{"id":89,"date":"2017-06-23T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-23T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/wordpress\/almostclassical\/?p=89"},"modified":"2025-01-11T16:53:04","modified_gmt":"2025-01-11T22:53:04","slug":"the-u-s-budget-and-compromises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/2017\/06\/23\/the-u-s-budget-and-compromises\/","title":{"rendered":"The U.S. Budget and Compromises"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United States’ federal budget spends a lot of money: between $3.5 and $4.0 trillion annually.<\/p>\n

How much do citizens of the United States earn each year? A little more than $6 trillion. In other words, the U.S. government is spending roughly two-thirds of the amount earned by all working<\/strong>\u00a0Americans. Two-thirds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"English:<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Graph of the US GDP compared with Federal budget outlay.
\n(Photo credit: Wikipedia<\/a>)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The top 10% of income earners represent $1 trillion in earnings, certainly a lot, equal to the entire stock valuation of Apple (not the same as Apple’s earnings, which are $9 billion per quarter, $36 billion annually).<\/p>\n

If every penny earned by the top 10% were confiscated<\/strong>\u00a0it would have no material effect on the federal budget. That’s how out of sync spending is today.<\/p>\n

The total wealth<\/strong>\u00a0in the United States is nearly $70 trillion, meaning everything owned by every person or company, at current “fair value” is worth $70 trillion. Yet, if you were to sell off things, they immediately lose that value so this is a complex and rough notion of how much we are worth as a nation.<\/p>\n

Our annual economic activity is between $15 trillion and $17 trillion, with much of that in international transactions.<\/p>\n

Are you wealthy or close to it and don’t realize it?<\/p>\n

The top 5% of households earn an annual income of $214,462 or higher, according to the Census Bureau<\/a>. That’s nearly four times the 2015 nationwide median household income of $56,516. Overall, this group lays claim to a 22.1% share of total household income<\/p>\n

Read more: How Much Income Puts You in the Top 1%, 5%, 10%?<\/a> | Investopedia<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The top 5% earns 22.1% of all income. The “average” top 5% family has two college-educated adults in the house. Two college-educated people earning $108,000 each isn’t that hard to imagine, is it?<\/p>\n

And yet, even if we had a 90% tax rate on the top 5% of households starting at $150,000, we would not balance the federal budget. Not even close. In fact, we’d be in deficit spending by August of each year.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.nationalpriorities.org<\/a><\/p>\n

In fiscal year 2015, the federal budget was $3.8 trillion. These trillions of dollars make up about 21 percent of the U.S. economy (as measured by Gross Domestic Product<\/a>, or GDP). It’s also about $12,000 for every woman, man and child in the United States.<\/p>\n

Congress allocated $1.11 trillion in discretionary spending in fiscal year 2015, meaning $2.69 trillion are pre-allocated and cannot be adjusted without revising non-discretionary social welfare programs. (And $230 billion went to servicing debts.)<\/p>\n

From the IRS<\/a> and the Congressional Budget Office for 2016<\/p>\n

GDP: $16.5 trillion<\/p>\n

Total Receipts: $2.99 trillion<\/p>\n

Total Outlays: $3.54 trillion (down slightly from 2015)<\/p>\n

Total Deficit as Percentage of GDP: -3.3%<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We have a spending problem, even if we increase taxes on the highest income earners. We need to talk about budget priorities, but we won’t.<\/p>\n

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