 billion over ten years.”</em></p> <h3>The Perry Record on Spending</h3> <p>Like Romney, Perry’s real <a href="http://www.cato.org/blog/rick-perrys-spending-record">record</a> is not one of fiscal restraint. Rick Perry came into office in December 2000. Texas general spending has risen from $29 billion that first Perry year to $41 billion by fiscal year 2011, which works out to an average annual increase of 3.5 percent. (Data from NASBO).</p> <p>For some perspective, let’s look at Perry versus the average spending increases of governors in all 50 states over the last decade.</p> <p>Here is NASBO data showing increases in state general fund spending between fiscal 2001 and fiscal 2011:</p> <ul> <li>Texas, Perry: $29 billion to $41 billion, a 41 percent increase.</li> <li>Total of 50 states: $506 billion to $651 billion, a 29 percent increase.</li> </ul> <p>Under Perry, the Texas budget increased 41% from</p> <p>However, the Texas population has grown faster than the U.S. population, so let’s put these figures on a per-capita basis.</p> <ul> <li>Texas, Perry: $1,360 per capita to $1,598 per capita, an 18 percent increase.</li> <li>Total of 50 states: $1,774 per capita to $2,091 per capita, an 18 percent increase.</li> </ul> <p>Perry is touting the “Texas Miracle” as a template for the rest of America, which is stuck in a rut of high <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20130420170633/http://www.usnews.com/topics/subject/unemployment">unemployment</a> and could certainly use some fresh ideas for how to create jobs. Texas has clearly fared better than most other states since the recession began at the end of 2007. Its unemployment rate is <a href="http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&met_y=unemployment_rate&idim=state:ST480000&fdim_y=seasonality:S&dl=en&hl=en&q=texas+unemployment+rate">8.2%</a>, a full point lower than the national average. The housing bust in Texas was far milder than it was in other places. A strong energy sector kept state tax revenues from plunging the way they did in other states, which forestalled layoffs in state and local government.  Additionally, the majority of the jobs created in Texas were government jobs.  From the beginning of 2008 to the end of 2010, government employment in Texas increased by <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20150416103545/http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/rick-newman/2011/08/16/how-rick-perry-created-jobs-in-texas">7 percent</a>, whereas it only increased 2 percent over the rest of the country.  Private sector jobs in Texas only grew by 0.6% during this period.</p> <p>So Perry’s record is perfectly mediocre. Like with Romney, we shouldn’t expect too much in the way of cuts if past is prologue.</p> <h3>The Verdict</h3> <p>So after examining the records and proposals of all the candidates, it appears that Ron Paul is the only candidate who intends to make balancing the federal budget a real priority.   Based on the others’ records and proposals, it appears pretty likely that, under their administrations, we’re going to continue the status quo Washington spending spree.</p> <p><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Budget-spending-cuts-by-GOP-Republican-presidential-primary-candidates-2012-infographic-480x160.jpg" alt="Budget spending cuts by GOP Republican presidential primary candidates 2012 infographic"></p> <p></p> <p><audio class="wp-audio-shortcode" id="audio-1123-7" preload="none" style="width: 100%;" controls="controls"><source type="audio/mpeg" src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn012_presidential_plans_compared.mp3?_=7"><a href="http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn012_presidential_plans_compared.mp3">http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn012_presidential_plans_compared.mp3</a></audio></p> <p>Podcast: <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn012_presidential_plans_compared.mp3" title="Play in new window">Play in new window</a> | <a href="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tbn012_presidential_plans_compared.mp3" title="Download">Download</a></p> 2011-12-18T20:02:16.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/terrorism/muslims-terrorists-terrorists-muslims/ <h2>Suicide terrorism is not primarily Islamic fundamentalism</h2> <p>The data are clear: <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AteZ14sZB7x_dGc5akM1WjVmaEIzeVJBSHBUQ0hrVlE">42% of suicide terrorist attacks</a> from 1981 to 2000 were perpetrated by non-Muslims.</p> <p>Before the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, the world's leading practitioners of suicide terrorism were the <a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1869501,00.html">Tamil Tigers</a> in Sri Lanka. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (<a href="http://www.adl.org/terrorism/symbols/liberation_tigers_te2.asp">LTTE</a>) is a secular Marxist-Leninist group primarily drawn from Hindu families. The LTTE seeks to seize control of Sri Lanka from the Sinhalese majority and create an independent Tamil state.</p> <p>From 1981 to 2000, the non-Islamic Tamil Tigers committed almost four times as many suicide attacks as any other terrorist group. The LTTE is responsible for 71 suicide terrorist attacks out of 167 committed during this period. The runner up, Hamas, comes in second with 18 attacks.</p> <p>You have a terrorist problem. You believe it's caused by religion. The leading terrorist organization during this period is secular Marxists. The math requires third-grade arithmetic. You have third grade, so the confusion is notable.</p> <p><a href="http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-2002-2005/terror02_05">http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-2002-2005/terror02_05</a></p> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Terrorist-Group-Pie-Chart-1981-2000.jpg"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Terrorist-Group-Pie-Chart-1981-2000.jpg" alt="Suicide Terrorist Group Pie Chart of Attacks from 1981 to 2000"></a></p> <p>Share of Suicide Terrorist Attacks by Group from 1981 to 2000</p> <p><a href="http://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/number-of-terrorist-attacks-by-group-1981-20012.jpg"><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/number-of-terrorist-attacks-by-group-1981-20012.jpg" alt="bar graph of number of terrorist attacks by group from 1981 to 2001"></a></p> <p>Number of Suicide Terrorist Attacks by Group from 1981 to 2000</p> 2012-01-03T00:31:56.000Z https://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/meet-the-backers-bankers-flip-flop-to-romney/ <p>The Wall Street banks that funded Obama in 2008 switched to Romney in 2012.</p> <h2>What Is TARP?</h2> <p>TARP is the Wall Street bailout program. President Bush started it in 2008.</p> <p>TARP stands for Troubled Asset Relief Program, which is a very serious name for "we gave all your money to banks who gambled it away." The government tried calling it "The Giant Bank Giveaway" but focus groups said that was too honest.</p> <p>Banks knowingly provided risky subprime mortgages that borrowers couldn't pay back. When this became a problem, the government bought into the banks using your money.</p> <p>The government ultimately spent $32 billion on TARP according to Congressional Budget Office estimates.</p> <p><img src="https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/TARp.png" alt="Cost of TARP program"></p> <p>Romney endorsed TARP multiple times. Obama continued it.</p> <h2>Campaign Contributions: Follow The Money</h2> <p>The banks that needed bailouts still had money for campaign contributions.</p> <table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" width="104"><strong>Company</strong></td><td valign="top" width="90"><strong>TARP Bailout</strong></td><td valign="top" width="113"><strong>Obama 2008</strong></td><td valign="top" width="136"><strong>Romney 2012</strong></td></tr><tr><td valign="top" width="104">Goldman Sachs</td><td valign="top" width="90">$10 billion</td><td valign="top" width="113">$1,013,091</td><td valign="top" width="136">$994,139</td></tr><tr><td valign="top" width="104">JPMorgan Chase</td><td valign="top" width="90">$25 billion</td><td valign="top" width="113">$808,799</td><td valign="top" width="136">$792,147</td></tr><tr><td valign="top" width="104">Citigroup</td><td valign="top" width="90">$45 billion</td><td valign="top" width="113">$736,771</td><td valign="top" width="136">$465,063</td></tr><tr><td valign="top" width="104">Morgan Stanley</td><td valign="top" width="90">$45 billion</td><td valign="top" width="113">$512,232</td><td valign="top" width="136">$827,255</td></tr></tbody></table> <p>Goldman Sachs needed a $10 billion bailout. They gave Obama over $1 million in 2008. They gave Romney about $1 million in 2012.</p> <p>JPMorgan Chase needed $25 billion. They gave both candidates about $800,000 each.</p> <p>Citigroup needed $45 billion. They gave Obama $736,771 and Romney $465,063.</p> <p>Morgan Stanley needed $45 billion. They gave Obama $512,232 and Romney $827,255.</p> <h2>The Pattern</h2> <p>The same banks fund both candidates. The candidates both support bailouts. The banks get bailouts.</p> <p>This is not corruption. This is the system working as designed. The design just isn't what they teach in civics class.</p> <p>It's like a restaurant where you order food, the waiter takes your money, brings food to someone else, and then charges you again. You might call this "terrible service," but the restaurant calls it "Thursday." The restaurant is doing great, by the way.</p> <p>Sources: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program">TARP data</a>, <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638">Obama 2008 contributions</a>, <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contrib.php?cycle=2012&id=N00000286">Romney 2012 contributions</a></p> <p><audio class="wp-audio-shortcode" id="audio-2571-6" preload="none" style="width: 100%;" controls="controls"><source type="audio/mpeg" src="http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/www.crowdsourcingutopia.com/tbn/podcast/tbn013_why_think_by_numbers.mp3?_=6"><a href="http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/www.crowdsourcingutopia.com/tbn/podcast/tbn013_why_think_by_numbers.mp3">http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/www.crowdsourcingutopia.com/tbn/podcast/tbn013_why_think_by_numbers.mp3</a></audio></p> <p>Podcast: <a href="http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/www.crowdsourcingutopia.com/tbn/podcast/tbn013_why_think_by_numbers.mp3" title="Play in new window">Play in new window</a> | <a href="http://media.blubrry.com/thinkbynumbers/www.crowdsourcingutopia.com/tbn/podcast/tbn013_why_think_by_numbers.mp3" title="Download">Download</a></p>