The DEBT STAR
Cross-posted at AustinHess.com and UncommonSenseBlog.com
by Austin Hess…
Rarely do my Star Wars geekery and political activism intersect, but as I was working on a way to visualize the enormity (and yes, I’m using the dictionary definition of “atrociousness,” not just immensity) of the US debt, I began to realize that, when you plot it as a circle with an area proportional to the dollar amount, it dwarfs any of the related figures (like any of the “draconian” cuts designed to reduce it)… and that if you arrange the circles a certain way, it starts to resemble the Death Star. I’d seen photoshops of the Death Star with the Obama O superimposed called the “Debt Star,” but I decided to make a Debt Star infographic that shows just what a threat our national debt is.
So, here is The DEBT STAR: 2012 (you can like it on facebook here if you want).
It shows the current figures from the US Debt Clock for the US National Debt, US Federal Spending, US Federal Tax Revenues, and the US Federal Budget Deficit, each as a circle with areas proportional to the dollar amount (all to scale). As you can see, we have a massive amount of debt, and we are spending much more than we take in (thought the deficit is less than it has been in other Obama years), so it is growing all of the time. It’s a trap!
Most of the cuts people talk about (like touted Obama’s $100 Million in savings in office supplies) sound like big numbers… until you compare them to our current deficit. Circles that size would probably be no wider than two meters on this chart (I should know. I used to bullseye womprats in my T-16 back home, they’re not much bigger than two meters). Even the dreaded “Fiscal Cliff” cuts that everyone is falling over themselves to avoid, amounting to $103 Billion, seem pretty paltry.
That $103 Billion is only 8.12% of our current $1.268 Trillion deficit, 2.84% of our current $3.633 spending, and only 0.65% of our debt. $100+ Billion cuts may sound scary to some, but we need to be cutting in the trillions if we’re going to stop hemorrhaging money, avoid bankruptcy, and start to pay down the debt. And no, raising taxes won’t help. All that would do would be to further damage the economy and decrease revenues. And you can’t tax the incomes of wealthy Americans at a high enough rate to even cover this year’s deficit, to say nothing of the next year, when everyone would be destitute. We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem.
For fun, I decided to expand the Debt Star chart to compare our current debt to our current unfunded liabilities (from Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, pensions, etc.) of $122.1 Trillion. Here, I let Alderaan stand in for the liabilities.
The facebook photo is here. As you can see, our unfunded liabilities dwarf even our already massive national debt (to say nothing of the $103 Billion in cuts). You can find some other great visualizations here. Obviously, we have to reform our entitlement system to avoid even more crippling debt. $15.95 Trillion is a lot of debt, but its only 13.09% the amount of our unfunded liabilities.
I also heard that the US fiscal gap (the present value difference between projected future spending and revenue) just jumped $11 Trillion to $222 Trillion (!). So I decided to compare the size of the Debt Star to that, along with the US GDP for 2011 (the latest year available, obviously) of $15.09 Trillion. This time, I let the red gas giant Yavin Prime represent the fiscal gap, and it’s moon, Yavin IV, represent GDP (here’s the photo on facebook).
As you can see, the national debt is already larger than last year’s GDP, and both are tiny compared to the fiscal gap. Our current debt is only 7.18% of the amount of the fiscal gap (and, incidentally, the $103 Billion in cuts are 0.04639%).
In short, “We’re doomed.” Unless, that is, we rebels in our secret base on that green ball can blow up the debt star and get back to fiscal sanity. I’m reminded of one of my bumper stickers (on my car with the “OBIWAN” license plate) that says “Rebel Scum do it in small thermal exhaust ports.”
All these Star Wars metaphors remind me of a great graphic I saw in the aftermath of Chief Injustice John’s Roberts' Obamacare decision:
I think it’s applicable here as well. All government spending is taxation, however the spenders might spin it. Deficit spending is just future taxation, and all promises of future spending are promises of future taxation. The debt accumulated by deficit spending can only be paid off (with interest) by direct taxation of ourselves and future generations, or inflating it away by printing more money (which is an invisible tax on everything). So don’t fall into the trap of believing politicians like Obama spending us into oblivion but claiming they’re not raising taxes. Remember, “IT’S ATAX!”
Now, if I can just figure out how to make an infographic using Jabba the Hutt and Leia in her metal slave bikini…
Posted via email from Uncommon Sense | Comment »
