Beyond our absurd deficit, what is more scary in this story of tax revenues falling 34% from one year ago, is that amount of money is only $138 Billion dollars. That is 34% drop off, which implies last years IRS total revenues were $405 Billion.
Think about $1 trillion. Multiple that by 12 and then see what 34% of our tax revenues in a year is. Last year's tax revenues were $405 billion. That means to just pay off $1 trillion dollars, no interest, just the principle, would have taken 2.5 years and this is before the 34% drop in tax collections. Yet the government committed to $12 trillion total in financial bail out commitments.
Oh yes, the reason IRS revenues have dropped is once again, Americans are broke and we need jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. So here is yet another factor where everything depends upon employing the U.S. labor force.
...and no, you can't blame that guy pissing in the IRS elevator for this either. You can blame all of those who got us into this mess and you can also blame the stimulus for refusing to tie the money directly to employing U.S. citizens as fast as possible.
Beat me to it
I had missed this earlier post, but there's another side of this that was brought up on a survivalist blog I belong to, that should worry everybody.
This means, in effect, the Obama administration has 3 choices:
1. Abandon stimulus- not affordable any more
2. Print more funny money to borrow from the FED- hyperinflation.
3. Raise taxes and create a windfalls profit tax.
You know #3 won't happen. You know #1 can't happen unless they're ready to abandon the nation completely. Which leaves #2. And if the conspiracy theorists are right, a Wag-the-dog artificial national disaster to distract people while they do it would be in order.
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Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.
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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.