With only a day or two until Armageddon
… until life as we know it ends
… or until, at least, the sky falls
… let’s put the Sequester in perspective.
This single graphic says more than a thousand words … or, in Obama’s case, a couple of thousand words,
Please, sleep well tonight … I think the Nation can absorb this fiscal pin prick.
Thanks to MC for feeding the lead.
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Tags: Chicken Little, Sequester
The Homa Files 
February 27, 2013 at 3:44 pm |
The graphic completely fails to address the problem with the sequester. It isn’t the amount of the spending reduction, which is indeed small. It’s the stupidity of across-the-board cutting “so everyone’s hurt and no one’s happy”, as opposed to targeted reductions like elimination of tax loopholes, and specified cuts like, “We don’t need “x” ships, though we do need “y” planes.” The plan about to be pursued is the dumbest way imaginable to reduce over-spending.
February 27, 2013 at 5:18 pm |
With the exception of every other alternative on the table.
March 1, 2013 at 9:33 am |
It is a dumb way to do it…. but like secret Army base closing commissions (allowing only a final up/down vote)… it might be the only way? Small “r” republicanism leads to odd outcomes- victories of the possible?
Either way, I’m not sweating the sequester. Buy stocks– any asset you can get your hands on– if the anything dips on “bad” sequester news.
February 27, 2013 at 9:35 pm |
In all likelihood, government expenditure would never have been a subject of discussion, if the budget were balanced or in a state of surplus (thank you Bill Clinton).
Perhaps fairer portrayals of the situation would be the amount of the budget deficit divided by the population (since, over time, population, and tax revenues have grown, too), or as a % of GDP.
See here:
http://www.skymachines.com/US-National-Debt-Per-Capita-Percent-of-GDP-and-by-Presidental-Term.htm
and here.