The US spends more than $500 million per victim on anti-terrorism efforts.  However, cancer research spending is only $10,000 per victim.  Evolutionary psychology may offer an explanation for this irrational threat amplification.

Lightning.

Over the last decade it has stricken more Americans than terrorists have. It will stop at nothing to destroy our way of life.

Yet some politicians in Washington don’t see lightning as a threat. Barack Hussein Obama doesn’t. In the Senate, he voted to allocate hundreds of billions of dollars to the so-called war on terror, while spending absolutely nothing on a threat which has taken far more American lives. He just doesn’t get it.

Barack Obama.

Wrong on lightning.

Wrong for America.

This message paid for by the Committee to Declare War on Weather Patterns.

Roughly 3,000 Americans have lost their lives to terrorist attacks in the last decade. This averages out to a loss of 300 people a year, which is a tragic figure and, as a country, it behooves us to do everything we can to reduce or eliminate the threat of terrorism. But there are still a lot of other ways to wind up being the main course at a worm banquet. The gravest dangers we face include heart disease, cancer, and celebrity breakups. Unfortunately, our country doesn’t have infinite resources available to eliminate every threat. So the task falls to our government to allocate what resources we do have in a manner proportional to the magnitude of each threat. If we, as a society, want to effectively counter the dangers we face, we first have to put them in perspective.

Ranked by the number of victims, heart disease comes in as the number one threat. It’s responsible for 700,000 deaths a year. This coronary malady keeps food on the tables of funeral directors nationwide. And, like a perpetual motion machine, this very food fills their arteries with cholesterol leading to even more heart attacks.

On to number two. Cancer kills 550,000 people a year. But ironically, some futurists see it as a potential key to immortality. It removes the limit on the number of times that a cell can replicate itself. Thus, if properly harnessed, this disease could be used to defy aging by allowing eternal tissue regeneration. This would enable Joan Rivers to continue enchanting Americans with her iconic brand of celebrity commentary for generations to come.

Runners up for the best solution to overpopulation include strokes with 160,000 casualties a year, respiratory disease with 120,000 casualties annually, diabetes at 70,000 , pneumonia at 60,000 , Alzheimer’s disease at 50,000 , and vehicular accidents at 40,000.

As previously stated, averaged over the last decade which contained the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history, terrorism still only killed about 300 people a year. Compare this to the 1000 people who are struck by lightning every year. Hopefully, by putting storm clouds on the federal no-fly list we’ll be able to reduce this number in the future. But until then, based on current trends you’re three times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be killed in a terrorist attack.

Sources: Unless otherwise noted, all accidental death information fromNational Safety Council. Disease death information from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lifetime risk is calculated by dividing 2003 population (290,850,005) by the number of deaths, divided by 77.6, the life expectancy of a person born in 2003. *Shark data represents number of attacks worldwide, not deaths.

Now that we’ve compared the risks, let’s examine how the government chooses to allocate our limited resources to combat these threats. To the least likely means of death I’ve mentioned, terrorism, the federal government devotes about $150 billion annually. On the other hand, to combat the most likely cause of death, heart disease, the government contributes only $2 billion. And just $300 million is devoted to research on the third most likely cause of death, strokes.

So looking at it another way, we spend $500 million for every death from terrorism and only $2,000 for every death resulting from strokes. That means we spend 250,000 times more per death on terrorism. I’m sure all of this is very flattering to Osama bin Laden, but this disparity might leave some stroke victims scratching their heads, assuming they’ve retained full motor control of their arms.

Evolutionary psychology may be able to explain this phenomenon. The human brain has been around for 200,000 years.   More than 99% of that evolution has been characterized by starvation and general scarcity of resources typified the environment in which humans evolved.  In this situation, violent acquisition of resources from other groups was often a necessary survival technique. Hence, human brains most hyper-vigilant and aggressive toward human threats (i.e. terrorists) were most likely to survive and propagate these characteristics.

On the other hand, throughout evolutionary history medical science was almost non-existent.  Hence, there would be no survival value added by a tendency to focus on more likely health-related causes of death. We just weren’t designed for these times.

One possible reason is anxiety fatigue. When an individual is subjected to a stimulus for an extended period of time, such as the aroma of a hospital room, the sound of a fan, or the endless nagging of the mother-in-law, their mind eventually just filters it out. Mortality risks such as heart disease and cancer extend farther back in time than even the existence of our current civilization. Our society now more or less accepts these unfortunate facts of life as another cost of doing business.Thus, they’re filtered out of our collective consciousness to some extent. On the other hand, consider the SARS virus scare a few years ago. Despite the absence of a single American fatality, the newness of this airborne illness allowed it to occupy headlines for weeks. Similarly, the Islamic terrorist menace is also a relatively new phenomenon to the US. Maybe threat fatigue for terrorism just hasn’t set in yet.

The economic consequences of terrorism would, at first thought, seem like a justification for the level of concern. There was a huge financial cost associated with the 9/11 attacks. Total related insurance claim payments are estimated at $32.5 billion. However, there’s been no definitive proof that the attacks lead to a significant decline in GDP. In fact, a GDP which had been falling due to recession in the quarter prior to 9/11 actually started growing again in the quarter following 9/11.

It’s conventional wisdom that military spending is good for the economy. However, most macroeconomic models show that, in the long term, military spending diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment. This ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment. So if one thinks they’re protecting our economy by taking trillions of dollars away from other productive uses to fight the so-called global war on terror, they should consider upgrading their abycuss to a calculator.

Another seemingly more justifiable reason for a magnified response to terrorism is the potential for a nuclear attack that could result in a far greater number of casualties than the typical terrorist attacks have to date. According to many experts on nuclear proliferation, the possibly insurmountable technical challenges of building or acquiring a thermo-nuclear weapon are enormous. Including the requirement that the weapon be portable, makes the likelihood of acquisition dramatically more remote. However, there is a real threat that highly enriched uranium could be aquired from a former Soviet state and used to make a crude bomb. This is a serious risk and needs to be addressed by either securing or downgrading the 1000 tons of yellowcake remaining within Russia and her neighbors. The government currently spends about a billion dollars on this effort annually. Compare this to the two billion we spend in Iraq every week and one might assume we have a bonobo setting our national security priorities in exchange for bananas.

Finally, the psychological makeup of our species could also be a contributing factor to this risk amplification. Just look at the plot structure of a work of fiction. The vast majority of conflicts are between a human protagonist and a human antagonist.We seem to maintain an inherent attraction to interpersonal or, on a larger scale, inter-societal conflict. It’s only natural that this affinity translates to our media diet as well. Many studies have shown that the media sets the public policy agenda.So, the point is that interpersonal and societal conflicts like that between Western civilization and Muslim extremists are simply better able to maintain our attention than conflicts between man and complex, abstract medical threats.

In addition, sociologists and psychologists have determined that society amplifies the danger of risks imposed upon them, such as terrorism. Conversely, society finds risks resulting from voluntary behavior, such as car accidents, more acceptable.

Graph Source: http://www.federationofscientists.org

Graph Source: http://calamitiesofnature.com

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The financial sector receives more of the average paycheck than any other sector of the economy.  Its share of the economy totals $2 trillion dollars.

In 1985, the financial sector earned less than 16% of domestic corporate profits.  Today, it’s over 40%.

In the 1960s, finance and insurance accounted for only 4% of GDP, whereas in 2007 finance and insurance accounted for 8% of GDP.

The purpose of the financial services industry is basically to transfer money from savers to entrepreneurs. It primarily consists of using a computer to shift money from one bank account to another. This service requires virtually no physical labor and very few material resources.

Yet, this relatively simple service cost our country more than $2 trillion in 2007. That was more than the country spent on health care, construction, food, utilities or transportation.

The free market system automatically optimizes resource allocation to satisfy society’s wants and needs. The current problems in our financial sector can be seen as our economy’s attempt to reduce the excessive size of the financial sector and redirect those resources to more productive purposes. Yet, the government is doing everything in its power to counteract this process. The feds have taken or committed to take over $12 trillion from the other sectors and given them to financial institution to maintain this imbalance. This works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S.

The financial sector is at a historic high as share of the overall economy.

Graph Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NYUGDPFinancialShare.jpg

Note another year in history when it peaked, 1929.  At that time, many of the country’s resources were shifted to this low-employee, unproductive sector.  It was followed by a decade of unemployment and economic stagnation.  This would suggest that it may be unwise for the government to fuel this bloating if they wish to avoid another lost decade.

This begs the question “Why is government taking money from the paychecks of working people and giving it to AIG and Goldman-Sachs?” They claim that their failure will result in the collapse of our entire economic system.  This would, of course, eventually lead to a dystopian Mad Max scenario. However, the presented choice between government bailout and complete financial collapse is a false dichotomy. In reality, if the government allowed these irresponsible actors to fail, they would enter a bankruptcy process and be sold off to more smaller, more responsible companies.

Correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation. However, the reason the government is so set on using tax dollars to prop up these insolvent companies (as opposed to taking the bankruptcy route) might be related to campaign contributions. For instance, AIG executives gave more than $630,000 during the 2008 political cycle even as the company was falling apart. President Obama collected a total of $130,000 from AIG in 2008, while McCain accepted a total of $59,499. Last year AIG and its subsidiaries spent about $9.7 million on federal lobbying, or about $53,000 for every day Congress was in session in 2008. Additionally, Obama’s top presidential campaign contributor was Goldman-Sachs. McCain’s was Merril-Lynch.

For all the awful investments AIG made, this political investment has produced a 1730000% rate of return.

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The financial sector receives more of the average paycheck than any other sector of the economy.  Its share of the economy totals $2 trillion dollars.

In 1985, the financial sector earned less than 16% of domestic corporate profits.  Today, it’s over 40%.

In the 1960s, finance and insurance accounted for only 4% of GDP, whereas in 2007 finance and insurance accounted for 8% of GDP.

The purpose of the financial services industry is basically to transfer money from savers to entrepreneurs. It primarily consists of using a computer to shift money from one bank account to another. This service requires virtually no physical labor and very few material resources.

Yet, this relatively simple service cost our country more than $2 trillion in 2007. That was more than the country spent on health care, construction, food, utilities or transportation.

The free market system automatically optimizes resource allocation to satisfy society’s wants and needs. The current problems in our financial sector can be seen as our economy’s attempt to reduce the excessive size of the financial sector and redirect those resources to more productive purposes. Yet, the government is doing everything in its power to counteract this process. The feds have taken or committed to take over $12 trillion from the other sectors and given them to financial institution to maintain this imbalance. This works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S.

The financial sector is at a historic high as share of the overall economy.

Graph Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NYUGDPFinancialShare.jpg

Note another year in history when it peaked, 1929.  At that time, many of the country’s resources were shifted to this low-employee, unproductive sector.  It was followed by a decade of unemployment and economic stagnation.  This would suggest that it may be unwise for the government to fuel this bloating if they wish to avoid another lost decade.

This begs the question “Why is government taking money from the paychecks of working people and giving it to AIG and Goldman-Sachs?” They claim that their failure will result in the collapse of our entire economic system.  This would, of course, eventually lead to a dystopian Mad Max scenario. However, the presented choice between government bailout and complete financial collapse is a false dichotomy. In reality, if the government allowed these irresponsible actors to fail, they would enter a bankruptcy process and be sold off to more smaller, more responsible companies.

Correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation. However, the reason the government is so set on using tax dollars to prop up these insolvent companies (as opposed to taking the bankruptcy route) might be related to campaign contributions. For instance, AIG executives gave more than $630,000 during the 2008 political cycle even as the company was falling apart. President Obama collected a total of $130,000 from AIG in 2008, while McCain accepted a total of $59,499. Last year AIG and its subsidiaries spent about $9.7 million on federal lobbying, or about $53,000 for every day Congress was in session in 2008. Additionally, Obama’s top presidential campaign contributor was Goldman-Sachs. McCain’s was Merril-Lynch.

For all the awful investments AIG made, this political investment has produced a 1730000% rate of return.

A world without disease, starvation, violence, and suffering is the ultimate destination of humanity. Getting there will require voters to base their decisions on statistical cost-benefit analyses instead of irrational emotions. The power of numbers can make utopia a reality.

The Others

Your mind has been infiltrated. Your logical and conscious prefrontal cortex is ever thwarted by powerful saboteurs hiding within the dark realm of your subconscious. The usurpers of your decision-making processes are none other than the ignorant reptilian brain stem and emotional limbic system. They torture you with sadness for the slightest defiance. They drug you with narcotic neurochemicals to reward your obedience. This diabolical duo is responsible for all forms of irrational human behavior, such as racism, war, and marriage. Your only defense against these illogical bastards is to base your decisions on cold, hard numbers. For unlike these very flawed and mischievous components of our brains, numbers cannot lie.

You have a total of three brains: the reptilian brain, the paleo-mammalian brain, and the rational brain. In a sense, a human being is what you might get nine months after a romantic evening between a lizard, a dog, and Mr. Spock.

Diagram Source: http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/101269/chapters/A-Walk-Through-the-Brain.aspx

That’s all that crocodiles really do with their tiny, pea-sized brains.  This republican, I mean reptilian brain is “rigid, obsessive, compulsive, ritualistic and paranoid”. It is prone to repetitive, programmed behaviors and is incapable of learning from mistakes.  The reptile brain’s only saving grace is that it is responsible for all core tasks required for self-preservation.

So within our craniums, we have an ongoing battle between the vicious, impulsive lizard, the slobbering dog digging a hole in your couch to china for no reason, and Mr. Spock struggling to determine the fate of our planet. Wouldn’t it be best to leave this job solely to Spock?

So, we’ve got this top of the line neocortex which is perfectly capable of rational thought.  Why then, do we behave so irrationally as a species?  The problem is that the rational neocortex is enslaved by the lower brains.  It is not free to examine all available information in it’s quest to attain objective truth.  Instead, it frequently becomes a kind of a slimy neuro-lawyer defending and rationalizing the preconceived notions of our emotional limbic systems. Let’s break down the processing of new infomation:

The limbic system, this primitive brain that can neither read nor write, provides us with the feeling of what is real, true, and important using its own often irrational and illogical criteria. It therefore poses great danger to all of human civilization.

Many of the hostile commenters on my site have expressed their own theories as to why this is.  However, I feel that the reason for this can be explained by a concept known as “The Caveman Principle”.  This principle states that our brains have generally evolved very little since the time of the caveman.

The human brain has been around for about 200,000 years.  The Stone Age only ended about 6,000 years ago.  So, ninety-nine percent of our ancestors lived in environments characterized by starvation and a general scarcity of resources. Evolution crawls at a snail’s pace, so we still have these caveman brains optimized for an environment millennia away from our own. So our wants, dreams, personalities, and desires have not changed much in 200,000 years.

So, like, what were cavemen into?  Surviving long enough to successfully replicate one’s genes in an unstable environment requires brains with very specific interests.  Hence, the type of brain that survived to reproductive age typically paid a great deal of attention to these questions:

Note these topics of interest, which are suspiciously absent from this list:

An interest in these topics was pretty much worthless to primitive humans struggling to survive in ancient Africa.  This is especially true since math and written language didn’t even exist at the time.  Conventional evolutionary theory states that traits that offer no survival or reproductive advantage will not persist in a species. Hence, these subjects are as fascinating to us as Al Gore recounting a riveting experience of watching paint dry.

Evolution has made these subjects brutally boring to most of us. So that, my non-existent reader, is why you are not reading this sentence, and are instead viewing one of the many fine pornographic websites that the prestigious internet has to offer.

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data, fool.”  – Mr. T

A general disinterest in economics and statistics wouldn’t be a big deal if we lived in a dictatorship.  However, in our political system, government action is to some degree a product of public opinion.  Thomas Jefferson once said, “An informed citizenry is the bulwark of a democracy.”  Based on this quote, I think it’s safe to say that our democracy is currently bulwark-free.  The fact that I don’t know what a bulwark is further proves that we do not have an informed citizenry.

The only way to understand the important details of complex and large-scale societal issues is through the use of statistics and economics. Additionally, formal cost-benefit analysis is the only way to make optimal decisions on these complicated issues.  Unfortunately, most of us don’t even know what a cost-benefit analysis is, let alone have a firm grasp of the statistical and economic data needed to perform such analyses.

Here’s a list of what the average voter (such as myself) doesn’t know:

Without factual data for our neocortices to utilize in doing a cost-benefit comparison of our electoral choices, our stupid brain stems and emotional limbic systems get to choose our candidates.

The US government is the most powerful man-made entity in the history of the world. Allowing an uninformed public control of this colossus is like giving a baby a nuclear bomb. My dream is that one day we might upgrade our democracy to the equivalent of a toddler with a nuclear bomb.

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” — Pee Wee Herman

Elections are won and lost not primarily on “the issues” but on the values and emotions of the electorate, including the “gut feelings” that summarize much of what voters think and feel about a candidate or party.

Ideally, the goal in selecting any candidate is to identify the individual most likely to maximize the overall well-being of the citizenry. If our neocortices were in charge, politicians would be selected solely based on three primary criteria.

Unfortunately, I and most other voters have an informational vacuum between our ears with regard to this data for most candidates. Hence, our neocortices are unable to perform a rational calculation. This leaves the decision up to our stupid brain stems and emotional limbic systems. These portions of our brains can’t follow arguments of any complexity. They stuff themselves with slogans and advertisements. They eschew fact for myth. They operate on biases and stereotypes. They privilege feeling over thinking. The result is a political system of daunting irrationality.

The primary factors which do influence our electoral decisions include:

We’re damn lucky that CEO’s aren’t elected by popular vote.  If the public got to decide who ran Microsoft, I would be typing this sentence on a typewriter.

Utopia, a world without disease, starvation, violence, and suffering, is the ultimate goal and destination of society. The thinking, rational mind has the power to make utopia a reality through innovation.  We’ve had a few hundred thousand years to get there, yet it remains a distant dream. Irrational or uniformed decisions are the primary reason why humanity fails to reach its true potential.

In a democracy and a free enterprise economy, voters and consumers are the deciders. Our prehistoric brains decide to waste society’s resources on wars and short-term gratification through erroneous decision-making. They are a drain on the economy, public welfare, the environment, and national security. Resources are misallocated, good ideas are rejected, and bad ideas are accepted. Money is wasted. Life and health are put in jeopardy.

Irrational beliefs are sand in the gears of the entire economy.  It’s virtually certain that your life will be shorter and less happy as a result of emotion-based decisions.

The only way to break the shackles put on our neocortices by its evil stepsisters is through the use of numbers.  When our rational mind has cold, hard statistics to support its arguments, it’s much more likely to overcome the emotion-based arguments of the primitive brains.  Providing your neocortex with this ammunition is the purpose of this site.  Using numbers we can overthrow this idiocracy and ignite a revolution of reason.  Suffering can be eliminated and utopia can be realized.

It’s quite possible, and maybe probable, that I’m an idiot. I may be wrong about a lot of this stuff.  If so, I would be eternally grateful if you were to straighten me out in the comments section.

Love,

Mike P. Sinn

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It looks like Romney may have inherited Obama’s pocket liners. Take a look at Obama’s 2008 campaign contributors and Romney’s 2012 contributors and a disturbing trend emerges: the financial sector, the very sector that borrowed and is still paying the U.S. back billions in TARP benefits, has scooted over to Romney after having supported Obama four years ago. TARP What is TARP? TARP is the controversial Wall Street bailout program first put into place by President Bush in 2008. The program was made because banks knowingly provided risky subprime mortgages, which borrowers were oftentimes unable to pay back. There was speculation that the entire U.S. financial system was in jeopardy as a result (whether or not this was the case, however, is a matter of debate). In any case, the U.S. government bought into many of the large banks that were struggling at the time, including AIG, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup. Romney has publicly endorsed the TARP program on numerous occasions, and Obama saw it through in his first term. TARP was risky, but in the end most of its participants bought back their assets. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the program will ultimately cost the U.S. $32 billion.     Campaign Contributions Interestingly, many of the companies that benefited from TARP made donations to the Obama campaign in 2008, despite the dire straits of their finances. Now, these banks have flip-flopped to greener pastures for the 2012 election. See the chart below:

GOP Candidate Ron Paul has produced a detailed budget containing over $1 trillion in first-year reductions. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich have only indicated that they would attempt to repeal Obamacare saving an average of $20 billion a year.

The only way that a president can noticeably affect the everyday lives of all Americans is by raising or lowing their standard of living.  This is accomplished through their influence over the real tax rate.  The real tax rate encompasses all normal forms of taxation, but it also includes a hidden tax known as inflation.

All of the Republican candidates have detailed plans for modifying the tax code.  But saying you’re going to cut taxes without cutting spending correspondingly is sneaky. If you cut taxes, but maintain the same level of spending, then you have to either borrow or print the resulting budget shortfall.  Borrowing the money is worse than paying with taxes immediately, not only because we’ll have to pay it back in a future when the government’s fiscal situation is predicted to be far worse than is today, but we’ll also have to pay a bunch of interest on top of that.

The alternative to borrowing is to have the Federal Reserve fire up the printing press.  The FED creates trillions of new dollars out of thin air and give it to the government through the purchase of treasury bonds.  The effect of this is identical to the effect of criminal counterfeiting.  If one doubles the money supply without a corresponding increase in GDP, the long-term result is that everyone’s paycheck can only buy half as much.

So using the magical money machine to pay the bills just shifts the tax burden to an inflation tax.  According to the Consumer Price Index, inflation is only about 3.5%. However, the real rate of inflation is currently almost 10%. The inflation tax, while largely ignored, hurts middle-class and low-income Americans the most.  This is because inflation is flat tax which doesn’t tax the poor at a lower rate the way our progressive income tax system does. In fact, it’s somewhat regressive because the loss in value is delayed.  When the new money is initially created, price inflation hasn’t set in yet.  The first people who get to spend the new money are generally giant financial institutions.  By the time it filters down the average Joe, it’s already lost a lot of it’s value.

So the only way a president can change the real tax rate is by increasing or decreasing government spending.  Therefor, the only thing about a candidate that’s guaranteed to significantly impact your life is not whether they think gay people should have the right to suffer through the institution of marriage. It’s not whether or not their religion’s doctrine includes magic underwear.  It’s not even their tax plan. It is only the candidates’ positions on spending that is guaranteed to directly affect your everyday life by increasing or decreasing your standard of living.

After all, isn’t the level of spending set by the congress?  This is generally true, but the president does have a number of very powerful means of controlling the budget:

We know that President Obama stands shoulder to shoulder with our nation’s drunken sailors on spending, but what about the potential Republican nominees?

Romney wants to repeal Obamacare (which is very similar to Romneycare aside from the fact that Romneycare covered abortions).  As stated before, this would save $20 billion a year.

Other than that, this is the maximum level of specificity from his programmers:

“Mitt Romney will bring fiscal restraint to Washington by placing a hard cap on federal spending to force our government to live within its means and put an end to deficit spending.

Mitt will also curb federal spending by repealing Obamacare, the federal takeover of health care that is scheduled to cost taxpayers one trillion dollars over the next ten years. He will also focus on eliminating wasteful government spending and right-sizing the federal government to save taxpayer dollars. 00010101.”

If we’ve learned anything from the vast disparity between George W. Bush’s fiscal rhetoric and fiscal record, it’s that Romney’s gubernatorial record might be a better indicator of what we could expect from a Romney federal budget. Under Mr. Romney, state spending went from $22.3 billion to $28.1 billion, an annual increase of 6.5 percent.  This is twice as much as the average 2.9% average statewide budget increase.

So, if his record is any indication, we shouldn’t expect too much from a Romney presidency in the way of cutting the federal budget.

Image Source (Below)

From his complete detailed and itemized budget:

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p style=”text-align: justify;”>“The Plan to Restore America cuts $1 trillion in spending during the first year of Ron Paul’s presidency, eliminating five cabinet departments (Energy, HUD, Commerce, Interior, and Education). It abolishes the Transportation Security Administration and returns responsibility for security to private property owners.  It also abolishes corporate subsidies, stops foreign aid, ends foreign wars, and returns most other spending to 2006 levels.

Makes a 10% reduction in the federal workforce, slashes Congressional pay and perks, and curbs excessive federal travel. To stand with the American People, President Paul will take a salary of $39,336, approximately equal to the median personal income of the American worker.”

Image Source (Above)

Paul’s congressional record consists of a long list of votes against federal spending.

Note: I tried to write this objectively, so I seriously put a lot of effort into finding any votes by Ron Paul for significant spending increases.  I hoped to find some to add an appearance of increased credibility to the piece but was  unsuccessful.  If you have any examples, please leave them in comments at the bottom.

Let’s look at how Ron Paul’s plan would affect the individual taxpayer.  He wants to cut $4,000,000,000,000 over his 4-year term. Divide this number by 142,449,000 federal income tax filers and that comes out to an average of $28,080.23 in savings for each taxpayer.  Alternatively, the $4 trillion should be divided by 307,006,550, the total US population. This would produce a 4-year savings of $13,029.04 per person.

(a.k.a. Sorry, There’s Nothing Funny About Newt Gingrich)

Specific Cuts = $20 Billion

Like Cain and Romney, all his cuts would come from the repeal of Obamacare.

Other than that, he’s not too specific.  From his website:

“Balance the budget by growing the economy, controlling spending, implementing money saving reforms, and replacing destructive policies and regulatory agencies with new approaches.”

Gingrich’s fiscal record is mixed. During his time in Congress, he had an exemplary voting record on a lot of the top spending proposals:

Gingrich has also been a vocal opponent of most of the big spending habits pushed by the White House and Congress over the past few years.  He opposed the $787 billion stimulus proposal,  the auto bailout,  and Cash for Clunkers.

On the other hand, in 2003, when he urged “every conservative member of Congress” to support the Medicare drug benefit bill.  He called it the “most important reorganization of our nation’s healthcare system since the original Medicare Bill of 1965.”  The drug benefit now costs taxpayers over $60 billion a year and has almost $16 trillion in unfunded liabilities.

Notably in 2008, he also backed the $700 billion Wall Street bailout.

He’s also attacked those who oppose omnibus spending bills.  These bills roll thousands of programs which may not pass on their own into massive one massive all or nothing bill that is more likely pass. In 1998, he derided a group of House conservatives by calling them the “the perfectionist caucus” for opposing a 4,000-page omnibus spending bill, adding that “those of us who have grown up and matured in this process understand after the last four years that we have to work together on big issues.”

Like all the other candidates, Cain wants to repeal Obamacare which would save $20 billion a year.  But other than that, this is about as detailed as it gets:

“Nothing should be off the table. Every federal agency, every government program and expenditure must be reviewed and revised with a keen eye and a red pen.”

It doesn’t exist.  With no political record, Cain needs to be way more specific for voters to make anything close to an educated decision.

What is known is that Cain supported TARP, the government bailout of the financial industry. He even chastised those who opposed it.

On the other hand, Cain opposed the Democrats’ stimulus, saying, “The Obama-Reid-Pelosi cure for more national economic pain – more spending, more taxes and more socialism! That’s just more pavement for the road to perpetual debt.”

This sounds nice, but without significant specific spending cuts, Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan will actually be a 9-9-9-9 plan.  A 9% corporate tax, a 9% sales tax, a 9% income tax, and a hidden 9% inflation tax.

(a.k.a. The Executioner)

“Consolidating Department of Education funding for all elementary and secondary programs, reducing it by 50 percent, and returning the rest of the money to the states would save $25 billion in the first year. Reducing the portfolio of investments by government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would save $26.5 billion over ten years.”

Like Romney, Perry’s real record is not one of fiscal restraint. Rick Perry came into office in December 2000. Texas general spending has risen from $29 billion that first Perry year to $41 billion by fiscal year 2011, which works out to an average annual increase of 3.5 percent. (Data from NASBO).

For some perspective, let’s look at Perry versus the average spending increases of governors in all 50 states over the last decade.

Here is NASBO data showing increases in state general fund spending between fiscal 2001 and fiscal 2011:

Under Perry, the Texas budget increased 41% from

However, the Texas population has grown faster than the U.S. population, so let’s put these figures on a per-capita basis.

Perry is touting the “Texas Miracle” as a template for the rest of America, which is stuck in a rut of high unemployment and could certainly use some fresh ideas for how to create jobs. Texas has clearly fared better than most other states since the recession began at the end of 2007. Its unemployment rate is 8.2%, a full point lower than the national average. The housing bust in Texas was far milder than it was in other places. A strong energy sector kept state tax revenues from plunging the way they did in other states, which forestalled layoffs in state and local government.  Additionally, the majority of the jobs created in Texas were government jobs.  From the beginning of 2008 to the end of 2010, government employment in Texas increased by 7 percent, whereas it only increased 2 percent over the rest of the country.  Private sector jobs in Texas only grew by 0.6% during this period.

So Perry’s record is perfectly mediocre. Like with Romney, we shouldn’t expect too much in the way of cuts if past is prologue.

So after examining the records and proposals of all the candidates, it appears that Ron Paul is the only candidate who intends to make balancing the federal budget a real priority.   Based on the others’ records and proposals, it appears pretty likely that, under their administrations, we’re going to continue the status quo Washington spending spree.

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GOP Candidate Ron Paul has produced a detailed budget containing over $1 trillion in first-year reductions. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich have only indicated that they would attempt to repeal Obamacare saving an average of $20 billion a year.

The only way that a president can noticeably affect the everyday lives of all Americans is by raising or lowing their standard of living.  This is accomplished through their influence over the real tax rate.  The real tax rate encompasses all normal forms of taxation, but it also includes a hidden tax known as inflation.

All of the Republican candidates have detailed plans for modifying the tax code.  But saying you’re going to cut taxes without cutting spending correspondingly is sneaky. If you cut taxes, but maintain the same level of spending, then you have to either borrow or print the resulting budget shortfall.  Borrowing the money is worse than paying with taxes immediately, not only because we’ll have to pay it back in a future when the government’s fiscal situation is predicted to be far worse than is today, but we’ll also have to pay a bunch of interest on top of that.

The alternative to borrowing is to have the Federal Reserve fire up the printing press.  The FED creates trillions of new dollars out of thin air and give it to the government through the purchase of treasury bonds.  The effect of this is identical to the effect of criminal counterfeiting.  If one doubles the money supply without a corresponding increase in GDP, the long-term result is that everyone’s paycheck can only buy half as much.

So using the magical money machine to pay the bills just shifts the tax burden to an inflation tax.  According to the Consumer Price Index, inflation is only about 3.5%. However, the real rate of inflation is currently almost 10%. The inflation tax, while largely ignored, hurts middle-class and low-income Americans the most.  This is because inflation is flat tax which doesn’t tax the poor at a lower rate the way our progressive income tax system does. In fact, it’s somewhat regressive because the loss in value is delayed.  When the new money is initially created, price inflation hasn’t set in yet.  The first people who get to spend the new money are generally giant financial institutions.  By the time it filters down the average Joe, it’s already lost a lot of it’s value.

So the only way a president can change the real tax rate is by increasing or decreasing government spending.  Therefor, the only thing about a candidate that’s guaranteed to significantly impact your life is not whether they think gay people should have the right to suffer through the institution of marriage. It’s not whether or not their religion’s doctrine includes magic underwear.  It’s not even their tax plan. It is only the candidates’ positions on spending that is guaranteed to directly affect your everyday life by increasing or decreasing your standard of living.

After all, isn’t the level of spending set by the congress?  This is generally true, but the president does have a number of very powerful means of controlling the budget:

We know that President Obama stands shoulder to shoulder with our nation’s drunken sailors on spending, but what about the potential Republican nominees?

Romney wants to repeal Obamacare (which is very similar to Romneycare aside from the fact that Romneycare covered abortions).  As stated before, this would save $20 billion a year.

Other than that, this is the maximum level of specificity from his programmers:

“Mitt Romney will bring fiscal restraint to Washington by placing a hard cap on federal spending to force our government to live within its means and put an end to deficit spending.

Mitt will also curb federal spending by repealing Obamacare, the federal takeover of health care that is scheduled to cost taxpayers one trillion dollars over the next ten years. He will also focus on eliminating wasteful government spending and right-sizing the federal government to save taxpayer dollars. 00010101.”

If we’ve learned anything from the vast disparity between George W. Bush’s fiscal rhetoric and fiscal record, it’s that Romney’s gubernatorial record might be a better indicator of what we could expect from a Romney federal budget. Under Mr. Romney, state spending went from $22.3 billion to $28.1 billion, an annual increase of 6.5 percent.  This is twice as much as the average 2.9% average statewide budget increase.

So, if his record is any indication, we shouldn’t expect too much from a Romney presidency in the way of cutting the federal budget.

Image Source (Below)

From his complete detailed and itemized budget:

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p style=”text-align: justify;”>“The Plan to Restore America cuts $1 trillion in spending during the first year of Ron Paul’s presidency, eliminating five cabinet departments (Energy, HUD, Commerce, Interior, and Education). It abolishes the Transportation Security Administration and returns responsibility for security to private property owners.  It also abolishes corporate subsidies, stops foreign aid, ends foreign wars, and returns most other spending to 2006 levels.

Makes a 10% reduction in the federal workforce, slashes Congressional pay and perks, and curbs excessive federal travel. To stand with the American People, President Paul will take a salary of $39,336, approximately equal to the median personal income of the American worker.”

Image Source (Above)

Paul’s congressional record consists of a long list of votes against federal spending.

Let’s look at how Ron Paul’s plan would affect the individual taxpayer.  He wants to cut $4,000,000,000,000 over his 4-year term. Divide this number by 142,449,000 federal income tax filers and that comes out to an average of $28,080.23 in savings for each taxpayer.  Alternatively, the $4 trillion should be divided by 307,006,550, the total US population. This would produce a 4-year savings of $13,029.04 per person.

(a.k.a. Sorry, There’s Nothing Funny About Newt Gingrich)

Specific Cuts = $20 Billion

Like Cain and Romney, all his cuts would come from the repeal of Obamacare.

Other than that, he’s not too specific.  From his website:

“Balance the budget by growing the economy, controlling spending, implementing money saving reforms, and replacing destructive policies and regulatory agencies with new approaches.”

Gingrich’s fiscal record is mixed. During his time in Congress, he had an exemplary voting record on a lot of the top spending proposals:

Gingrich has also been a vocal opponent of most of the big spending habits pushed by the White House and Congress over the past few years.  He opposed the $787 billion stimulus proposal,  the auto bailout,  and Cash for Clunkers.

On the other hand, in 2003, when he urged “every conservative member of Congress” to support the Medicare drug benefit bill.  He called it the “most important reorganization of our nation’s healthcare system since the original Medicare Bill of 1965.”  The drug benefit now costs taxpayers over $60 billion a year and has almost $16 trillion in unfunded liabilities.

Notably in 2008, he also backed the $700 billion Wall Street bailout.

He’s also attacked those who oppose omnibus spending bills.  These bills roll thousands of programs which may not pass on their own into massive one massive all or nothing bill that is more likely pass. In 1998, he derided a group of House conservatives by calling them the “the perfectionist caucus” for opposing a 4,000-page omnibus spending bill, adding that “those of us who have grown up and matured in this process understand after the last four years that we have to work together on big issues.”

Like all the other candidates, Cain wants to repeal Obamacare which would save $20 billion a year.  But other than that, this is about as detailed as it gets:

“Nothing should be off the table. Every federal agency, every government program and expenditure must be reviewed and revised with a keen eye and a red pen.”

It doesn’t exist.  With no political record, Cain needs to be way more specific for voters to make anything close to an educated decision.

What is known is that Cain supported TARP, the government bailout of the financial industry. He even chastised those who opposed it.

On the other hand, Cain opposed the Democrats’ stimulus, saying, “The Obama-Reid-Pelosi cure for more national economic pain – more spending, more taxes and more socialism! That’s just more pavement for the road to perpetual debt.”

This sounds nice, but without significant specific spending cuts, Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan will actually be a 9-9-9-9 plan.  A 9% corporate tax, a 9% sales tax, a 9% income tax, and a hidden 9% inflation tax.

(a.k.a. The Executioner)

“Consolidating Department of Education funding for all elementary and secondary programs, reducing it by 50 percent, and returning the rest of the money to the states would save $25 billion in the first year. Reducing the portfolio of investments by government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would save $26.5 billion over ten years.”

Like Romney, Perry’s real record is not one of fiscal restraint. Rick Perry came into office in December 2000. Texas general spending has risen from $29 billion that first Perry year to $41 billion by fiscal year 2011, which works out to an average annual increase of 3.5 percent. (Data from NASBO).

For some perspective, let’s look at Perry versus the average spending increases of governors in all 50 states over the last decade.

Here is NASBO data showing increases in state general fund spending between fiscal 2001 and fiscal 2011:

However, the Texas population has grown faster than the U.S. population, so let’s put these figures on a per-capita basis.

Perry is touting the “Texas Miracle” as a template for the rest of America, which is stuck in a rut of high unemployment and could certainly use some fresh ideas for how to create jobs. Texas has clearly fared better than most other states since the recession began at the end of 2007. Its unemployment rate is 8.2%, a full point lower than the national average. The housing bust in Texas was far milder than it was in other places. A strong energy sector kept state tax revenues from plunging the way they did in other states, which forestalled layoffs in state and local government.  Additionally, the majority of the jobs created in Texas were government jobs.  From the beginning of 2008 to the end of 2010, government employment in Texas increased by 7 percent, whereas it only increased 2 percent over the rest of the country.  Private sector jobs in Texas only grew by 0.6% during this period.

So Perry’s record is perfectly mediocre. Like with Romney, we shouldn’t expect too much in the way of cuts if past is prologue.

So after examining the records and proposals of all the candidates, it appears that Ron Paul is the only candidate who intends to make balancing the federal budget a real priority.   Based on the others’ records and proposals, it appears pretty likely that, under their administrations, we’re going to continue the status quo Washington spending spree.

Illustration by The New York Times

Here's a thing humans claim to want: happiness. Here's another thing humans do constantly: argue about who should pay what percentage of their papers to the government.

Turns out these two things are connected. Who knew.

University of Virginia psychologist Shigehiro Oishi and his colleagues did something unusual - they asked 59,634 people in 54 nations if they were happy, then checked what kind of tax system their government used. The results were published in Psychological Science.

The finding: People in countries with progressive taxation (where richer people pay higher rates) reported being happier than people in countries with flat taxation (where everyone pays the same rate).

Not "felt slightly better about abstract concepts of fairness." Actually happier. On a scale of 1 to 10, rating their lives closer to "best possible life." Experiencing more days of smiling and being treated with respect. Fewer days of sadness and shame.

The math here requires third-grade arithmetic, so the decades of debate about this are notable.

The happiness wasn't just people feeling warm and fuzzy about fairness. It came from something concrete: satisfaction with public goods like schools, housing, and public transportation.

Progressive taxes → better public services → people who use those services are happier.

The researchers measured tax progressivity by the gap between the highest and lowest tax rates, accounting for family size and benefits. Then they asked people to rate their life satisfaction and their satisfaction with public services.

Countries with bigger gaps between rich and poor tax rates had happier citizens. The citizens specifically said they were more satisfied with the public goods those taxes funded.

Higher government spending alone didn't make people happier. In fact, there was a slight negative correlation.

"That data is kind of weird," Oishi said, displaying the scientific term for "what the hell."

His guess: Some countries are terrible at converting tax money into actual services. The U.S., for example, spends more on education and healthcare than most developed countries while ranking poorly in both. It's like using a calculator to hammer nails - expensive and ineffective.

If you want happy citizens, tax progressivity appears to matter more than total spending.

Not because progressive taxation is morally superior or ideologically correct. Because it empirically correlates with people reporting that their lives are better.

You can debate economic theory all you want. The people living in these systems have opinions about their own lives, and they shared those opinions with researchers, who counted them.

The U.S. has been reducing tax progressivity for decades. This study suggests that's probably making people less happy, though Americans have many other reasons to be concerned about their choices.

Medical News Today - Progressive Taxation Linked to National Happiness

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From medicalnewstoday.com:

The way some people talk, you’d think that a flat tax system – in which everyone pays at the same rate regardless of income – would make citizens feel better than more progressive taxation, where wealthier people are taxed at higher rates. Indeed, the U.S. has been diminishing progressivity of its tax structure for decades.

But a new study comparing 54 nations found that flattening the tax risks flattening social wellbeing as well. “The more progressive the tax policy is, the happier the citizens are,” says University of Virginia psychologist Shigehiro Oishi, summarizing the findings, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Oishi conducted the study with Ulrich Schimmack of the University of Toronto at Mississauga and Ed Diener, also at University of Illinois and the Gallup Organization.

The researchers analyzed the relationship between tax progressivity and personal well-being in 54 nations surveyed by the Gallup Organization in 2007 – a total of 59,634 respondents. Well-being was expressed in people’s assessments of their overall life quality, from “worst” to “best possible life,” on a scale of 1 to 10; and in whether they enjoyed positive daily experiences (such as smiling, being treated with respect, and eating good food) or suffered negative ones, including sadness, worry, and shame. Finally, the analysis looked at the participants’ satisfaction with their nation’s public goods, from schools to clean air.

The degree of progressivity was measured by the difference between the highest and lowest tax rates, corrected for such confounding factors as family size, social security taxes paid, and tax benefits received by individuals.

The results: On average, residents of the nations with the most progressive taxation evaluated their own lives as closer to “the best possible.” They also reported having more satisfying experiences and fewer discomfiting ones than respondents living in nations with less progressive taxes. That happiness, Oishi says, was “explained by a greater degree of satisfaction with the public goods, such as housing, education, and public transportation.”

Higher government spending per se did not yield greater happiness, in spite of the well-being that was associated with satisfaction with state-funded services. In fact, there was a slight negative correlation between government spending and average happiness.

“That data is kind of weird,” Oishi says. He guesses that the misalignment might indicate national differences in the efficiency with which those services are delivered or in people’s relative ability to access them. For example, the U.S. spends more on education and health care than other developed countries, “but its international standing in those areas is not so great.” Such puzzling findings may be illuminated in further research.

The study, like others Oishi has done looking at connections between economics and personal life, has important social implications. “If the goal of societies is to make citizens happy, tax policy matters,” he says. “Certain policies, like tax progressivity, seem to be more conducive to the happiness of the people.”

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/234017.php

According to Rasmussen Reports, voters have opinions about corporate welfare. Shocking, I know.

In a democracy, what the voters want matters. This is why we ask them what they want, write it down carefully, and then do the opposite.

70% of voters oppose giving foreign countries money to buy weapons from US companies.

15% support it.

15% are still thinking about whether subsidizing weapons sales is a good idea.

To be fair to that 15%, it IS a complex question. Should we pay other countries to buy murder equipment from us? Really makes you think. Ideally for less than 30 seconds, because then you might notice we're doing it anyway.

The government does it anyway.

The US government gives $20 billion per year to farms.

46% of voters think this should stop.

37% think it should continue.

17% haven't decided if paying farmers not to grow food makes sense.

The 17% undecided voters are probably just trying to understand how "paying someone to NOT grow food" works. It's simple: you give them money, and then food doesn't happen. It's like reverse farming, which is apparently something we do now.

The government continues giving farmers $20 billion per year.

The Export-Import Bank gives billions in loans and loan guarantees to Boeing and General Electric. The stated purpose is to "sustain American jobs."

29% of voters support this.

46% oppose it.

25% are undecided about whether Boeing needs help from taxpayers.

The government continues providing these loans.

In each case, voters oppose corporate subsidies by large margins. In each case, the subsidies continue.

This is democracy working exactly as designed. The design just isn't what you were told it was.

It's like ordering a pizza and getting a cinder block. Sure, it's not what you asked for, but the delivery system worked perfectly. The cinder block arrived on time and you still have to pay for it.

Source: Rasmussen Reports

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