On my other blogs, I generally don’t venture much into politics. Since I’m basically Libertarian, I find myself at odds with both of the major parties in the US. But here, I can post stuff that doesn’t fit elsewhere.

I’m a fan of Doug Casey, and a regular subscriber to his newsletter. Today’s issue contained the following rather interesting study in economics (near the end of a rather long newsletter):

Lesson #1

• US Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
• Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
• New debt: $1,650,000,000,000
• National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
• Recent budget cuts: $38,500,000,000

Let’s now remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:

* Annual family income: $21,700
* Money the family spent: $38,200
* New debt on the credit card: $16,500
* Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
* Total budget cuts so far: $385

Note that I corrected the last figure. David Galland (the guy who writes most of the newsletter issues for Doug Casey Research) slipped a decimal point.

There was a Lesson #2 in the same issue of the newsletter, which I think was just as poignant, but you need to go there to see it. The whole issue is worth reading, but it’s definitely not for the attention-span-challenged.