A little Monday math…

The current budget proposal has reached $3.8 trillion. My first reaction was, is that really the government just printing money? Here’s some back of the napkin math…

$3.8 trillion budget
300,000,000 (or 300 million) Americans

This equates to $12,667 per American, not a grossly high number.

But let’s chop the Americans total in half to eliminate the elderly/retired and the children…

$3.8 trillion/150,000,000 = $25,333 per person, which is starting to feel like an entire annual salary.

So let’s consider that mulit-millionaires are picking up the slack and that corporation taxes will also filter there way into the process to reduce some of this.

Doing a search I found a Labor Bureau statistic from 2002 stating the average annual salary in the US was roughly $36,000. Let’s say that went up to $40,000 in 8 years, not unlikely. Now let’s say each person earning $40,000 had a tax rate of 30%, which is probably high, but a decent rough number.

$40,000 * 30% = $12,000.

So somehow, we just went from needing $25,333/person to getting $12,000/person.

And then I read this quote in an article about the budget “Next year’s budget will have a nearly $1.3 trillion debt.”

Oh really? I want to know how many $40,000/year wageearners and how many hours were spent to put this thing together, because on a very full stomach from a great steak cube meal at the Japanese restaurant, I figured out this problem in about 3 and a half minutes.

Now, I’m not going to say what I earn, but let’s say I put together a budget that has me 34% in debt ($1.3 trillion/$3.8 trillion). How long is it before my car is repo’d, my house is foreclosed and my credit cards are cut up IN MY FACE!

To even publish a budget like this is a joke. This is not a Republican/Democrat thing. This is a common sense thing. This needs to go back to the drawing table, chop out $1.3 TRILLION and reproposed WHEN IT ACTUALLY IS A BUDGET, not a BLANK CHECK.

Yes, I’m an accountant. But, no, it would not take me long to get that checkbook for the government in order. He-man.

(And now I realized that’s the first He-man of TheLockhart.com. He-man is a term coined by The Great Murphenis and SB during a trip to Magnetawan, Ontario, Canada. Apparently, whenver I get to Netawanda, our friend Big Head’s family cabin, I puff my chest out and feel like I am the master of the universe, aka He-man. The term has now been used for over 5 years any time someone is patting themselves on the back. It can be pre-emptively used by a person if they know they are patting themselves on the back. Equally, She-ra can be used for a female participant.)

Quick hits of the day:

– I really wish youtube would work in my office here so I could insert a movie clip. I just had lunch at Bow House, a Japanese restaurant near our office in Hong Kong. After every order, the waiter, looked at us and said “And then?”. Think “Dude, where’s my car?”.

– Macao has the Wynn, MGM and Venetian, all like Vegas….and I even saw cards of girls on the ground in the tunnel going to the Wynn from Casino Lisboa, the original Portuguese casino on the island.

– Citygate Outlets on Lantau Island were disappointing. Prices, even after the sale, were more expensive than the UK and the US. Not worth your time.

– Apparently the jade market is though. Lunch tomorrow will be spent on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong looking for some green goodies.

Goodnight and God bless,

Scott