When people hear billion and trillion, their brain does not comprehend well. I like to translate things to human terms. To understand how reasonable the USA is, you must reduce it to the size of a community you could imagine living in. A community of 1000. If the USA was shrunk down to 1000 people, the land would only be 12 square miles (half of manhattan island), with 3 square miles owned by the government.
Imagine a community of 1000 people. Here is the age distribution:
138 age 0-10
134 age 10-20
141 age 20-30
130 age 30-40
152 age 40-50
135 age 50-60
93 age 60-70
53 age 70-80
34 age 80+
Here is the political and economic situation:
Only 2 people are elected officials. The vice ruler handles all city, school, and municipal laws, and the most powerful ruler decides all laws down the the county level and commands a 4 man military that is backed by a 2 million dollar per year budget. Under the NDAA, the head ruler has the right to secretly abduct or assassinate any of the 1000 citizens without trial or process.
Together they employ a total of 68 community members into government jobs, almost half of which are in education. 2 of these government employees have top secret clearance and the permission to spy on any computer they choose. These 2 elected rulers are responsible for 71 government employees, 311 million dollars of unfunded liabilities, 17 million dollars of yearly tax income, and 21 million dollars of yearly expenses. Within the borders exists 380 million dollars of assets, 100 million of which is government owned.
Only 2 people have the power to arrest citizens but they spend 825 thousand dollars per year doing so. 7 people are currently in prison because of them. They make 35 arrests per year, 5 of which for contraband medicine. 15 grand was spent last year trying to increase the size of their world record size prison.
Every law passed by the ruler is decided exclusively by the desires of the richest 100 people despite public elections and despite only 30 thousand dollars spent yearly on lobbying.
(
This is literal: how much the poorest 900 desire a law has statistically zero effect on if that law is passed. This is not surprising when 1 man having a 52 million net wealth owns 20% of all wealth. This man and the other 99 richest collectively own 75% of all wealth in the community. Half of these 100 richest live within 80 feet of where the ruler sleeps in DC.
In 2009, a depression happened that was threatening the welfare of the common family. To save the poor with "trickle down economics", the ruler confiscated via inflation an average of 100 thousand dollars from every citizen, forming a total of 100 million dollars. The ruler used it to bail out the most powerful bank, which happens to be owned by the richest man, a banking and tech CEO.
37 people are unemployed. 250 have a negative net worth. 470 are incapable of handling an unexpected 400 dollar expense even with the option of using a credit card. The banking CEO collects 34 thousand dollars a year in overdraft and atm fees, largely from these people. How easy is it to save these people? If the bank bailout would have been directed to these 470 people instead of the bank, they would have each received a $20,000 bailout every year for a decade. Even more depressing is that enough money (3 million) is spent every year on welfare for the poor, that if that money was used instead to cut direct checks, it could set a universal basic income nation wide of $22,000 per year.
20 acres of farms are worked by 8 people, 4 of them undocumented immigrants. These 8 people provide 85% of the food for the community and the rest is imported. 10 people are in the industry of offering this food to the community.
282 thousand dollars are spent every year maintaining 174 miles of road.
60 people, 3 of which are doctors, work in the medical industry and collect 9 million dollars from the community every year. As a result 400 people have medical debt, and every year 5 people declare bankruptcy due to this debt.
The 12 people that work in the higher education industry, of which 5 are professors, collectively charge the community 1.9 million dollars every year to provide their college services. A total 124 people are collectively 3.7 million dollars in debt to these 12 people and risk going to debtors prison if they fail to pay.
The number do not look healthy to me.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1qjm44/if_the_us_were_to_cut_all_welfare_programs_for/
https://consumerist.com/2016/02/25/banks-turned-account-overdraft-fees-into-11-16b-in-revenue-last-year/
http://www.census.gov/population/age/data/2010comp.html
http://www.answers.com/Q/How_many_miles_of_paved_roads_are_there_in_the_US
https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-the-U-S-government-spend-annually-on-roads-and-police
http://www.numberof.net/number-of-government-employees-in-the-us-2/
https://www.quora.com/How-many-professors-are-there-in-the-United-States
http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/291-federal-lands-in-the-us
http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/10/pf/college/student-loans/
http://college.usatoday.com/2015/04/08/national-student-loan-debt-reaches-a-bonkers-1-2-trillion/
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/09/26/number-college-faculty-and-staff-members-flattens
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/02/01/consumers-still-struggling-with-medical-debt/22587749/
https://nrf.com/advocacy/retails-impact
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-us-military-spends-its-billions-2015-8
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Crime#sthash.zWYpftrc.dpbs
http://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2016.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_StatesWikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_the_United_States
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/21955000-12329000-government-employees-outnumber-manufacturing
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/3/29/1372225/-Just-how-many-elected-officials-are-there-in-the-United-States-The-answer-is-mind-blowing
http://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-net-worth-hits-high-of-84-9-trillion-1434038401
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/13/us-wealth-inequality-top-01-worth-as-much-as-the-bottom-90
https://www.foodsafety.gov/news/fsma.html
https://saf-unite.org/content/united-states-farmworker-factsheet
Well done! A revealing perspective.
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Excellent.
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very informative
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