Economics For Mobster Dummies, Part 1: Magnitude

[Stephen Atkinson]

Lets say I am standing here in southern New Jersey, facing southwest, and there are people standing beside me in a straight line all the way to Dallas, Texas. That would be approximately 2,500,500 people. Gee, that's the same number of people who have lost their jobs since Obama took office in January of this year. On the ground, in front of this long line of work disabled, let us place dollar bills, lengthwise, and all going to the same point in Dallas, Texas. I calculate that to be over 1,000,000 dollars. based on the length of the bill, and the willingness of the people so assembled, to not pick them up and keep them for their own.

Two and a half million people. and one million dollars. Good! We have now set an important reference point for what follows:

Were we to exagerate the number of bills in terms of the national debt Obama has imposed upon us, things begin to get more interesting, for after all, a million dollars is chump change these days. So, if we take the 1,200,000,000,000 figure (which is a conservative estimate of looming national debt) and recalculate the worth of the green paper lying on the ground between New Jersey and Dallas, it gets pretty cumbersome. Rather than place all these many bills atop the originals lying on the ground before the line of unfortunates, let us simply put them into the hands of the people, for safe keeping. Can you imagine over a trillion dollar bills being swooped up by a gust of air? Would there be an unaccounted for eclipse of the sun?

How many bills would we have to give each person to accomplish what we try to do here?

Try 1,200,000 dollar bills! The sheer magnitude of that is almost incomprehensible, isn't it? Understandably, each person could not possibly hold that many bills so easily, so, let's do what the government does, and give them each an IOU for 1,200,000 dollars. Doubtless, these poor souls would never get the chance nor the opportunity, to collect on the IOU, would they? Nor their children or grandchildren, either.

Hey! That's only for starters, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves here. There is the not so small matter of escalating current year fiscal spending to add, and how about the sizeable debt service payments yet to be paid to the lenders? More IOU's. Pass the aspirin please.

I'll call this "Obamanomics" for the time being, unless someone comes up with a better explanation of the phenomenon, that is.

Have you ever stood silently and at attention on a parade ground at some US military installation iunder the formerly pre-global warming hot August sun, for what seemed like houirs on end? I have, and I am concerned about those poor people lined up from Jersey to Dallas. As my seven year ol;d grandson exclaimed today," Help. I need a medic!" He had fallen off a swing, and it was only a scratch, but needed attending to none the less. He is also an X-Box junkie, so he knows of what he speaks. But, those people who have fallen in the line of duty while clutching their government IOU's, what shall happen to them? Will they get proper and timely medical attention? That which was once taken for granted, is not now so easily assured them, is it?

We could go on and on, but you get the drift, I am sure. Then again, this is only Part 1 of "Economics For Mobster Dummies", there will be more object lessons to follow, as each new day dawns in America, Obama's Amerika, that is.

"Sic Semper Tyrannis!" (Thus Always To Tyrants!)