Jack Talks Jacks: lets talk about the budget and other assorted things on this fine sunday

so this a picture from real time with bill maher. its a plate of fried chick, mashed potatoes and gravy, mac and cheese and on the other side (which you can't see) is a sprig of parsley and mini carrots. now the mac and cheese represents defense spending, the fried chick is medicare/medicaid, and the mashed potatoes and gravy belong to social security.

so to put it in perspective:

nearly 700 billion for the 2010 budget went to the defense department. all the others received what was left, that means that green side of the chart represents medicaid/medicare, social security, education, transportation, commerce, agriculture, interior department, and all the other departments under the executive branch. now think about this for a minute, the vast majority of the government's tax revenue comes from income tax, and social security and retirement receipts, then corporate tax, then excise tax, and then lastly other taxes (aka sin tax on alcohol and tobacco gas tax all that good stuff). but to that remember when obama caved into the right wings extension of bush era tax cuts? yeah well heres what that tax income bracket looks like:

above is the tax bracket for people in 2010 if filing on a single status, here is what the this tax bracket looked like in bushes first year immediately after clinton left office final year in office before bush came in:

the first bracket is what the bush era tax cuts created, two new brackets, with the largest breaks going to the top half of the bracket. now the below image is of what this bracket looked like from 1955 to 2007:

did you catch the trend? look whose taxes have steadily gone down, and whose have steadily risen, gone down, then risen again. so do you think its fair that your paying just about the same taxes as bill gates, warren buffett, and all the other wildly rich? didn't think so. so let me explain something. in 1955 when that tax rate on the top percent of wage earners was high, america saw its greatest expansion of hospitals, schools, the creation of the interstate highway system, and numerous other benefits from this higher tax on the rich. and over that time since their taxes have decreased so has tax revenue for the government, the roads have deteriorated (have you driven on an interstate recently?) our schools are falling apart, and the national debt is ballooning to un-fathomable rates. not to mention we have given thousands of tax loop holes, tax breaks, and writeoffs of major corporations (GE, Exxon Mobile, Shell, Walmart, etc.) and we have seen the revenue of taxes from these corporations dwindle to nothing. and you may say "dylon thats bull, of course they pay something right?" well i hate to rain on your ignorant parade, but last year General Electric (who owns NBC, makes more wind turbines than anyone else in the world, and is the largest corporation in America) paid ZERO, yes read that again ZERO as in 0, nadda, zip, zilch in taxes, and recorded how much profit? 13 BILLION in profit thats how much they recorded. sound fair to you? didn't think so. but ya know what the argument here is by the right wing? if we give them these tax breaks these good wholesome corporations will watch after us and invest in the economy, and foster economic growth by creating jobs. i call it the table scrap theory, they call it trickle down or "reaganomics." the way i see their economic plan is that all the big dogs are gonna eat at the table and whatever MIGHT fall on the floor the rest of us are going to pick up. its called voodoo economics folks and it don't work and it's all bullshit and its bad for ya. so the governments massive tax breaks for the rich and corporate america have caused it to abandon responsible tax revenue, therefore generating nothing but a few million bucks for the federal budget. isn't that nice? so back to our picture of the fried chicken:

the social security is vastly important to our older citizens, it provides them with that comfort of knowing that they can spend their "golden years" relaxing, golfing, and shooting the shit at the shuffleboard court with other old people. the medicare and medicaid allows our poor citizens and disabled citizens and our older citizens to receive health care benefits that they so need. but the defense budget? what does that go to? well heres a few images of what that money is going to:

is that money worth those images? i personally don't think it is. i will let you decide if it is on your own.

there is only a few ways we can balance this budget without bringing the nation to the brink of complete destruction: taxing the wealthy, taxing corporate america, and slashing the defense budget and ending our wars overseas and ending our imperialist nature around the world (aka closing Guantanamo bay, pulling troops out of germany, korea, japan, italy and so many other nations that we haven't even been at war with for over 50 years). its all bullshit folks and it's bad for ya.

so now im going to move onto china with just a few words for all you people freaked out over china. all i hear these days is people yammering about how china is going to take us over, and call in our debt, and cause our economy to collapse, and how world war 3 will be fought between america and china and all this other bullshit. folks let me let you in on a secret, china can't survive without the american consumer. who buys more of china's shit than anybody else including the Chinese? The american consumer of course. so while our government owes china billions of dollars, and lets just say china calls in that debt, our economy collapses and we enter the worst depression ever, even worse than the great depression, and for a few months china benefits vastly and then the markets open in shanghai, and they plummet to record lows because guess what? no americans are buying their shit. its a standoff folks. american and chinese interest are so intertwined now that one can not possibly live without the other. so the next time you see some stupid white kid in a lakers jersey and nike high tops, you thank them for allowing america to keep chinas balls in their hands. so shut up about china taking over the world, just because gdp rises and will eventually surpass ours, does not mean china is going to take over the world, destroy america, and force everybody everywhere to eat moo moo kitty kitty for dinner every night. shut up. its all bullshit and its bad for ya. and just to put it in perspective here is where the american consumers money is going