Drove my chevy to the levy but the levy was dry

The IRS reports the following statistics for FY 2003:

• 130,728,360 individual tax returns were filed, grossing $987 billion
• 5,890,821 corporate income tax returns were filed, grossing $194 billion
• 2.8 million people reported an income of greater than $200k.

So let's do some simple math!

Tax brackets aside, we're going to compute how much of a per-capita tax increase there will have to be to balance the budget. Let's see. 2003's average tax per capita was $6,691.86. We figured out last time that next year's budget deficit would be $1,770 per capita. That means that the budget deficit is 26.4% of what you paid, per capita, last year. You would have to pay 26.4% more, per capita, JUST TO BALANCE THE BUDGET. Certainly we can't decrease military spending. Apparently Canada needs your military support, and anyway, I'm going to need that military might in a bit when I give you my solution.

Let's look at it another way, still not accounting for tax brackets. (Because if we did, the people in the middle would pay more than the people at either end, and if you're reading my journal it's likely that you're somewhere in the middle so your share would be more than the number I'm going to quote you.) Let's take the number of individual tax returns filed and figure out how much per return that works out to be. $987 billion divided by 130,728,360 gives me a very nicely almost-round number of $7550 per individual return. Now let's balance the budget by dividing next year's deficit by that number of returns. $527 billion (which, by the way, is a deficit that is 53.4% of 2003's individual tax revenue) divided by 130,728,360 returns is $4,031 per return over what the 2003 average is. A 53.4% increase JUST TO BALANCE THE BUDGET.

Remember, if we don't cut spending by eliminating the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development completely (which would effectively balance the budget), this increase will have to stay year over year, though it might get smaller as smaller budget cuts are made.

Great. So now you've experienced a 53.4% tax increase just to balance the budget. Let's also eliminate the debt. Let's amortize the federal debt over 30 years, because nobody expects us to pay it down right away. (One good thing is that the amount of interest you're paying will drop as the debt is paid down.)

The federal debt as of right now is $8.1 trillion. That works out to be $62,037 per individual return in 2003. We're going to spread that out evenly over 30 years, so each year you're going to pay an additional $2,067.90 to pay down your share of the debt. Too much? Let's do it over 50 years, though many of us won't live that long. I can save you some money over the space of the year, though: it's only $1,240.74 per return to pay down the debt in 50 years.

Now what I've done by stepping in for the government is basic fiscal responsibility and common sense: I'm spending less than I'm making, and I'm eliminating my debt. In order to do that, I have to either cut spending or I have to increase income. Those are the only two options. There are no other options.

By dividing things evenly ("flat tax") to make math simple, I've increased your tax returns by $6,098.90 per return per year if we pay down the debt over 30 years, or $5,271.74 per return per year if we take 50 years to eliminate the debt. The 30 year number means that you see a tax increase of 80% over what you paid last year. Amortizing the debt payment over 50 years gives us a much more tolerable increase of 70% over what the average return was last year.

But wait! Let's take the Canajun approach and pay the debt at a rate of only $4 billion a year, keeping your tax breaks where you like them, and costing you only an additional $30 per year per return. At that rate it would take over 2,000 years to eliminate the debt. Or we can correct for the difference in population, assuming that the US (with a population 10 times that of Canada) can pay down debt 10 times faster than Canada can. At that rate you could eliminate the debt in only 200 years! 200 years ago the US had been governing itself for only 15 years.

I'm all about the helpfulness, so I propose these alternate solutions to your problem:

1. Invade UAE, Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran. (Check, check, check, check, check, pending.) Take over their oil production and distribution. Between them, they produce about 50 million barrels of oil a day. At its current rate of around $42/barrel of light crude, that's going to gross $2.1 billion a day. Great news! I've eliminated your deficit and given myself $239.5 billion a year to pay down your debt! All it's cost is thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of lives from those other stupid countries that don't deserve to live anyway. Even better, if production stays steady (i.e., nobody's blowing up oil wells or refineries or kidnapping your truck drivers or anything, and the oil supplies don't dry up), I can eliminate the US debt in less than 34 years! (Now, I'm not allowing for any increase in US military spending to do this, but I'm feeling magnanimous as I write this. Feel the love.)

2. Beat up kids in kindergarten and take their lunch money.

HTH!