THE MATH DOESN’T WORK

Below are two charts that tell a story of an unsustainable trend. Here are the facts:

  • There are 144 million Americans employed, with 115 million employed full-time and 29 million employed part-time.
  • There are 246 million working age Americans, of which 91 million are supposedly not in the work force and 11 million are officially unemployed.
  • Approximately 68 million of these workers are in the top two income quintiles.
  • The bottom three quintiles receive more government entitlements than they pay in taxes. That means the top two quintiles pay 106% of all the taxes, while the bottom 60% of income producers get money back.
  • There are 68 million workers paying taxes to support the 76 million lower income workers, the 11 million unemployed workers, the 91 million working age Americans who have supposedly “chosen” not to work, and the 70 million people either too young or too old to work.
  • The workers in the top two quintiles represent 28% of the working age population and are paying 106% of the taxes to fund our welfare/warfare state.

What is shown on these charts is just the entitlement side of the equation. The taxes paid by 68 million people also have to fund our wars of choice in the Middle East, our ever growing surveillance state, prisons for the excess population, and the various other boondoggles that our beloved leaders pay for with our money. Do you understand why we are adding $1 trillion per year to the national debt? Today’s current scenario is a disaster.

We are only at the cusp of the Baby Boomers retiring and collecting what they are “owed”. Entitlement outlays are on automatic pilot and will soar, as 10,000 people per day turn 65 for the next 17 years. The math in this equation does not add up. It is simply unsustainable. The people in the 4th quintile making $88,000 per year can barely call themselves middle class in this hunger games society. Are the politicians in D.C. going to tax them more to cover the fiscal gap? Are the top .1% who write the tax laws going to allow themselves to be shaken down to pay for the bottom 72% who are net recipients of government goodies?

Can 68 million people pay the load for the other 248 million people, along with running a world empire? There is no solution to this dynamic. It’s a train wreck happening in slow motion. We are too far down the track and the bridge is out. Disaster beckons.