Very Interesting…

Earn interest while keeping your emergency fund fluid.

As you work your way towards financial freedom, it is imperative to have liquid assets. The most liquid of all assets of course is always cash. Having stocks in a brokerage account is dandy, but the turnaround time to sell them can be days until the funds are transferred into your bank account.  This is no good if you have a situation arise which requires immediate funds.

Because life happens, having an emergency cash supply is essential.  The ideal emergency fund is to have two years worth  of living expenses stashed away. It sounds like an excessive amount, but believe me it is achievable. It just takes time to reach that level.

Two years worth of living expenses for most people is measured in tens of thousands of dollars. So for argument’s sake, let’s assume the amount we are discussing is between $25,000 and $50,000. Keeping that amount of money liquid can be a tricky matter, but you should not sacrifice the chance to earn interest on as much of your emergency fund as possible. There are ways of earning varying amounts of interest while still keeping your assets accessible.    

touchme

The first and most important thing I recommend is always having $1000 physically on hand in your home. Keep it hidden of course, but have it! You’ll never earn interest on this smallest part of your emergency fund, but it is worth the small sacrifice to be able to reach out and touch your money if you need it in seconds.  It is better to have a $1000 in cash on hand you don’t need, than to need $1000 you don’t have.  Again, this is EMERGENCY MONEY, not fun money.  If it’s not a matter of life and death, DON’T TOUCH IT! DON’T EVEN LOOK AT IT!

Next, keep between $2000 and $5000 in your savings account. There are still some banks that will offer a minimal amount of interest with no fees. Often times credit unions will offer better interest than banks. Usually keeping $5000 in either a saving or money market account will earn you a higher interest rate for your cash. You can shop for the best interest rates offered at www.bankrate.com

Laddering CDs

Certificates of Deposit or CDs offer better interest rates but they tie up your funds until the maturity date. The longer the term, the higher the interest rate. Typically the terms run from as little as 3 months to as long as 5 years. To take advantage of the best interest rates while still keeping the cash fluid, I would recommend using a CD laddering strategy. Distribute your next $5000 to $10000  into a varying number of CDs each having different terms and end dates. You can create a ladder of CDs as long as you like with each CD being a rung. As each rung matures you can access it without penalty, or roll it over and wait for the next rung in the ladder to mature.

EX: Using $10,000, divvy it up into:  

  • 5 year CD $5000
  • 2 year CD $2000
  • 1 year CD $1000
  • 6 month CD $1000
  • 3 month $1000

With the CD ladder in this example, you will have a minimum of $1000 available to you every 3 months, and a minimum of $2000 every 6 months which you can cash in without penalty should you need it. Or let it roll over and continue to accrue interest.

Brokerage Account

Any part of your remaining cash assets beyond the above suggested $16,000 of allocated funds should be kept in a brokerage account such as MerrillEdge or TD Ameritrade to be used for the purchase of dividend stocks.  By investing in a diversified portfolio of various dividend paying stocks, you will be able to hedge your bets while maintaining a return on your investments. You’ll have to do your own homework on which stocks to buy, as past performance does not guarantee future earnings.

Experimental Investing

When you have two years worth of living expenses under your belt, you can afford to use any additional ‘mad money’ you may have for more risky financial ventures.  Some suggestions could include:

  • Collectibles / art
  • Real estate
  • Starting a business
  • Financing peer-to-peer loans through Prosper.com

 

Again, these are just suggestions and not recommendations. Ultimately you have to decide your financial future, but if you fail to plan for your future, you won’t have one.  As always I wish you happiness and success.  

The Three Big No-No’s

Explaining the Inter-connectivity of Politics, Economics, and Religion.

AN EPIC OPINION/RANT

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“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”   – Ronald Reagan

It’s often been said that you’re never supposed to discuss politics, religion, or money (economics).  The problem is that these are three topics are very important, and share a high degree of inter-connectivity when we are discussing the USA. InstantCoffeeWisdom.com is MAINLY a financial blog, but it does sometimes touch briefly upon matters of religion and politics because  of the shared nature of the three topics.  With the ability of the populace to access the sum total of human knowledge via their internet-enabled smart phones, we have the largest forum ever created in which to voice our opinions and concerns. It amazes me that my weekly blog has been read by people in over 25 nations around the globe. My late father was a newspaper editor and had a weekly column for years  which never circulated outside of New York City. It is amazing how fast the world has changed in less than fifty years.

There has been a dumbing down of America and we can’t keep ignoring it because it’s not going away, it’s only getting worse. Due to the vast information overload, people who lack critical thinking skills are having difficulty distinguishing between fact and fiction.  The signal-to-noise ratio is off the scale and people can chose to listen to whatever viewpoint aligns with their personal ideology.   These uninformed  and indoctrinated citizenry are unable to critically evaluate and analyze everything they hear, choosing    instead to believe whatever fake news supports their fantasy world.

I am a Christian and a Republican and  I FULLY support my God Jesus Christ, My President Donald J. Trump, and the United States of America.

That being said, I’m going to attempt to explain how the three big no-no’s which you’re not supposed to discuss for fear of offending someone are connected. This is a very complex topic which could fill volumes, but I’ll try to keep it as short as possible. This is meant to inform, not offend.

“At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child – miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.” – P.J. O’Rourke

More and more, young people on college campuses are self-identifying as libertarians, communists, anarchists, or any other fringe group attempting to overthrow the government. They stage protests, destroy property, and burn flags while condemning made-up issues like corporate greed and conservative bigotry. They demand that the president be impeached, the constitution changed or eliminated altogether,  and that the government must provide them with all these free services and non-existent ‘rights’ they claim to be entitled to.

On top of this, I can’t go a single day without hearing some brainwashed fool  comparing President Donald J. Trump to Adolf Hither. 

I for one, am sick of hearing about it. I’m tired of being called names by ignorant twits who couldn’t pass a civics test if their lives depended upon it. This is the greatest county on the face of the Earth. If you don’t like the USA, LEAVE! There are 194 other countries  in the world, pick one you like and move there.  And don’t come back, EVER!

Nothing beats capitalism for generating wealth

Communism and socialism do not allow the same freedoms granted by capitalism. Under Capitalism, individuals own and control land, capital, and production of industry. You can buy what you want, live where you want, work where you want. You have the maximum amount of choices possible in life and the freedom to act upon them. This is the ‘pursuit of happiness’ from the Declaration of Independence. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are unalienable rights granted by our creator, God.  When God is the final authority, your rights cannot be revoked. In communist  or socialist countries rights are granted by the state, and can be revoked if the state decrees it.  Capitalism and Christianity function together best out of all the economic systems.  This is why the Founding Fathers chose it.

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Often you hear cries that you ‘can’t mix religion and politics’, that there’s ‘separation of church and state’.

Almost all of the Founding Fathers of the USA were Christians with very few exceptions. As such, their world view was greatly influenced by their Biblical beliefs. Revisionist historians and leftist ‘liberal’ teachers have obscured this fact in the modern classroom, greatly influencing the impressionable minds of young children who believe everything they’ve been told. As a result the majority of the next generation has been corrupted by the very teachers entrusted with their education. By and large, they have been rendered as the useful idiots of the left. Unquestioning revolutionaries fed by lies at every level of their cognitive development. Having been empowered by a steady diet of YA dystopian fiction throughout their teens, these millennial snowflakes react violently at worst, and at the very least hurl insults at any authority figure that attempts to point out the fallacy in their way of thinking. They often accuse conservatives of bigotry and hate, but if you wish to see a true display of hatred, disagree with a liberal! They are totally brainwashed and think everything great about America is bad.  Unfortunately, once a person has been so thoroughly brainwashed, it’s impossible to break through to them. Any attempts to un-brainwash them will only result in you being frustrated, and them having a dish-pan brain.      

The Fourth Center of Learning

Prior to the Twentieth Century, there were only Three Centers of Leaning.

  • Family
  • Church
  • School

Your world view was shaped by these three segments of life. These are the same three that shaped the world view of the Founding Fathers. Church and scripture reading were a larger segment of their lives, and influenced their way of thinking.

In the Twentieth Century, this changed. We developed an new Forth Center of Learning.

  • Media

Movies, radio, television, computers and the internet drastically changed the way we viewed the world. Suddenly people were introduced to idea and topics that prior generations never thought about.  When Clark Gable said ” Frankly My Dear, I Don’t Give a Damn” in 1939 in Gone with the Wind, it was shocking. Now we have all sorts of foul language throughout media that children are exposed to.  In December 1953 Hugh M. Hefner published Playboy Magazine, and you could buy porn at the newsstand. Today, it’s everywhere accessible via the internet, and even new TV shows and movies contain scene of gratuitous nudity and simulated sex.  Now we get the majority of our information through media. Let’s not even get started on all the violent content found throughout our modern entertainment.

At the same time Media was gaining a bigger part of our attention, the three tradition centers of learning were being  attacked. In schools, students were being taught what to think, not how to think. Christianity was being labeled as outdated, and the Bible filled with ‘errors’. No-fault divorce was added to our legal system and has lead to more broken families than any generation prior.  Now we have a generation that is learning about life from what’s taught to them by the media. They have no firm moral center. Instead they rely on ethics. Morals and ethics are very different things. Morals come from a religious source and are concrete, whereas ethics are drawn from societal norms and are situational and fluid. Morals define things as either right or wrong 100% of the time.  There is no grey area. Ethics change with the circumstance and individuals. What’s right for you may be wrong for me. If something is legal, it is not unethical. If it were unethical it would be illegal. If something is immoral, it is ALWAYS immoral whether it is legal or not. God wants what is best for us and outlines it in his Word, the Bible. It not only covers laws and acceptable social behavior, it also provides encouragement and has over 2000 passages relating to financial matters that are time proven.  

In the twenty-first century, only about 2% of Christians have ever read the Bible cover to cover. This lack of biblical knowledge has resulted in much of the immorality and financial poverty that plagues our society and threatens our nation. The common knowledge and common sense of our forebears has been lost due to illiteracy and apathy.  As a constitutional republic, we elect our representatives to vote legislation on our behalf. How can you elect moral leadership if you have no standard by which to measure the man?  How do you vote laws if you have no measure of accepted morals or justice? So today, we have a very different world-view than The Founding Fathers.  If you don’t believe religion belongs  in politics, you are sadly mistaken. God has been involved in the United States since its inception because the Founding Fathers had a Biblical world view.

One Nation Under God

  • The United States is the longest existing constitutional republic in history.
  • It is a Christian nation.
  • It has a capitalist economy.

Attempting to change just one of these three factors will diminish or even outright destroy the other two.

The “wall of separation between church and State” is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned. Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985) – Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist

The phrase ‘separation of church and state’ does not appear ANYWHERE in the Constitution. Don’t believe me? Read it for yourself. I did. The 1st amendment guarantees the right of freedom of religion, and bars any laws from being enacted to restrict or prohibit it. The constitution is ‘almost’ impossible to change. The founding fathers designed it this way to protect it. In the wake of the recent school shooting there has been sharp criticism from the left to change, or even to revoke  the 2nd Amendment. If the constitution could be changed at whim, they could easily revoke the 1st amendment as  well and eliminate religious freedom, and free speech.

Our political structure and election system comes straight from the Bible.

21 But select capable men from all the people—men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain—and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. 22 Have them serve as judges for the people at all times, but have them bring every difficult case to you; the simple cases they can decide themselves. That will make your load lighter, because they will share it with you. Exodus 18:21-22

As a republic, we elect representatives to act on our behalf and based on the will of the people. If immoral self-serving con-men are elected, there is nothing to stop them from passing laws according to their own desires against the will of the people. This is the rationale behind the  “drain the swamp” movement. (Washington D.C. was originally swampland.) Also, since the members of the Supreme Court are picked by the president, the wrong person in the White House could pack the High Court with justices that ‘legislate from the bench’, dramatically reshaping the USA into their own vision.

The three branches of Government –Judicial, Legislative, Executive– are derived from Isaiah 33:22

22 For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; he will save us. Isaiah 33:22 King James Version (KJV)

The Supreme Court comes from the Bible too. The ancient Jewish court system was called the Sanhedrin. The Great Sanhedrin was the supreme religious body in the Land of Israel during the time of the Holy Temple.

Our First President was a devout Christian

1-2-291-25-Prayer at Valley Forge LC

George Washington, the first president of the United States was a devout Christian who spent two hours each day reading the Bible and in prayer on his knees , one hour in the morning, and one in the evening.

When he was inaugurated as the first president, he placed his hand upon the Bible, when he took the oath to God, he bent over and kissed the Bible and then lead the entire congress to Saint Paul’s Church  for  a two hour service of worship and thanksgiving.  

Shortly thereafter the Congress of the U.S. asked Washington to declare a National Day of Thanksgiving.

Does this sound like the actions of people who wanted their newly created nation to be devoid of religion? No! The government was designed to work hand-in-hand with biblical principles for the glory of God.  

[New York, 3 October 1789] By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation.

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor — and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be — That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks — for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation — for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war — for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed — for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted — for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions — to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually — to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed — to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness onto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord — To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us — and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New-York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

Also in 1789, the first act of the newly created Supreme Court of the US was to have a FOUR HOUR communion service.

Furthermore, without exception:

  • The Inaugural address of every U.S.  president mentions God.
  • The Constitutions of all 50 states mention God.
  • The majority of the monuments and federal buildings in Washington D.C. contain scores of inscriptions and references to God.
  • The National motto In God We Trust is on all our money.
  • God is mentioned in our National Anthem and in our Pledge of Allegiance.         

“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem.”  — Ronald Reagan 

Purpose of U.S. Government

According to the Constitution’s preamble, the specific functions of the United States government are:

  1. ‘To form a more perfect Union’
  2. ‘To establish Justice’
  3. ‘To insure domestic Tranquility’
  4. ‘To provide for the common defense’
  5. ‘To promote the general Welfare’
  6. ‘To secure the Blessings of Liberty’

It is vitally important that Christians have a role and a voice in civil Government. We need to elect moral leaders who have a deep understanding of what the Bible says, and are willing to defend the Constitution.. In addition, they must have a firm understanding of business and the economy. Passing laws that hurt business and punish the wealthy are bad for the economy. Laissezfaire economics are a key part of free market capitalism. The government has no business interfering in the day-to-day operations of any business. The less the government is involved in the economy, the better off business will be – and by extension, society as a whole. 

Since Donald J. Trump was elected, he has been pushing through sweeping tax cuts and cutting bureaucratic red tape which is helping fix the economy.  I trust President Trump more than anyone else in Washington. Just because you don’t see everything going on behind the scenes, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. He is a capable leader that is slowly checking off items on the list of campaign promises he made which got him elected.  I am confident that he is going to do everything in his power to defend the Constitution and that he will Make America Great Again. A Christian man leading a Christian nation is definitely good for the county. When America blesses God, God will bless America. As always, I wish you happiness and success!  

 

LA-LA-LA! I Can’t Hear You!

The real reason it’s lonely at the top.

I have never swindled a man. At most I kept quiet and let him swindle himself. This does no harm, as a fool cannot be protected from his folly. If you attempt to do so, you will not only arouse his animosity but also you will be attempting to deprive him of whatever benefit he is capable of deriving from experience. Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig. – Robert Heinlein  (from his 1973 novel  “Time Enough for Love”)

As I’ve stated previously, I’ve been broke in the past, and grew up poor. The reason I have risen to the level I now find myself on is because I made a conscious  decision to change my circumstances and become rich. There’s one problem with success. You can pursue it for yourself, and you can try to encourage others to follow your example, but you can’t force them to do the right thing. Just as you yourself have arrived  at the decision to make a positive change in your life, they must make their own decisions.

If you go to any large bookstore, you’ll notice that there are thousands of self-help books on the shelves. I’ve read my fair share in my personal quest to become a better man. Many of these contain simple common sense solutions. The problem is that what used to be considered common sense has been discounted as outdated or erroneous. Common sense is not as common as it once was. One thing I have also noticed is that the most successful self-improvement books all reference the greatest self-help book ever written: The Bible. That’s because timeless wisdom is timeless. I make no secret of the fact that I am a Christian first, and a Republican second. I could not be the man I man today without Jesus Christ. 

For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

2 Timothy 4:3 NIV Bible

The reason I started writing InstantCoffeeWisdom sprang from a growing concern that the knowledge I’ve accumulated which has so helped me, and which I’ve tried to impart on others was being largely ignored. The more successful you become, the fewer close personal friends you will end up with. Your social circles will change drastically. Some of the people you once considered indispensable members of your clique will suddenly start to drop away. Part of this is because they are not strong enough to continue the journey with you and leave to pursue their own interests. Some will leave due to disagreements, jealousy or resentment. It’s painful to lose friends, but it’s important to let the ones who wish to leave go. You can’t force people to love you, or respect you.  Either they will want to be with you, or they won’t. This is why it is of the utmost importance to always express  your views with respect and civility towards those who disagree. Never engaged in vituperation or name-calling.  Just as it takes time to become successful, it also takes time to build a reputation.

WorldWideBlog

Always give credit where credit is due.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. – John Donne

The knowledge I pass along  thought this weekly online blog is not my own. It has been distilled over time from reading countless others, many of whom also reference one another. Over the years I’ve read and studied many wise men, and I am where I am today because I stand on the shoulders of the giants who have come before me.  I encourage you to seek out and read books by:

  • Dave Ramsey
  • Napoleon Hill
  • Brian Tracy
  • Tony Robbins
  • John C. Maxwell
  • Richard Carlson

just to name a few.

Lastly before I wrap up this week’s edition of InstantCoffeeWisdom, I want to say that I am humbled that my blog has been read by people in over 20 countries around the world. My articles are mostly financial, but sometimes include a smaller political and religious component. This is because the three hot-button topics of Politics, Economics, and Religion are all interwoven and part of the same ‘island’. I hope that you have found my mostly financial blog to be helpful, informative, and entertaining.  If you have found it to be so, please consider sharing it with your friends on social media so that they too may benefit. As Always, I wish you happiness and success.

Millions and Billions and Trillions, oh my!

The economy and tax cuts simplified!

 

crushing_burden_debt

The media often decries that tax cuts for the rich are unfair, and that the wealthy are greedy individuals who don’t care about poor people and don’t pay their fair share in taxes. We saw a lot of this in recent years from the Occupy Wall Street group as they tried to demonize the top 1%. The sad fact is that the majority of individuals in the USA do not understand the economy, personal finance, taxes, investments, or the stock market in general.

These are three undeniable facts:

  • Wealthy people create the most jobs and pay the most taxes.  
  • Poor people are poor because they don’t yet understand how to become rich.
  • Investing in the stock market has resulted in the largest creation of wealth in human history.

“(It’s) the economy, stupid” – James Carville

Let’s start off by differentiating between the economy and the stock market. They are NOT the same thing.  February 5th 2018 saw the largest single drop in the history of the Dow Jones, 1175 points.  And the two week period from the end of January to mid February amounted to a market correction, which is to say, a 10 percent drop. You did not see 10% of the business in America hang a ‘closed forever’ sign on their doors, nor did you see them fire 10% of their employees, or find the shelves stocked with 10% less goods.  This is because the economy is just as strong today as it was before the market dropped. The economy involves the sum of all the goods and services produced in this country every day. The stock market is something very different and doesn’t have anything to do with the economy at all.  The market reflects speculations by investors on the potential values of various companies based on imagined future profits. Nothing is produced on Wall Street except wealth. When you buy a stock, you are actually really just loaning that company money in the hopes of a future return on your investment. The stock exchange just facilitates and records that transfer of funds. The influx of currency gives the company capital which it can use to expand and grow the goods and services it produces. Hopefully.  As the famous investing disclaimer goes “past performance does  not guarantee future earnings”. This is why tax cuts for business and the wealthy can cause the market to fluctuate.  The perceptions of investors change, and the market reflects that change.  

408chart

A median is the exact mid-point. In 2016 the real median household income was $59,039. That said, half of the households in the USA earned more, and half earned less.  The same can be said of tax payers. About 50% of the people in the country pay ZERO in federal taxes, while the wealthiest 1%  in the country account for a staggering  35% of all taxes collected. When you expand this group to the top 10% of wage earners, the taxes collected grows to 68%. Is it fair when a millionaire gets a larger tax cut? Absolutely! If taxes were ‘fair’ we’d all pay the exact same percentage regardless of our level of income.  

There’s no such thing as a free lunch!

On October 30th 2017, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders kicked off a press briefing by reading an anecdote about reporters and a bar tab to try to explain who would benefit from the proposed Republican tax reform framework.  It was adapted from a piece that had been floating around the internet since the early 2000’s, Here is the original:

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for lunch and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.

The fifth would pay $1.

The sixth would pay $3.

The seventh would pay $7.

The eighth would pay $12.

The ninth would pay $18.

The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do.

The ten men ate lunch in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball.

“Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily lunch by $20.00.”  So lunch for the ten men would now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.  So the first four men were unaffected.  They would still eat for free.  But what about the other six men?  How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33.  But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to eat his lunch.

So the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.

And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% off).

The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% off).

The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% off).

The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% off).

The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% off).

The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% off).

Each of the six was better off than before.  And the first four continued to eat lunch for free.  But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare the amount they got off.

The sixth man said, “I only got $1 off out of the $20 while the tenth man got $10 off!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man.  “I only got $1 off, too.  It’s unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!”

“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man.  “Why should he get $10 off, when I got only $2?  The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all.  This new tax system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and told him they were angry that he got so much off while they each got very little.

The next day the tenth man didn’t show up for lunch, so the nine sat down and had their lunches without him.  But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important.  They didn’t have enough money amongst all of them for even half of the bill!

And that is how our tax system works. The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the largest benefit from a tax reduction.  Also, all of the taxes collected annually do not cover all of the spending by the Government the short fall of which is covered by borrowing money from foreign countries. Each year this deficit and the interest on the foreign loans adds to the growing national debt.  You can see this debt growing in real time at usdebtclock.org .  Currently we have a national debt of $20,633,000,000,000. This amounts to $63,000 per citizen OR $170,000 per tax payer ! The government needs to shrink the national debt and the only way to do that is by the elimination of all non-essential spending. We need to have everyone pulling their own weight. We can’t have half the country working and paying taxes for the other half of the country to sit home and not work. Government welfare programs must end. We simply cannot keep spending more money than we take in. You can spend your way into the poor house, but you’ll never spend your way into prosperity.    

TheNumbersDontLie

Now when you’re earning less than $60,000 a year, a million dollars is a lot of money.  Even if you earned $250,000 a year, a million dollars is still a lot of money. But when we talk about the US economy, the budget, and tax cuts, were are discussing billions (a thousand-million) and trillions (a million-million) and these numbers are larger than the average person can comprehend.  Let’s ignore the smaller numbers and shoot for the moon by explaining  the size of a trillion.

A single one dollar bill measures 6.14 inches. If you laid a trillion of them end to end, it measures 96,906,656 miles. This would exceed the distance from the earth to the sun. Even if you just stacked them one on top of the other, the distance would be 67,866 miles. This would reach more than one fourth the way from the earth to the moon. Mind blowing huh?

One of my favorite examples of explaining the US budget, taxes, and those ‘HUGE’ multi-billion dollar budget cuts is to shrink the example down to a household budget. You remove the 8 zeroes. I’m using numbers from the recent 2018 US budget and the current national debt .  

  • United States Tax revenue : $3,654,000,000,000
  • Fed budget $4,094,000,000,000
  • New debt $440,000,000,000
  • National debt  $20,633,000,000,000
  • Recent budget cuts which some politicians are proud about  $ 54,000,000,000

Now, remove 8 zeroes and pretend it’s a household budget.

  • Annual income $36,540
  • Annual spending $40,940
  • New debt on the credit card $4,400
  • Outstanding credit card debt  $206,330
  • Recent budget cut $ 540

Now look at those ‘household budget’ figures.  Knowing that you were in debt about 564% of your annual income, would you continue to spend 112% of what you earn? Would you decrease that by less than 1.5% and call that an accomplishment? You’d have to be way beyond crazy to think that was a good idea. Hopefully you now understand why we need to end the welfare state and stop demonizing the rich. As always I wish you happiness and success!