POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

23Feb/118

I understood that there would be no math

[Silly people - with Meep, there's always math!]

Recently we saw the new White House spokesman getting broken in by Jake Tapper:

"If I borrow money from you to pay off the interest for the debt I owe to Geoff, am I not adding to my debt? ... The president seems to think that that borrowing money to pay the interest on the debt is not adding to the debt. I don't understand that math."

That's been a theme of late. A lot of tricksy math, that at its heart, is shown to be a total fraud. Here's a bit of math I think any of us can understand:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

That's the wisdom of the inimitable Mr. Micawber from David Copperfield [a Dickensian character who was a thinly disguised copy of the author's spendthrift father]. A wisdom that the current generations are learning the very very hard way.

Let's look around to see if we can see more harsh math, shall we?

The government's primary activity? Moving tiny bits of green paper around:

That's supported by fewer and fewer people:

Need to have money for retirement? You really should be saving lots more than you already are. No really, you're screwed. Big reason for being screwed - longer life expectancies [even in Canada!]. And unrealistic expectations...or treating expectations as certainties.

And here's something quick for New Jersey public employees considering retirement. But given how well the pension has been funded... well....that's what you get from having an electorate that doesn't care about math. [Math is hard! Aren't there rich people we can tax?]

Enough doom and gloom! Let's look at happy math! [and speaking of rich people to tax....]This here guy just had great bank from his old boss -- that's new White House chief of staff Bill Daley who got $8.7MM from J.P. Morgan.

Okay, enough happy talk. Back to penury. California teachers pension headed toward insolvency. Illinois governor seeking federal backing of pension obligation bonds....ha ha, good luck with that one, Quinn, with a Republican House. As per Jake Tapper questioning borrowing to pay for interest payments, others are questioning Quinn's borrowing plan for Illinois.

San Diego retirees, I don't know how much longer you'll be getting that 13th check pension bonus.

For those who want a bit more public pension valuation wonkery, Girard Miller breaks down some of the major issues in the area.

And back to some more hopeful math -- Gov. Perry of Texas challenging the UT system to figure out how to cut costs. Well, I guess it's hopeful if you're a prospective student. The profs might not be as happy about it. Hmmm, perhaps I know of a company that could talk with them [the fact I contract with them is clearly coincidental]... [UPDATE: A plan for reaching the 10K degree, and yes, online videos are involved.]

MORE MATH: The dismal math of fixing Social Security - if we want the benefit structure to be unchanged and make a fix right now, then payroll taxes must bump up from 12.6% to 15.7%. But that's assuming a change is made right now. I favor changing the benefit structure to make people change their behavior to working longer.

Parents to pay up for public schools in California, beyond normal taxes

Meep

Meep is a member of the Irish Catholic mafia, having a suspiciously high number of green-eyed, red-haired friends. While she doesn’t have red hair herself [except when she goes into the sun (rare for any vampire)], she does have green eyes. She’s a raving Papist and is a life actuary on the side [i.e., she counts dead people]. An amateur pain-in-the-ass [willing to go pro!], she likes covering retirement, mortality, math, and education issues.

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  1. Troll Feeder
    February 24th, 2011 - 10:21

    Noodling around with the Bammer’s 2012 budget provided the following:

    2010 income: $2,163 billion (page 171)
    2010 mandatory SSI: $755 billion (p. 165)
    2010 mandatory medicare: $447 billion (p. 165)
    2010 mandatory medicaid: $281 billion (p. 165)

    2010 mandatory SSI, medicaid, and medicare entitlements as a percentage of 2010 income: 68%.

    2010 mandatory DOD and wars: $667 billion (p. 64)

    2010 income after mandatory DOD and wars, SSI, medicaid, and medicare spending: $13 billion.

    99.4% of 2010 income went to those four items, and the costs listed above include only the mandatory spending in those departments. Left out are such gems as the SSI Research and Development budget.

    And Food Stamps (which was $87 billion, BTW (p. 50)).

    Anyways, there are 20-ish other government departments that all operated on credit cards last year, to the tune of $1,293 billion (p. 171).

    My point is that the dismal math of fixing SSI, medicare, and entitlements is going to have to involve cutting those programs today, not five or ten or thirty years in the future. The mandatory spending on them alone ate up nearly everything the government took in last year.

    And the Bammer’s projected 2011 numbers are even worse. 72% of revenues to those three programs, 106% when DOD and the wars are included.

    But not to fear; his 2012 revenue projection includes an additional $453 billion in revenue. A 21% increase from 2011. And his 2018 revenue projection is $4,257 billion. A 96% increase from 2011.

    So the government can double revenue every 7 years. Hooray, we’re saved.

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  2. Troll Feeder
    February 24th, 2011 - 10:45

    Enoch:

    Yep. 200m hurdles and 4 x 100 m relay.

    I dare because I chose truth the last five times, and I wanted to mix it up a little. I was the change I had been waiting for.

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  3. Troll Feeder
    February 24th, 2011 - 11:25

    Oddly, even though federal revenues are projected to rise by 96% ($2,174 to $4,257) from 2011 to 2018, GDP is only projected to rise by 44% ($15,050 to $21,679). All numbers from p. 171 of the 2012 budget.

    The village idiot simplification of this could be that the first $15 trillion of GDP has a tax rate of 14.4%, but the next $6.7 trillion has a rate of 31.4%.

    The more nuanced version is that the overall rate will increase to 19.6%.

    The still more nuanced version is something like Eat the Rich, I think. It’s ok, though, because rich people are stupid; they’ll never see it coming.

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