$$$, Taxes, and the Deficit

[alohamonkey]

Interesting income tax facts and a passage from Bill Bryson to put things in perspective. 

From www.investopedia.com:

Q: During the 2006 fiscal year (October 2005 to September 2006), approximately how much taxes (net of refunds) did the Internal Revenue Service collect?

a) $421 billion
 
b) $876 billion
 
c) $1.4 trillion
 
d) 2.2 trillion
 
The correct answer is: d) $2.2 trillion

According to the 2006 edition of the Internal Revenue Service Data Book, the IRS collected more than $2.2 trillion worth of taxes (net of refunds), 44% of which came from individual income taxes. Furthermore, $243 billion was refunded during the same period.


[L]et's just try to grasp the concept of $1 trillion. Imagine that you were in a vault filled with dollar bills and that you were told you could keep each one you initialed. Say, too, for the sake of argument that you could initial one dollar bill per second and that you worked straight through without ever stopping. How long do you think it would take to count a trillion dollars? Go on, humor me and take a guess. Twelve weeks? Two years? Five?

If you initialed one dollar every second, you would make $1,000 every seventeen minutes. After 12 days of nonstop effort you would acquire your first $1 million. Thus, it would take you 120 days to accumulate $10 million and 1,200 days—something over three years—to reach $100 million. After 31.7 years you would become a billionaire, and after almost a thousand years you would be as wealthy as Bill Gates. But not until 31,709.8 years would you count your trillionth dollar.

—Bill Bryson, I'm A Stranger Here Myself: Notes On Returning To American After Twenty Years Away (1999), p.52

U.S. debt is somewhere around $8.8 trillion . . . I believe. 

http://www.federalbudget.com/

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

[JohninRI]

Let me add a little something to that

Suppose for a moment that in 1913, right after the Fed was born,  the United States of America borrowed one dollar, $1,  from the Federal Reserve Bank and just for ease and clarity sake,  suppose that the interest rate was 10% per annum and has always remained such.  After 10 years,  we would owe to the Reserve Bank for that original dollar still in circulation about $2.30;   after 20 years, about $6.00;   after 40 years, about $40.00;   after 60 years, about $250.00;   but after 80 years, we would owe the Federal Reserve Bank about $1,200.00 and we would still only have that one dollar, ($1), in circulation.  The Federal reserve Act is almost 100 years old and look at our Country's National Debt.

They don't even talk in terms of paying down the debt, only in paying  the interest.

This is something I wrote in 1995 on the IRS, the 14th Amendment and what to do about it.

http://templecon.org/TTW/ttw.html

John