As we enter 2012, the presidential candidates would do well to wrap their minds and messages around these seven mathematical facts:
- Every day, the U.S. government takes in $6 billion and spends $10 billion. This means that every day the federal government spends $4 billion more dollars than it has.
- The real unemployment rate is a jaw-dropping 11 percent.
- Every fifth man you pass on your way to work is now out of work.
- College graduates are now 34% less likely to find a job under Obama than they were under President George W. Bush.
- Every seventh person you pass on the sidewalk now relies on food stamps.
- The ravages of the Obama economy now mean that more Americans live under the federal poverty line than at any time in U.S. history since records have been kept.
- Under President Barack Obama, every fifth child in America now lives in poverty.
These are not partisan jabs, manufactured statistics, or ideological swipes. These are mathematical facts. And the presidential candidate who can most clearly and credibly articulate them—and their concomitant solutions—is bound to win.
Why? Because these facts point toward the solutions America must implement to avert the kinds of economic and social upheaval seen in Europe and elsewhere.
Start with mathematical fact number one—deficit spending. No person, family, business, or nation can spend more than it takes in and remain sustainable; it defies the simple laws of math and reason. And yet even as Washington hemorrhages $4 billion more than it has each day, citizens have watched as the farce that is “Super Committee” has proven it cannot even shave $1.2 trillion from America’s $15 trillion debt.
The time for carping over the appropriate size of government is over. The laws of math have settled the argument: either we return to limited government or we face economic collapse. Those are the choices. Period. As Robert Samuelson noted yesterday, “We are shifting from ‘give away politics’ to ‘take away politics.’”
Mathematical facts two and three—11% real unemployment and 20% male unemployment rate—focus the nation on the priorities of spurring economic growth, eliminating Obamacare, and adapting to the realities of the digital economy. Why aren’t employers hiring? As a September 2011 report by UBS explained, “arguably the biggest impediment to hiring (particularly hiring of less skilled workers) is healthcare reform.” And lest one forget, Obamacare hasn’t even gone into full effect and won’t until 2014. Even still, under Mr. Obama, the average family’s health insurance premiums have risen $2,393."...Please read more from:
