{"id":32013,"date":"2012-09-22T12:09:40","date_gmt":"2012-09-22T16:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=32013"},"modified":"2012-09-22T12:09:40","modified_gmt":"2012-09-22T16:09:40","slug":"federal-fiscal-follies-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=32013","title":{"rendered":"Federal Fiscal Follies – Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote the other day about the ridiculous economic cost of Federal regulation<\/a> – which is estimated by two different credible sources to exceed 10% of the US GDP by 2014 if it hasn’t already done so.\u00a0 Well, today I’ll be continuing that theme.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written previously about Federal entitlement programs \u2013 Social Security in particular.\u00a0 We now have more hard data showing exactly how such programs are slowly bankrupting the US.\u00a0 Figures for this year’s Social Security payments through the end of August 2012 are now available<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They’re not pretty.<\/p>\n

For those who didn’t know or who’d forgotten:\u00a0 the Federal government’s financial (fiscal) year runs from 1 October to 30 September.\u00a0 That means we’re nearing the end of the current Federal fiscal year.<\/p>\n

August data showed that the Federal government has already paid more than $594.64 billion to Social Security beneficiaries – with one month remaining in the current Federal fiscal year.\u00a0 Assuming Social Security payments for September are the average of the previous 11 months, that means the Federal government will transfer nearly $650 billion from wage earners to Social Security beneficiaries this fiscal year.\u00a0 That will be close to a 10% increase from last year\u2019s nearly $591.5 billion in Social Security payments – which was the previous record high.<\/p>\n

To put this in perspective:\u00a0 \u00a0the DoD Base Budget request<\/a> for fiscal 2012 was about $553 billion.\u00a0 Another $118 billion was requested by DoD to support overseas contingency operations.\u00a0 Yes, you read that right \u2013 this year, the Federal government will spend nearly as much on Social Security alone<\/em> as it did on\u00a0 DoD.\u00a0\u00a0 Given upcoming near-certain cuts to DoD’s budget next year and demographics, I’d guess we\u2019ll probably see \u201ccrossover\u201d next year.<\/p>\n

August 2012 also\u00a0 marks the all-time high for the number of people receiving Social Security benefits – 56,291,797.\u00a0 Based on the current US population estimate of a bit under 317.5\u00a0 million<\/a>, this means close to 18% of the US population – or approaching 1 out of every 5 US residents – is currently receiving income transfer payments from Social Security alone<\/em><\/span>. And remember:\u00a0 that percentage does not<\/strong> include those receiving income transfers from other Federal entitlement programs like AFDC, Medicare, Medicaid,\u00a0 subsidized housing, or other welfare programs.<\/p>\n

And today I’m not even going to discuss all of the issues with Social Security.\u00a0 More to follow on that score – tomorrow.<\/p>\n

But let’s take a moment to recap what we have so far.\u00a0 Government regulation costs the US economy around $1.8 trillion annually.\u00a0 Let’s assume 2\/3 of that regulatory cost is unnecessary.\u00a0 Social Security takes roughly another $650 billion out of wage earner’s pockets.\u00a0 So that means between waste due to compliance with unnecessary Federal regulation and Social Security, the Federal government has is responsible for taking close to $2 trillion from those who earned it.<\/p>\n

And that nearly $2 trillion total doesn’t include<\/em> income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, excise taxes, employer payroll taxes besides Social Security OASDI – or any other taxes.\u00a0 That’s only the income lost to wage earners due to Social Security plus the waste caused by unnecessary governmental regulation.<\/p>\n

H. Ross Perot was wrong.\u00a0 That “giant sucking sound” you hear isn’t jobs going South.\u00a0 It’s the sound of the Federal government siphoning off 12.3% of the GDP between government-mandated waste and support for Social Security.<\/p>\n

And the truly scary part?\u00a0 That’ nowhere near all that’s being siphoned away from those who earn it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote the other day about the ridiculous economic cost of Federal regulation – which is … Federal Fiscal Follies – Part II<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[189,11,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defense-cuts","category-economy","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}