{"id":22619,"date":"2013-10-21T09:53:10","date_gmt":"2013-10-21T14:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=22619"},"modified":"2013-10-21T09:57:04","modified_gmt":"2013-10-21T14:57:04","slug":"the-us-debt-iceberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/10\/21\/the-us-debt-iceberg\/","title":{"rendered":"The US debt iceberg"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jon Gabriel<\/a> has put together a clear, understandable way to show the relationship between the US government’s revenue, deficit and debt numbers:<\/p>\n

When Washington raised the debt ceiling this week, the Beltway media breathlessly reported that the fiscal crisis had ended. Lawyers danced in hallways, bureaucrats twerked on the Metro, congressional aides kissed strangers in the streets \u2014 the Tea Party has been defeated! It was like VJ day for wonks.<\/p>\n

As our political class exchanged high fives and reporters praised a return to \u201csanity,\u201d I wondered how these odd creatures defined insanity. <\/p>\n

America\u2019s fiscal crisis is not that our debt ceiling was too low, the fiscal crisis is that our debt is too high. When I mentioned this to left-leaning folks, they seemed indifferent. \u201cObama lowered the deficit.\u201d \u201cI think Bush spent more.\u201c \u201cIt\u2019s Reagan\u2019s fault!\u201d<\/p>\n

So I made this infographic:<\/p>\n

\"US<\/p>\n

Since most graphs look like this<\/a>, I focused on just three big numbers: Deficit, revenue and debt. <\/p>\n

The analogy is imperfect, but imagine the green is your salary, the yellow is the amount you’re spending over your salary, and the red is your Visa statement. Then imagine your spouse runs into the room and shouts, \u201cgreat news honey, our fiscal crisis is over. We just got approved for a new MasterCard!\u201d Your first call would be to a marriage counselor or a shrink.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

H\/T to Nick Gillespie<\/a>:<\/p>\n

What is it that Hemingway always used to say? That thing’s not loaded? Or something about how the “dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” Yeah, well, the horrors of federal finances is pretty undignified just looking at the amount of spending versus revenue we do and then it gets really sloppy when you look at the huge amount of debt below the waterline.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jon Gabriel has put together a clear, understandable way to show the relationship between the US government’s revenue, deficit and debt numbers: When Washington raised the debt ceiling this week, the Beltway media breathlessly reported that the fiscal crisis had ended. Lawyers danced in hallways, bureaucrats twerked on the Metro, congressional aides kissed strangers in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,84,13],"tags":[697,71,118],"class_list":["post-22619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-government","category-usa","tag-budget","tag-debt","tag-taxes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5SP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22619"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22623,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22619\/revisions\/22623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}