Our Country's Debt Crisis - Just the Numbers Mam!

Given that it's a problem, how can we move towards solving the Nation's debt crisis.

 I decided to look at our Nation's government spending and revenues and see how we might reduce spending, boost income and help to get the country out of "hock".

I found these two great graphics in Time this week, which break down spending and revenues to an understandable level.

 There it is, can't be simpler  We're spending $3,800,000,000.00  ($3.8 trillion)
                                     and    We're earning   $2,500,000,000.00  ($2.5 trillion)
                                                                        $1,300,000,000.00 Overbudget !!!

So let's take a small look at each of these individual items and see where we could help to solve the budget.  Based on some of my prior research three items immediately deserve attention;

• Medicare $485,000,000,000 (costs $485 billion/year)
• Defense   $716,000,000,000 (costs $716 billion/year)
• Corporate Income Taxes $237,000,000,000 (earns $237 billion/year)

Defense Spending

$716 billion/year is more than the next 15 countries in the world COMBINED!  Check out the top 9 spenders from this Wikopedia chart below;

Rank	Country	Spending ($ Bn.)[1]	% of GDP	World share (%)	Spending ($ Bn. PPP)[2]
—	World total	1,735	2.5	100	1562.3
1	United States	711.0	4.7	41	711
2	Chinay	143.0	2.0	8.2	228
3	Russiay	71.9	3.9	4.1	93.7
4	United Kingdom	62.7	2.6	3.6	57.5
5	France	62.5	2.3	3.6	50.1
6	Japan	59.3	1.0	3.4	44.7
7	Saudi Arabiaz	48.2	8.7	2.8	58.8
8	India	46.8	2.5	2.7	112
9	Germanyy	46.7	1.3	2.7	40.4

How about we trim defense spending to similar % of GDP number ($360 billion) or just twice as much as China, our latest 'enemy' ($285 billion).

Cool that's;

$716 - $285 = $431,000,000,000 ($431 billion/year SAVED)

Medicare Spending

The government's $485 billions dollars spending is a small! percentage of the total healthcare spending in the country, over $2.5 trillion/year (17% of GDP). Using another great chart from Wikopedia shows that we spend far more for healthcare that is considered worse than many other countries in the world.
Acknowledging that the rating of best healthcare is admittedly subjective, France has the world's best healthcare (#1 at $3,978 year) and our rating (#37 at $7,900/year) is below Cuba's at (#36 at $280/year).

Rank	Country	Total health expenditure per capita PPP US$	Total health expenditure % of GDP
1	United States	7,960	17.4
2	Norway	5,352	9.6
3	Switzerland	5,144	11.4
4	Netherlands	4,914	12.0
5	Luxembourg	4,808	7.8
6	Canada	4,363	11.4
7	Denmark	4,348	11.5
8	Austria	4,289	11.0
9	Germany	4,218	11.6
10	France	3,978	11.8

How about we just trim our healthcare costs to what most western "1st world's nations" spend or about 12% instead of 17%.
2010 Healthcare costs (17%)  = $  2,500,000,000,000 ($2.5 trillion)
                              2010 GDP = $14,447,100,000,000 ($14.45 Trillion)
                                    X 12% = $  1,733,000,000,000 ($1.73 trillion)
                                      SAVES $     817,000,000,000 ($817 billion/year)
I'm not quite sure how much of this is medicare healthcare cost reduction, but it's over twice the total medicare budget so that has to mean something.  How about we just take the 12% vs 17% (or 30%) percentage reduction of costs.

Cool that's another;

$485 billion X 30% = $145,000,000,000 ($145 billion/year SAVED)

Corporate Income Taxes

There's a couple things about corporate income tax that stand out to me.  First off corporate taxes are no where near the top taxable rate of 35% that you always hear of.  They are more closely xx% mostly because of deductions & other loopholes.  Secondly I believe that our rates are a historic lows and also quite low by world standards.  Let's check it out, check it out with another Wikopedia reference;

So this was a harder graphic to find, but let's use it.


If approximate US corporate taxes PER GDP is currently 2.0%. Why not raise it to 3.0% where it existed in the 60s & 70s.  That would be;

Cool that'd be another;

      $14.5 trillion X 3% - $237 billion = $200,000,000,000 ($200 billion/year EARNED)

So in conclusion for today, that's;

• Medicare $145,000,000,000 (saves $145 billion/year)
• Defense   $431,000,000,000 (saves $431 billion/year)
• Corporate Income Taxes $200,000,000,000 (earns $200 billion/year)

There we just removed  $696,000,000,000 ($776 Billion or 60%) of the deficit! Ka Ching

More on this later.

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Distance between 2 points

The following functions define the distance between 2 points in CG views and in geographic space.

First a simple C function for CGPoints;

float distanceBetweenPoints(CGPoint a, CGPoint b) {
    float deltaX = a.x - b.x;
    float deltaY = a.y - b.y;
    return sqrtf( (deltaX * deltaX) + (deltaY * deltaY) );
}

In a geographic space it's more difficult because although latitude distances are constant (approx 1 nautical mile = 1 minute of latitude) longitude distances vary as the longitude lines converge towards the poles.  This website:

 http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong.html

provides all of the simple math required to find actual distance using latitude & longitude on Earth.  (distances of under 10 - 20 miles can generally use the simple equation above)