US Annual Deficit Exceeds the Net Worth of America’s Wealthy

USA (SANEPR.com) January 19, 2009 -- Forbes magazine publishes an annual list showing the net worth of wealthiest people in the world. We all know what net worth is. It is the value of what you have after you have subtracted what you owe on it. If all you own is a car that is worth $10,000 and you owe $5,000 on it, then your net worth is $5,000. No debate, no confusion, no blame. With some simple changes, the Forbes list can give us the net worth of the wealthiest people in America.

Now, let us clear up the confusion about the US annual budget, annual deficit, and national debt. The annual budget is the amount of money the President thinks is needed to run the country. The annual deficit is the amount of money that the federal government spends over the budgeted amount. The national debt is the total amount of debt we have incurred over the years. Put another way, the total of all the annual deficits (not including interest). It is something like that credit card balance that never gets paid off.

From here it is a simple matter to put the two numbers together. Ready? The 2007 federal budget was $1,798 billion (don’t worry about the extra zeros, it makes the math more simple). In 2007 the net worth of US billionaires was $1,358.50 billion. You can check the math but $1,798 - $1,358.50 = $439.50 billion.

What this means is that the Federal government spends more money every year than the wealthiest people in the country have to spend. If we took everything “the rich” owned we could not run this country for one year. The Federal government does this every year.

Here is another scary fact. The Federal government only collects about $1,023.7 billion in income tax a year. So the annual deficit is a smoke screen, because the Federal Government does not even collect enough money to cover the annual budget. The real annual deficit is almost twice the net worth of the wealthiest people in America. This is happening every year.

That is why politicians all talk about taxing “the rich” and end up taxing hard-working, middleclass Americans. There are not enough rich people to pay for the money the Federal government spends.

What can you do? They all have websites, email addresses and telephone numbers.

Just say no.