Someone actually sat down and figured out thatif you stacked $1 million in newlyminted $100 dollar bills, it would make a pile roughly three feet high.
Now if you stacked $1 trillion in hundred dollar bills itwould stretch more than six miles.
Now multiply that more than three and you have PresidentObama's proposed 2011 budget, which, contains more than $2 trillion in highertaxes over the next 10 years (or 12-plus miles of $100 bills).
To put the budget in perspective, it's about $700 billionmore than the one submitted by his predecessor George W. Bush and double thefinal budget submitted under Bill Clinton.
According to reports, those increases would extrapolateto roughly $17,000 per household over the next decade (for those who care,that's $6,000 more than I made on my first job) and would do little to createjobs or stimulate the economy.
Why?
Let me preface this by saying that I'm convinced that thegovernment is highly skilled at creating jobs - government jobs. It simply cannotcreate wealth like the private sector can.
Even when it has a virtual monopoly on an industry. i.e.,the U.S. Post Office, it manages to post a $9 billion loss.
In addition, the current Cabinet has suspect experiencewith operating or even understanding private sector business. Not too long ago,one of the national business magazines ran a feature on the past Cabinetsdating back to Harry Truman and ranked them in order of their private sectorexperience.
The Carter administration finished next to last. Wouldyou care to take a guess at whose Cabinet ranked last?
If you've never made a payroll, how can you possibly layout a semblance of a strategy to help stimulate the private sector?
Yet the 2011 budget proposal levies higher taxes onbusinesses, upper-income earners as well as an increase in the "deathtax."
For an administration that has repeatedly stated that itstop priority is job creation, it seems to be doing everything counter to that.
For example, the budget allows the 2001 and 2003 Bush taxcuts to expire for families making over $250,000 a year and raise their top twomarginal tax rates from 33 and 35 percent to 36 and 39.6 percent, respectively.The president also proposed raising the tax rates on dividends and capitalgains from 15 percent to 20 percent for taxpayers with incomes over $250,000 ayear.
To me at least with a modicum of understanding ofeconomics, that would lead to slower job and wage growth as well as decreaseinvestment.
The budget also increases taxes on energy companies byeliminating several tax credits currently available.
Somehow I have a feeling that the energy companies wouldsimply pass these costs on to consumers and the higher taxes would simplyincrease the cost of operating a business. I'm not exactly sure how this wouldresult in job creation either.
The budget still has to wend its way though Congress, butI have a feeling that in lieu of economic stimulus and job creation, we'regoing to be stacking quite a few more $100 bills.
