It represents where our tax dollars go - stuff that accounts for 1% or less of the budget. The year was 2009. I've heard it is now up to 11%, but I've not been able to confirm that through the CBO.
Don't get me wrong, 11% of our tax dollars going to pay for the interest on our debt is a lot. That is a problem that should be addressed.
But the idea that 100% of our tax dollars goes towards paying off the interest on our debt is utter stupidity. When someone starts off a post by saying something that absurd they instantly lose all credibility. That's a big clue that people should just stop reading that post right there. Nothing said after that can be considered reliable information.
Well that's not true either. I heard a great quote the other day. "The US government for all practical purposes is an insurance company with an army". And it's true! ~80% of our budget goes to the military and healthcare/elderly services. We can debate weather that is a good or bad thing till we are blue in the face, but it's not inefficiency and waste.
It's not like Obama went out and bought a trillion dollars worth of Soulja Boy ringtones.
If you want to consider interest on the debt waste, that's a valid characterization. You could say ~10% is waste. You may disagree with where the rest of the money goes, but it's not waste.
"It represents where our tax dollars go-stuff that accounts for 1% or less of the budget"
So Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Defense, non-defense discretionary, other mandatory and interest on the debt is only 1% or less of the budget? Man, we're in a lot more trouble than I thought. Where is the other 99% of the budget spent, then?
Yes, my statement was incorrect and I later corrected it, but I am not posting pie charts without explanation of what they represent or making ridiculous statements like: "It (pie chart) represents where our tax dollars go-stuff that accounts for 1% or less of the budget" but I have lost all credibility. So be it. Did you read the Grace Commission report? I quote "With two-thirds of everyone's personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100% of what is collected is absorbed solely by the interest on the Federal debt and by Federal government contributions to transfer payments. In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services which taxpayers expect from their government"
"Well that's not true either. I heard a great quote the other day. "The US government for all practical purposes is an insurance company with an army"".
I hear quotes all the time, too:
"Maybe we ought to see that every person who gets
a tax return receives a copy of the Communist Manifesto with
it so he can see what's happening to him."
--T. Coleman Andrews, Commissioner of IRS
(May 25, 1956 in U.S. News & World Report)
"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans..."
Bill Clinton
"Depression and mass unemployment are not caused by the free market, but by government interference in the economy."
Ludwig von Mises
"Those who call themselves "liberals" today are asking for policies which are precisely the opposite of those policies which the liberals of the nineteenth century advocated in their liberal programs. The so-called liberals of today have the very popular idea that freedom of speech, of thought of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from imprisonment without trial -- that all these freedoms can be preserved in the absence of what is called economic freedom. They do not realize that, in a system where there is no market, where the government directs everything, all those other freedoms are illusory, even if they are made into laws and written up in constitutions."
Ludwig von Mises
"We are, without a doubt, living in times that we have never lived in before."
Lee P Brown, Mayor of Houston, TX
"I promise a police car on every sidewalk."
"If you take the killings, Washington actually has a very, very low crime rate."
"The contagious people of Washington have stood firm against diversity during this long period of increment weather."
"I am making this trip to Africa because Washington is an international city, just like Tokyo, Nigeria or Israel. As mayor, I am an international symbol. Can you deny that to Africa?"
Marion Barry, crack-smokin' mayor of Washington, DC
