Posted on 04/30/2012 7:23:34 AM PDT by Eyes Unclouded
You're breathing a sigh of relief because you've filed your taxes for 2011. But what if your taxes reflected the true cost of the federal government's annual expenditures? How much more would you have to pay?
To find out how much that true cost might be, go to Debt Bomb, a new 99-cent app launched last week for your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. You key in your age, your income, your expected income over the next few years, and the software will give you your household's average tax bill to cover Uncle Sam's annual spending.
Then, through the app, you can email or tweet President Obama and your congressional representatives and tell them to cut spending, raise taxes, or some combination. To show them you are serious, you could tell them which programs to cut, whether agriculture, unemployment benefits, high-speed rail, mass transit, energy loan guarantees, or others.
Debt Bomb is the brainchild of 25-year old Kyle Smith, who's getting his MS in engineering at the University of Texas.
Working with some friends, he figured out a way to tell his contemporaries, and others who buy apps, how much the government's spending spree would cost if the government were to live within its means, just as do households and states.
Alternatively, the app can calculate taxes based on a target of holding the budget deficit to no more than 2 percent of GDP. Kyle wants the users of the iGadgets to see the consequences of the government's largesse.
Kyle and his buddies are members of Generation O, the young people who contributed, registered, volunteered and voted for Barack Obama with greater intensity than we have seen since at least the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy.
Ironically, the effect of President Obama's failed economic policies has fallen most heavily on them. Their unemployment rates and student loan debt loads have risen in tandem-along with federal debt, and the taxes that will be required to foot the bill for the failed stimulus.
...
That may explain why Generation O has a fear of downward mobility, that they will not do as well as their parents.
Some young male graduates have been particularly adversely affected, with unemployment rates of 9.8 percent, compared to 8.3 percent for women. Five years before male graduates had an unemployment rate of 5.5 percent, and the rate for females was 4.5 percent. Male-dominated industries such as manufacturing have fared worse than female-dominated service industries, such as education and health services, which generated new jobs every month of the recession and the sputtering recovery.
As if lack of a job isn't bad enough, large increases in college tuition in recent decades mean that Generation O is climbing the career ladder with substantial debt. Students who graduated in 2011 left school with almost $23,000, on average, of student loans, the most ever, according to Howard Dvorkin, founder of Consolidated Credit Counseling in Fort Lauderdale. For graduates of some private colleges, law schools, and medical schools, debt to be repaid was even higher.
America has seen four years of deficits exceeding $1 trillion. In one neat app, Debt Bomb shows how Generation O will bear the brunt of this spending spree.
Let’s see if they’re smart enough to understand:
“Its the Collectivism, stupid”.
OK. This needs to stop now. We need to not acknowledge any article or person that uses “Generation O”.
I just can’t handle seeing that reference the rest of my life. We have to remove it from our collective psyche before it takes hold.
I could live with “GenZero.”
And no, many of the young will still vote for the Incompetent dog-eater. My niece among them. (sigh)
I like that, since it is perfect in it's simplicity.
I am to the point where I don't even acknowledge the democrats in my family anymore, let alone give them money or gifts.
Actually, the official designator is already in the books: Generation Y.
They're the people born after the last of the X'ers .... from 1981 or 1982 (better) onward, until 2001. Those born after the World Trade Center fell, are "Generation Z".
I forget which generation is the one also called "Millennials".
Yes....but there’s a group of Obama voters who are trying to get “Generation O” into the mainstream lexicon.
Google “Generation O, Obama” and you’ll see what I mean.
Obama's apparatus doing a little psych marketing, eh?
Good. It'll be a mark of infamy for anyone who adopts it. Sort of like "the Benedict Arnold Generation" or "the Tokyo Rose Generation".
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