Posted on 04/21/2009 7:00:59 AM PDT by AmericanHunter
So President Obama has given his Cabinet members just 90 days to come up with, er, $100 million in spending cuts. Just how statistically insignificant is this amount? Cue Harvard economist and former George W. Bush economic adviser Greg Mankiw: To put those numbers in perspective, imagine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had to be cut? By $3 over the course of the year--approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put that on the family credit card and worry about it next year.
Senior Editor Jacob Sullum wrote about Obama's "savings" via higher taxes last month, and about Mankiw's Bush-era "gaffes" in 2004. Contributing Editor Veronique de Rugy demonstrated in February how Obama's "New Era of Responsibility" and transparency was anything but, and I am still waiting for Obama's serially promised "net spending cut."
Even if they had gone after a reduction of $1B, it would be a spit in the ocean.....................
Obama will now be able to say that his administration is feeling the pain, too.
Insidious evil is what I’d call it.
Unpaid realty taxes skyrocket to $332 million in Tampa Bay area
By David DeCamp, Times Staff Writer, In Print: Monday, April 20, 2009
What’s $100 million anyway, in terms of federal spending - 10-15 seconds?
100 million divided by 4 trillion (est. added to deficit) = .000025 or 1 over 40,000. That is, only 1 dollar saved out of 40,000 dollars spent.
I like it!
Doctor: "Sir, your 6000 calorie-a-day diet is extremely unhealthy for you. Therefore I recommend you forego that after-dinner peppermint once a week."
Better illustration:
A family with $3400 monthly spending decides to tight its belt by cutting spending by a penny each month.
With a $3.6T budget, $100M is 14.6 minutes of spending. Less than 15 minutes out of an entire 24/7/365 year.
...by cutting spending by a penny each month.
I think that would be a dime each month.
So for every $1000 I spend per month I should cut my budget by 3 cents.
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