Simplifying the Tax Code is Long Overdue, but the GOP Tax Plan is a Travesty

The GOP — allegedly the party of fiscal responsibility — has proposed a tax cut that they claim will cost $1.5 trillion. However, a preliminary debt calculation by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office concludes that the plan would add $1.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.

That $200 billion difference is critical since it exceeds the limit Republicans agreed to for their reconciliation bill. They must restrain the cost of the bill to $1.5 trillion in order to retain the special “reconciliation” status of their tax proposal in the Senate, which would allow them to pass it with only 51 votes instead of 60. That means they could pass the massive deficit increase without a single Democrat’s vote.

This has set the stage for all manner of machinations, manipulation and massaging to get the bill below that threshold. You could call it smoke and mirrors or sleight of hand. In other words, don’t believe the $1.5 trillion figure for a minute.

The Republicans have railed against the deficit and the debt for decades but, as customary, when a fellow Republican occupies the White House, they have selective amnesia.

The GOP claims to loathe deficit spending — though the GOP-controlled Congress approves deficit spending each year, right along with the Dems — yet they have no issue with deficit-inducing tax cuts. Ultimately, they have the same result; spending takes money from the Treasury at the back end, while tax cuts take money at the front end.

We’ve got plenty of recent experience with the onerous cost of tax cuts and just how much they weigh on the deficit and debt.

The non-partisan Congressional Research Service estimated the 10-year revenue loss from extending the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts beyond 2010 at $2.9 trillion, with an additional $606 billion in debt service costs (interest), for a combined total of $3.5 trillion.

A commensurate $3.5 trillion in deficit spending would result in a lot of howling by the GOP, but the same impact to the deficit from tax cuts is met with cheering and applause. It’s dubious, if not delusional.

This enthusiasm for exploding the deficit comes at a time when the national debt stands at $20.5 trillion and rising. The fiscal 2017 budget deficit was $666 billion and the fiscal 2018 deficit is $440 billion (that’s before the tax cut), meaning that our “leadership” in Washington has added more than $1 trillion to the debt in just the past two years.

Meanwhile, bipartisan pressure for additional money for defense, infrastructure and other domestic demands could add nearly $100 billion in additional spending next year alone.

The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that deficits will total $10.1 trillion over the next decade.

No less a conservative authority than Forbes has called the Republican party a “deficit fraud.”

To that point, there are other estimates that the GOP tax cut plan will cost a whole lot more than advertised.

The plan outlined by the White House and Republican leaders in the House and Senate could cost more than $2 trillion over the next decade, according to a preliminary estimate by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan advocacy group.

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump insisted that he could eliminate the national debt in eight years. That would be laughable if the danger of our ever-expanding wasn’t so frightening.

This whole tax cut plan is being sold on the premise that it will spur economic growth. We’ve heard those rosy projections many times in the past and they haven’t panned put. This time will be no different.

George W. Bush and his fellow Republicans pledged that tax cuts would spur economic growth and ultimately pay for themselves. It’s an old canard that goes back to at least the Reagan Administration. So, what happened in the aftermath of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts?

Let’s take a look at economic growth by year, since 2001 (source: World Bank):

2001: 1.0%
2002: 1.8%
2003: 2.8%
2004: 3.8%
2005: 3.3%
2006: 2.7%
2007: 1.8%
2008: -0.3%
2009: -2.8%
2010: 2.5%
2011: 1.6%
2012: 2.2%
2013: 1.7%
2014: 2.4%
2015: 2.6%
2016: 1.6%

If only we could cut taxes and release the animal spirits of the economy! Just take the shackles off!

The above GDP numbers should be viewed through the following lens: Historically, from 1947 through 2016, the annual GDP growth rate in the US averaged 3.23 percent. Yet there have been just two years since 2001 in which economic growth reached even 3 percent. Furthermore, over the past 16 years, economic growth has averaged a paltry 1.79 percent.

Are you feeling conned yet? The whole notion that tax cuts spur economic growth — much less “tremendous” economic growth, as Trump would say — is pure snake oil.

Voters seem to have caught on to this ruse. Overall, the GOP tax plan is not popular with Americans. Even Republican voters worry about what this tax cut will do to the deficit, according to recent polling.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released this month found that just 25 percent of Americans think President Trump’s tax plan is a good idea.

A subsequent Quinnipiac University survey had the same result: just 25 percent of voters approve of the Republican tax plan.

We all dislike paying taxes and we’d all like to pay less. But this tax plan will only accelerate our insolvency — the moment of reckoning where we have to accept that the government can’t pay for the promises it has made. Then we will have to suffer the dual pain and indignity of less government services and much higher taxes.

For nearly five decades, our government has consistently spent more than it has taken in. Since 1970, the Federal Government has run deficits in all but four years (1998–2001). Without a doubt, Washington has a spending problem.

That’s why creating an even deeper revenue problem amounts to madness.

The idea of simplifying the tax code and eliminating the dizzying array of deductions, exemptions and credits would be a great start and one that is long overdue. There are a whole host of special interests that have inserted their pet deductions or exemptions into the code and they will fight like hell to maintain the status quo.

Businesses aside, no individual taxpayer should have to spend numerous hours and hundreds to thousands of dollars just to pay Uncle Sam — it amounts to rubbing salt in a wound.

Additionally, the tax code should not be used to reward or punish tax payers or to incentivize or dis-incentivize certain behaviors/activities. If you have kids or buy a house, for example, the rest of society that doesn’t have either of them shouldn’t be subsidizing your decisions. The government shouldn’t be favoring certain groups or activities above others, nor should it be penalizing childless people or apartment dwellers.

The one thing that Republicans pushing tax reform have right is that all deductions, exemptions and credits should be permanently eliminated — all of them. Poor people should helped out by paying a lower rate. That’s why the tax code has been progressive, with multiple tiers, for many decades and it’s why it needs to remain so.

A flat tax would be punitive to the poor. Here’s why: According to the Social Security Administration, 50 percent of wage earners make less than $30,000 annually, and a lot of them come from single-income households.

Taking 20 percent, for example, from someone who makes just $30,000 a year is much more painful than taking that same percentage from someone who makes $1 million, or even $500,000 annually. Though the dollar amount is higher for latter group, their lifestyle isn’t altered by a 20 percent income tax.

Whether the tax code should have three, four or five brackets is up for debate, but I won’t argue for one of them here. Suffice to say that the progressive tax code must remain… without ANY exemptions, deductions or credits.

Once Congress does that, it will simultaneously wipe out most lobbying and lobbyists.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Some Perspective on the Rise in Median Household Income

The Census Bureau reported this week that median household income rose to $59,039 in 2016, a 3.2 percent increase from the previous year and the second consecutive year of healthy gains.

To be clear, household income is the amount of income earned by an entire household, whether it’s a single occupant, a couple, or roommates.

Let's explore the term 'median', which denotes the midpoint. The median is the "middle" value in a list of numbers.

When it comes to median income, this means that half of earners have incomes above that amount, and half have incomes below that amount.

The fact that median household income rose last year is obviously good news, but before we pop the champagne, let’s have a little perspective.

Middle-class households are only now seeing their income eclipse 1999 levels. The Census Bureau reports that in 1999, median household income, adjusted for inflation, was $58,655.

Yes, it took us 17 years just to get back to where we started. Are we really supposed to celebrate that?

According to the Social Security Administration, 50 percent of wage earners make less than $30,000 annually, 61.5 percent make less than $40,000 and 70.5 percent make less than $50,000.

Again, 50 percent of all wage earners make less than $30,000 per year, and a lot of them come from single-income households.

The proportion of Americans who live alone rose to 27 percent in 2013, according to the latest Current Population Survey from the Census Bureau; that’s more than one-in-four people. Obviously, these are single-income households and a lot of them are surely earning less than the median.

As of 2012, 60 percent of married couples with kids had dual income households. Among the households with just one income earner; the father was the sole earner in 31 percent and the mother was the sole earner in 6 percent.

The average American household consisted of 2.53 people in 2016.

So, the median household income is generally a byproduct of two earners. That suddenly makes $59,000 seem a lot less impressive.

The incomes of the richest households are much further apart from those at the median than those at the median are from the bottom households. In other words, the difference between the households at the top and those in the middle is much more vast than the difference from those in the middle to those at the bottom.

Consider how different the earnings are among those above and below the median income.

According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the top 1 percent had an adjusted gross income of $465,626 or higher for the 2014 tax year.

Clearly, the top 1 percent are not all billionaires.

Remember, a significant majority of earners take home less than $40,000 per year. Thirty-seven percent of earners take home less than $20,000. However, the lifestyles of those two groups aren’t as radically different from each other as they are from those who make at least $465,000 a year.

Roughly 534,000 Americans made more than a million dollars in 2013, according to the latest IRS data available.

The mega wealthy — a fraction the top 1 percent — now earn an average of $1.3 million a year. That’s more than three times as much as the 1980s, when the super rich "only" made $428,000, on average, according to economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.

The top fifth of earners are taking home more than half of all overall income, a record.

The top 1 percent take home more than 20 percent of all income.

However, the bottom 50 percent collect about 12 percent percent of national income.

This is why the savings rate was just 3.5 percent in July. People simply don’t have enough left-over income to save. Most Americans are spending everything they make just to get by and are using credit cards to make up the difference, even for basics like groceries and gas.

Credit-card debt in the U.S. recently surpassed the peak set just before the 2008 financial crisis. Outstanding revolving credit, which includes credit-card debt, rose to $1.02 trillion in June, according to a monthly report from the Federal Reserve.

Low incomes and slow income growth are having some rather glaring effects, especially on younger Americans.

Last year, the Pew Research Center reported that 32.1 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds lived at their parents’ homes in 2014, exceeding the 31.6 percent of young adults who were married or living with a partner in their own household.

Yes, one third of young adults — people up to the age of 34 — are still living with their parents. Yet, the findings were even worse the following year.

Almost 40% of young Americans were living with their parents, siblings or other relatives in 2015, the largest percentage since 1940, according to an analysis of census data by real estate tracker Trulia.

It should be noted that 1940 was the end of the Great Depression, so the current state of affairs is quite troubling.

This huge percentage of adult children living with their parents has added at least one additional working adult to millions of households. Assuming the adult child lives with both parents and is working, it results in at least three income earners in millions of households.

Once again, that $59,000 median doesn’t seem so impressive.

Yes, it’s nice that median household income went up last year, but we’re still only back to 1999 levels and it’s clear that the masses are still struggling.

Remember, the bottom 50 percent collect just 12 percent percent of national income.

That’s important to consider, if you’re celebrating the rise in median household income.

Labor Day: a Reminder of How Far We've Come and How Far We Still Have to Go

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a celebration of the American worker. As you might expect, this day of tribute was created by the labor movement. Since labor has always had less capital than management, its strength is always in its numbers.

The day is an acknowledgement of the American workers who built this nation, and continue to do so, while advancing it economically and socially.

Though municipal ordinances were passed in 1885 and 1886, the first state to officially recognize Labor Day by law was Oregon, on February 21, 1887. Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York all followed suit later that year, and by 1894 a total of 28 states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers.

Finally, on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the U.S.

Labor unions, such as the American Federation of Labor, the Brotherhood of Carpenters, the American Railway Union and the International Association of Machinists were instrumental in fighting for betters working standards, as well as promoting a holiday to celebrate the working man (and later, working women).

Fighting for better labor standards, such as the eight-hour work day, the five-day work week and the minimum wage, etcetera, have raised the living standards of all workers and led to higher economic and political principles for all.

While Labor Day also symbolizes the unofficial end of summer and is celebrated with beach parties, backyard barbecues and retail-sales events, no American worker should ever lose sight of the true meaning of Labor Day, or the sacrifices that the labor movement made over the past century to improve work and living standards.

In the late 1800s, the average American worked 12-hour days and seven-day weeks to simply get by. Children as young as five or six worked in mills, factories and mines across the country, earning a fraction of their adult counterparts’ wages. Conditions for all workers were poor and often terribly unsafe. Many employees lacked access to clean air, toilet/wash facilities and work breaks.

There were examples of workers living in company-owned buildings, in company-owned towns, where the workers’ only option was to spend their hard-earned money in company-owned stores.

These circumstances drove workers to organize and strike for better conditions, hours and pay. At times, these strikes turned violent and dozens of workers died in protest. Chicago was the scene of the infamous Haymarket Riot of 1886 and the bloody Pullman strike in 1894, the latter of which resulted in federal troops being deployed to crush the rioting workers.

These violent, brutal events led President Grover Cleveland to sign the Labor Day holiday into law just days later.

The incidents also led to common labor statutes that are now accepted as standard, such as child labor laws, mandatory breaks, paid overtime, vacation time and even paid holidays.

The unfair, unsafe, often inhumane labor practices of the 19th Century ultimately resulted in United States labor law, whose basic aim is to remedy the "inequality of bargaining power" between employees and employers.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 requires a federal minimum wage and discourages unhealthy working weeks over 40 hours through time-and-a-half overtime pay. The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 requires that employees have a safe system of work.

The Clayton Act of 1914 guarantees all people the right to organize and the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 gave the right for most employees to organize over unfair labor practices without punishment.

None of these things would have resulted if not for the struggles and organization of American workers. We owe better pay, better hours, paid overtime and safe workplaces to the workers who fought for these things.

There is still a long way to go in order for most workers to be fairly compensated for their labors.

The federal minimum wage has remained at $7.25 an hour since 2009. Adjusted for inflation, it peaked in 1968 at $8.68 (in 2016 dollars), according to the Pew Research Center.

Contrary to popular belief, minimum wage workers are not all, or even mostly, teens. Less than half (45 percent) of the 2.6 million hourly workers who were at or below the federal minimum in 2015 were ages 16 to 24.

If a minimum wage worker puts in 40 hours per week and works 52 weeks a year (no vacation time), his/her annual earnings would be $15,080. The federal poverty guideline in 2017 for a family of two (one working parent, with one child) is $16,240. In other words, that minimum wage worker is below the federal poverty line.

This isn’t theoretical; it's real life for millions of Americans. According to U.S. Census Bureau, there were 23 million single-parent families in 2016 and the vast majority were headed by single mothers. Today, 1 in 4 children under the age of 18 are being raised without a father and almost half (40 percent) live below the poverty line.

It’s not just minimum wage workers who are a struggling. A reasoned argument can be made that most American workers are underpaid, which is a major factor in our troubling income inequality problem.

Sadly, America ranks among the worst in the world in this category. Of the 35 developed countries in the Organization for Economic Development (OECD), only three have worse income inequality than the US (Turkey, Mexico and Costa Rica).

Today the top 1 percent take home more than 20 percent of all U.S. income. Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent earn barely 12 percent of income.

According to the Social Security Administration, in 2015:

- 50 percent of wage earners made less than $30,000
- 61.5 percent of wage earners made less than $40,000
- 70.5 percent of wage earners made less than $50,000

Unionized workers are rarely minimum wage workers. Many are skilled laborers who rightfully earn more. The problem is that there are relatively few union workers left in America today.

The share of American workers who actually belong to a labor union has been falling for decades and is at its lowest level since the Great Depression, according to the Pew Research Center.

As of 2013, only 11.3 percent of wage and salary workers belonged to unions, down from 20.1 percent in 1983, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

At their peak in 1954, 34.8 percent of all U.S. wage and salary workers belonged to unions, according to the Congressional Research Service.

In many ways, American workers have come a long way over the past century, but they clearly have much further to go.

However, the labor movement's past achievements are worth remembering and celebrating on this, and every, Labor Day.

Humanity Vastly Overdrawing Its Ecological Bank Account

August 2nd was a rather auspicious day this year. That’s because what is known as Earth Overshoot Day (EOD) fell on the second day of August — the earliest it has ever arrived.

What is Earth Overshoot Day, you may be asking?

It is the date on which humanity’s resource consumption for the year exceeds earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources that year. The problem with EOD arriving on August 2nd is that there are still five months left in the year. From this point forward, humanity is stealing from its own future.

In a normal, healthy world, humanity would not use up all its available resources until Dec. 31. In fact, until the past few decades, humanity didn’t even come close to depleting all of the earth’s renewable resources on an annual basis. In 1963, humanity used just 78 percent of the earth's biocapacity.

Yet, Earth Overshoot Day has been arriving earlier than the previous year on a rather steady basis since the early 1970s. Look at where it fell at the start of recent decades:

1971 - December 21
1980 - November 4
1990 - December 7
2000 - November 1
2010 - August 21

Notice the trend? The arrival of EOD has really accelerated over the past two decades. As recently as 1975, EOD fell in December. The last time it fell in November was 1985. At the current pace, it will arrive in July in 2019.

Aside from representing the day when the human population overshoots its environment, economically speaking, EOD also represents the day on which humanity begins its ecological deficit spending.

This earth contains finite resources, some of which are renewable if given adequate time to replenish. Therein lies the problem; humanity is using these resources far faster than they can be restored annually.

Obviously, this has limits, which are recognizable in the form of shrinking forests, topsoil erosion, species loss, fisheries collapse, diminishing fresh-water supplies and higher commodity prices.

Earth Overshoot Day is calculated by Global Footprint Network, which calls itself, “An international think tank that coordinates research, develops methodological standards and provides decision-makers with a menu of tools to help the human economy operate within Earth’s ecological limits."

According to Global Footprint Network’s calculations, our demand for renewable ecological resources and the services they provide is now equivalent to that of more than 1.5 earths. The data shows us on track to require the resources of two planets well before mid-2000-century.

As you may know, there are no additional earths from which to extract precious resources. That poses some rather obvious problems, the kind that don’t have easy answers.

The obvious solution is to change our behavior, but humanity has never been very good at that. However, reality doesn’t negotiate. It’s terms are firm and irreconcilable.

Environmental groups, such as Global Footprint Network and the World Wildlife Foundation, recommend some fairly simple remedies, such as eating more vegetarian meals and cutting food waste. Yet, those are tough sells in America, where people believe in “American exceptionalism” and don't like being told what to do.

Big problems usually don’t have easy solutions. The above suggestions are fairly straight forward and achievable. However, getting big industries to stop deforestation and overfishing, for example, will be much more challenging.

The earth needs more trees, not less. Without a massive tree-planting campaign, the forces of climate change will evolve more quickly and be more devastating.

Every single minute, an area of forest the size of fifty soccer fields is cut down. Some 129 million hectares of forest — an area almost equivalent in size to South Africa — have been lost since 1990, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Overfishing has left vulnerable the millions upon millions of people around the world who are dependent on the sea for food and income. Nearly 90 percent of global fish stocks are either fully fished or overfished, based on an analysis from the UN’s FAO.

Ocean species are not the only animals vanishing from the earth at a dangerously rapid pace.

A report from World Wildlife Fund found that more than half the globe's vertebrates — mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish — were wiped out in a mere four-decade span. Specifically, these populations declined by 58 percent between 1970 and 2012.

The world’s topsoil, which is vital to growing crops, is in a perilous state; about a third of it is already degraded and the decline is projected to continue. Generating three centimeters of top soil takes 1,000 years, and if current rates of degradation continue all of the world’s top soil could be gone within 60 years, according to a senior UN official.

The global population is presently 7.5 billion. The United Nations predicts it will increase to 10 billion by 2050.

This means, by that time, the world’s farmers, ranchers, and fishers must find a way to produce more food than they have in all of human history. That will prove daunting since farmland is decreasing instead of increasing.

In 1960, there were 1.1 acres of arable farmland per capita globally, according to data from the UN. By 2000 that had fallen to 0.6 acre. Clearly, productive farm land and the human population are moving in the opposite directions.

Fresh water scarcity afflicts much of the world. Only about half of the world’s population has a connection to a piped-water supply in the home, whereas 30 percent rely on wells or local village pipes, and about 20 percent have no access at all to clean water.

Though 71 percent of the earth’s surface is covered by water, only 3% of all the water is freshwater, meaning it is safe for drinking. However, most of this is unavailable for human use. Roughly three-quarters of all freshwater is part of the frozen, and largely uninhabited, ice caps and glaciers. What remains for our use is about 1 percent of the total.

While a concerted, global effort is needed to stop and ultimately reverse the exhaustion of the earth’s resources, much of the developed world remains woefully unaware of the crises that are currently unfolding.

People who live in places where massive deforestation has occurred and continues, such as the Amazon, are well aware the emergency. People in fishing communities around the world come face to face with empty nets on a daily basis. The half of the global population without a piped water supply in their homes likely views clean, drinking water as the vital, precious resource that it is, while the other half likely takes it for granted.

Governments around the world need to act unilaterally, and quickly, to solve these problems or the entire planet will be facing multiple, crushing resource shortages all at once, just a few decades from now.

For much of the world, these issues are already at full-blown crisis levels right at this very moment.

Americans are Again Taking on Huge Debts, Which Didn't End Well Last Time

U.S. housing inventory hit a record low this year and the trend in tightness shows no sign of abating.

The inventory of homes for sale was down more than 11 percent in June, year over year, according to Zillow, with steeper drops in big markets like San Francisco (minus 26 percent), Minneapolis-St. Paul (down 30 percent), Washington, D.C. (down 20 percent) and Seattle (minus 24 percent).

Remarkably, housing inventory experienced a year-over-year decline for the 104th consecutive month, dating back to October 2008, according to RE/MAX.

Homebuilders haven’t picked up the slack by constructing more homes. Though housing starts have increased dramatically from the crash-era bottom, they’re still below average. In short, building hasn’t caught up with demand yet, which has kept supply painfully low.

“There are about as many homes for sale now as there were in 1994, except there are about 63 million more people in this country now than there were then,” reports Svenja Gudell, chief economist at Zillow.

That has driven home prices to record highs. The June 2017 Median Sales Price of $245,000 was the highest in the history of the RE/MAX National Housing report.

Unless supply rises quickly and dramatically, or unless demand suddenly falls due to lack of affordability, expect the housing crunch to continue.

Though median household income rose to $56,516 in 2015 (the latest data available), according to the U.S. Census Bureau, it remains 1.6 percent lower than in 2000, when it hit $57,790, and 2.4 percent below the 1999 peak at $57,909.

However, homes were much less expensive back then. The median U.S. home value was $119,600 in 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Because homes are far less affordable today, relative to incomes, it will lead to more defaults and foreclosures in the next, inevitable, recession.

This isn’t the only evidence that Americans are living beyond their means.

Credit-card debt in the U.S. rose again in June, surpassing the peak set just before the 2008 financial crisis.

Outstanding revolving credit, which includes credit-card debt, rose to $1.02 trillion in June, according to a monthly report from the Federal Reserve.

This has consequences; defaults are once again on the rise. The New York Federal Reserve observed a 7.5 percent rise in the share of credit-card balances that were seriously delinquent, or at least 90 days past due, in the first quarter.

Mortgage debt ($14.4 trillion), credit card debt ($1 trillion), student loan debt ($1.4 trillion) and auto debt ($1.2 trillion) have all piled up to record levels. Consequently, U.S. household debt surpassed its pre-crisis peak in the first quarter. Total household debt increased to $12.73 trillion, surpassing the previous record level seen in 2008.

If you’re looking for a ray of light in this story, it might be that household income is now higher than in 2008. However, it still remains lower than in 1999 and 2000. That’s not good news.

Another positive view: in the fourth quarter of 2007, when many of us realized that the wheels were coming off the wagon, Americans were devoting 13 percent of their disposable personal income to household debt service. By the first quarter of 2017, that percentage was 10 percent.

Maybe that means that everything ok and Americans have it all under control.

But there’s no escaping the fact that wages have been very sluggish, rising just 2.5 percent over the past year. Wages typically grow by 3.5 percent to 4 percent when the unemployment rate is this low

However, inflation has also been sluggish, remaining below the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target for five years. In fact, the Consumer Price Index rose just 1.7 percent, year-over-year, in July.

So, though wages have remained weak, inflation has remained even weaker.

Yet, the CPI is misleading. Things such as college tuition, prescription drugs and home prices are all far above the overall inflation rate. For example:

* Tuition at four-year public colleges has risen 225 percent over the past 20 years, according to College Board data. Student loan debt has now risen to $1.4 trillion.

* From about mid-2015 to mid-2016, prescription drug costs jumped by nearly 10 percent. Furthermore, according to an AARP study, the price for an AARP-selected basket of widely used prescription drugs rose from $4,140 in 2005 to $11,341 in 2013, an average annual increase of 13.4 percent and a total jump of 174 percent.

* The median U.S. home value rose 96 percent from 2000 - 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, meaning it roughly doubled over 17 years. That’s an average annual increase of 4.1 percent, well above the inflation rate.

Though consumers may have seen modest increases for consumer goods, such as clothing and footwear, the bulk of our money is spent on much more expensive items, such as housing, tuition, prescription drugs, health insurance and healthcare. None of those things have undergone modest price increases.

The heavily inflated costs of these components are creating enormous and unhealthy debt levels. Record-high debts should be seen as a canary in the coal mine.

The last time debt levels were this high, it didn’t end well. In fact, we’re still grappling with the aftermath a decade later.

Stock Market Mania Will End in Tears

In the first quarter, real GDP increased 1.2 percent, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Yet, that weak performance didn’t stop all the major US stock indexes from closing at or near record highs.

Though the economy strengthened in the second quarter, expanding at a 2.6 percent clip, it was still tepid by historical standards. However, the Dow Jones has just experienced a streak of nine record closes. Over the course of 2017, the Dow has posted 35 record finishes.

Records have become commonplace for the Dow in recent years. In fact, the Dow has reached a new high, on average, once every seven days since fully recovering from the Great Recession in March 2013. In all, the Dow has achieved a new record 154 times in that span.

The S&P 500 also rose to a new record this week. The index has advanced nearly 11 percent so far in 2017. The NASDAQ and Russell 2000 indexes also closed at record highs this summer.

So far this year, the US economy has expanded just 1.9 percent, yet the stock markets are going nuts. It’s all come on the heels of a weak 1.6 percent expansion for all of 2016.

With that in mind, ask yourself this: Why are all of the stock markets at, or near, all-time highs?

This is the definition of “irrational exuberance,” as former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan once described it.

The stock market is supposed to be forward looking. Yet, that sort of wisdom has become a thing of the past. Federal Reserve officials now expect GDP to remain around 2 percent through 2019. The markets are somehow unconcerned with this projection.

While most members of the 30-stock Dow make a big chunk of their money overseas, they are a pittance compared to the thousands of U.S. companies who do not.

The truth is, the stock market is not an accurate measure of the health and strength of the economy. The markets are simply a bet on the future performances of a select group of companies listed on a few stock exchanges.

Most American companies aren't even publicly traded. In fact, less than 1 percent of the 27 million businesses in the U.S. are publicly traded on the major exchanges.

Additionally, the number of public companies in the U.S. decreased by nearly 50 percent from 1996 to 2014, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

So, in reality, Wall St. is not a true reflection of how the average American worker, or the average family, is faring. In fact, nearly half of us don't own any stocks at all.

According to Gallup, 52 percent of U.S. adults owned stock in 2016. Since Gallup started measuring this in 1998, that's only the second time ownership has been this low. These figures include ownership of an individual stock, a stock mutual fund or a self-directed 401(k) or IRA.

Furthermore, the gains from this surging stock market have been flowing mainly to richer Americans. Roughly 80 percent of stocks are held by the richest 10 percent of households.

Clearly, the ballooning stock market is not a reflection of the financial well-being of the vast majority of Americans. Half of them aren't even investors. The markets are simply Wall Street’s betting games.

The reason for the markets' meteoric rise has been the Federal Reserve’s vast financial engineering.

During the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed cut its key interest rate to zero. After determining that this radical move wasn’t sufficient, it took the dramatic step of initiating quantitative easing, or QE.

Following three successive rounds of these Treasury and mortgage bond purchases with magically conjured money, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet ballooned to $4.5 trillion. That amounted to a fourfold increase from late 2008 to late 2014. Much of that freshly-created money flooded into the stock markets. The money had to go somewhere.

Most people can’t live with, or on, the measly interest rates from savings accounts or certificates of deposit, which seem downright antiquated at this point.

Treasuries offer little help. Check out these yields (as of today):

1-year: 1.22 percent
2-year: 1.36 percent
5-year: 1.83 percent
10-year: 2.28 percent
30-year: 2.86 percent

Remember that the S&P has advanced nearly 11 percent so far just this year. It’s little wonder that investors are willing to roll the dice and hope that the good times just keep on rolling.

Of course, bets don’t always pan out. The markets always correct and they sometimes crash. Right now, there are plenty of reasons to worry, or at least be deeply concerned.

Michael Lebowitz of 720Global assembled “22 Troublesome Facts” behind his reluctance to follow the bullish stock market herd. Here’s a small sampling:

• The S&P 500 cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings (CAPE) valuation has only been higher on one occasion, in the late 1990s, during the Tech Bubble. It is currently on par with levels preceding the Great Depression.

• Total domestic corporate profits (w/o IVA/CCAdj) have grown at an annualized rate of just .097% over the last five years. Prior to this period and since 2000, five-year annualized profit growth was 7.95% (note: period included two recessions).

• Over the last 10 years, S&P 500 corporations have returned more money to shareholders via share buybacks and dividends than they have earned.

• At $8.6 trillion, corporate debt levels are 30% higher today than at their prior peak in September 2008.

• At 45.3%, the ratio of corporate debt to GDP is at historical highs, having recently surpassed levels preceding the last two recessions.

John Mauldin summed it all up this way:

"So, US corporations are simultaneously more indebted, less profitable, and more highly valued than they have been in a long time. Furthermore, they are intentionally making themselves more leveraged by distributing cash as dividends and buying back shares instead of saving or investing that cash. Yet investors cannot buy their shares fast enough. Maybe this will end well… but it’s hard to imagine how."

As I have long said, this will end in tears. History tells us so. What goes up must come down. Nothing grows in perpetuity.

Millions of investors will be wiped out when this market has its eventual collision with reality. Many think they can time the market, but no one has a crystal ball. When markets tumble, investors by the millions sell in a panic. The trouble is, for every seller, there must be a buyer. When everyone is trying to exit the market at the same time, there won’t be enough buyers. It will turn into a bloodbath.

The U.S. has entered its ninth full year of expansion — making it the third longest since the 1850s — and that creates reason for concern.

Throughout U.S. history, the gap between one recession’s end and the next one’s beginning has averaged just under five years. In other words, this expansion has gotten really long in the tooth, which is a very uncomfortable reality.

Whether it’s the next, inevitable recession that sparks a stock market meltdown (remember recessions often begin before they are officially recognized) or if it's a market collapse that ignites the next recession doesn’t really matter.

The outcome will be the same, and it will be brutal.

Official Statistics Don't Recognize Scope of US Poverty

During the Great Recession, the ranks of the poor and impoverished in America swelled. Yet, a decade after the recession began, its aftermath remains broad and extensive.

Following the Great Recession, the poverty rate increased to 15.1 percent in 2010 and registered 15.0 percent in 2011, according to a report by Stanford University.

By 2015, 13.5 percent, or 43.1 million, Americans lived in poverty. However, according to a supplemental poverty measure, the poverty rate was 14.3 percent. That was six years after the Great Recession ended.

The official poverty rate in the United States had ranged from a high of 22.4 percent when it was first estimated for 1959 to a low of 11.1 percent in 1973. The launch of major “War on Poverty” programs in 1964 has kept the poverty rate fluctuating between roughly 11 and 15 percent ever since.

What does it all mean?

Despite the “War on Poverty" and repeated economic expansions, nearly 1 in 6 Americans still lives in poverty. But the problem goes well beyond that.

On top of the 43.1 million Americans living in poverty, an additional 97.3 million (33 percent) people in the US are low‐income, defined as having incomes below twice the federal poverty line, or $47,700 for a family of four.

Taken together, this means that 48 percent of the US population is poor or low income. That’s 1 in every 2 people.

Consider that for a moment: census data shows that half the population qualifies as poor or low income.

If you’re wondering how this can be, take a look at national income data; it's quite elucidating.

According to the Social Security Administration, in 2015:

- 50 percent of wage earners made less than $30,000
- 61.5 percent of wage earners made less than $40,000
- 70.5 percent of wage earners made less than $50,000

It’s a snapshot of the economic struggles most Americans are facing. Again, half of US workers earn less than $30K annually.

What officially defines poverty? The federal government offers this definition, according to the 2017 poverty guidelines:

1 person - $12,060
2 people - $16,240
3 people - $20,420
4 people - $24,600

By this criteria, a family of four that makes $25,000 this year is not considered by the federal government to be in poverty.

I beg to differ. If we’re being honest, millions more Americans are genuinely impoverished, though they are not officially recognized as such.

This is not even a discussion about fairness. The poor always have been, and always be, among us. But, surely, we can do better. After all, the US remains one of the richest nations in the world.

These weak income levels are a primary reason that our economy has averaged a meager 2.16 percent annual growth rate over the last five years. That’s less than two-thirds of the historic average.

As I’ve said many times for many years, the majority of Americans simply do not have enough income to grow the economy at levels once considered normal or customary.

The US economy is based on demand and consumption, not manufacturing and exporting. If Americans aren’t vigorously spending, the economy grounds to a halt, as it has over the past decade.

There is nothing to suggest that incomes are going to rise significantly this year, or any time in the near future, or that the poverty rate will suddenly decline toward its 1973 low.

We can’t even get the government to be honest about how many of its citizens are truly impoverished.

The first step to correcting a problem is to admit that you have one, and the federal government can’t — or won’t — do that.

The (un)Affordable Care Act Has Failed America

Healthcare and health insurance have been hot topics in the U.S. for well over a decade now. But, to be clear, they are not one and the same.

Healthcare is about access and affordability; the ability to get care when needed and the ability to pay for it without going bankrupt or into debt. Health insurance, on the other hand, is supposed to provide financial protection in the eventuality of a costly illness or injury.

What the U.S. suffers from is a lack of accessible and affordable healthcare. What good is health insurance if you can't access or afford healthcare anyway?

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was supposed to remedy these problems. However, after seven years of existence, the law has had, at best, uneven results.

The good news is that the number of Americans without health insurance has been reduced by roughly 24 million. The CDC reported that the percentage of people without health insurance fell from 16.0 percent in 2010 to 8.9 percent during the January–June 2016 period.

However, most of these people tend to be poor Americans who receive subsidies through the ACA’s health exchanges and people who qualify for Medicaid, which was designed for the poor.

The Congressional Budget Office reported in March 2016 that there were approximately 12 million people covered by the exchanges, 10 million of whom received subsidies to help pay for insurance. Another 11 million were made eligible for Medicaid by the law, a subtotal of 23 million people. An additional 1 million were covered by the ACA’s "Basic Health Program," for a total of 24 million.

Wealthy Americans can afford healthcare, even though it is expensive. They do not avoid the doctor or monthly insurance payments because the cost interferes with their mortgage payments or ability to eat.

The people squeezed by the ACA are those in the broad middle — the ones who make too much to receive a subsidy, yet too little to practically afford soaring premiums and deductibles.

The way insurance is supposed to work is that you either pay a high premium that affords you a low deductible (out-of-pocket treatment cost) or you pay a low premium that puts you on the hook for a higher deductible when you eventually get sick or injured.

Middle income Americans are rightly angry about health insurance costs; both our deductibles and our premiums have concurrently shot upward. This is not how insurance is supposed to work.

Healthcare and insurance costs have become unreasonable and unmanageable, and the ACA hasn't changed that. But it wasn't always this way.

As recently as 1980, health care expenditures were just 4.2 percent of gross domestic product. Since that time, costs have taken off like a rocket and they now account for roughly one in six of all dollars spent in the U.S.

National health expenditures grew 5.8 percent to $3.2 trillion in 2015, or $9,990 per person, and accounted for 17.8 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

Per capita healthcare spending in the U.S. is more than twice the average of other developed countries. Meanwhile, the share of GDP allocated to health spending in the 34 OECD (developed) countries was just 8.9 percent in 2013. That’s less than half the percentage the U.S. spent.

Yet, things are only getting worse. The CMS projected that total health care spending for 2016 reached nearly $3.4 trillion, up 4.8 percent from 2015. The costs just keep rising, with no end in sight. The CMS projects that U.S. health care spending will grow by an average 5.6 percent annually over the next decade, due to the aging population and rising prices for health care services.

This problem is compounded by the fact that healthcare costs are growing more rapidly than the economy. The CMS projects that national health care spending will outpace GDP growth by 1.2 percentage points over the next decade. As a result, the CMS estimates that health care spending will account for 19.9 percent of GDP by 2025, up from 17.8 percent in 2015.

These are the issues the ACA was supposed to rectify. Back in 2009, US healthcare costs totaled $2.5 trillion and comprised 17.6 percent of the economy. However, the treatment for this disease turned out to be no cure at all. By 2015, healthcare costs had risen to $3.2 trillion and 17.8 percent of GDP.

Despite these massive expenditures, the U.S. gets very little in return. Bloomberg put it this way:

The U.S. health-care system remains among the least-efficient in the world.

America was 50th out of 55 countries in 2014, according to a Bloomberg index that assesses life expectancy, health-care spending per capita and relative spending as a share of gross domestic product… and life expectancy was 78.9. Only Jordan, Colombia, Azerbaijan, Brazil and Russia ranked lower.

By those measures, the U.S. healthcare system is clearly failing.

A 2014 report from the Commonwealth Fund found that the US “ranked last overall among 11 industrialized countries on measures of health system quality, efficiency, access to care, equity and healthy lives.” The kicker was that the US has the highest costs while also displaying the lowest performance.

Whoever says, “You get what you pay for,” clearly hasn’t seen America’s deplorable healthcare statistics.

These findings are not a recent development. They are decades in the making.

Back in 2000, the World Health Organization ranked the US 37th of 191 countries for "overall health system performance," 72nd for "level of health," and first for "health expenditures per capita."

Yet, even as healthcare costs continue to soar, Americans are doing very little to help themselves. The U.S. is beset by lifestyle diseases, such as heart disease, hypertension and diabetes. In other words, Americans suffer from things that are preventable, but we choose to do little about them. The American diet is famously unhealthy and Americans exercise far too little, if at all.

A 2013 study by the CDC estimated that nearly 80 percent of adult Americans do not get the recommended amounts of exercise each week, potentially setting themselves up for years of health problems.

However, it’s a relatively small group of Americans that is driving the cost of healthcare.

Just 5 percent of the population is responsible for almost 50 percent of all healthcare spending. At the other end, half of the population accounts for just 3 percent of spending.

Unlike other sectors, healthcare is one area where improvements in technology don’t lower costs. It’s a true anomaly because it’s by design.

More than anything else, the cost of healthcare in America is driven by greed. Hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and medical-device makers, for example, have determined that they can stick it to the federal government and the insurance companies. Those costs are simply passed along to tax payers and consumers, as Steven Brill so eloquently pointed out in his authoritative TIME magazine piece, Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us.

If we’ve learned anything from the ACA experiment, it’s that we can’t expect the government to save us. Accidents will surely happen, but the more we take care of ourselves the less likely we are to become sick and in need of healthcare.

Regular exercise results in health and wellness. Fitness means taking care of your health. In other words, fitness is health care. On the other hand, going to the doctor is sick care.

Taking care of yourself to the best of your ability is likely the best insurance policy you will ever have, or ever be able to afford.

As the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Waging a War on Cash, Governments and Central Banks Seek Cashless Societies

Does the notion of a cashless society seem preposterous to you? Well, such plans are being discussed in central banks and other corridors of power around the world.

While you may not have realized it, the war on cash is underway.

No one imagined negative interest rates 10 years ago. Such a notion seemed like fantasy. Now it’s reality. Negative interest rates disincentivize saving and encourage spending. It’s a policy intended to keep cash circulating throughout the economy by keeping it out of banks.

But what if people take their money out of banks and, instead of spending it, keep it hidden at home to avoid negative rates? A cashless society prevents that. It gives governments and central bankers complete authority. There is nowhere to hide money or keep the government from confiscating it, which is what negative rates are -- pure, unmasked confiscation.

A cashless society gives bankers and government total control. Stealing your savings via negative interest rates or other means (see the Cypress “bail in”) is effortless and guaranteed. Additionally, in a cashless society, all purchases are tracked. There is a record of all of every purchase you make: what you bought, where you bought it, and the time and day of your purchase. It’s a privacy nightmare.

In such a scenario, all of your money is forced into the banking system, like it or not.

There is no way to protect your savings or yourself in a cashless society. Digital money takes no effort to create. It is fiat currency on steroids. All money is instantly created via digital key strokes. This inflation of the money supply is the essence of price inflation — devaluing money and causing the cost of goods and services to rise in response.

A move away from cash allows governments to confiscate their citizen’s money via negative interest rates. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. It’s the same reason that governments and banks hate gold: it exists outside the banking system and they can’t charge interest on it. It competes with official currency.

Since negative interest rates compel depositors to withdraw their money from the bank, bankers and governments have devised a method to prevent this drain of money. By eliminating physical money in favor of digital currency, the central bank/government can confiscate your money at will.

Eliminating high-denomination currency is the first step to eliminating all physical currency and it a devious, insidious plan. These “Masters of the Universe” think they can do anything they want.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Sanders is the latest to publicly call for the elimination of the $100 bill. As ZeroHedge noted, of the $1.4 trillion in total U.S. currency in circulation, $1.1 trillion is in the form of $100 bills. By eliminating the $100 bill the value of 78% of all currency in circulation would be instantly wiped out.

Suddenly, there would be very little paper money to keep outside the banking system to avoid negative interest rates, aka, confiscation.

There is, however, a bit of good news in this otherwise dystopian story.

Americans still love cash. Despite the broad usage of credit cards, debit cards and mobile payments, cash still dominates many forms of payments. A 2014 Federal Reserve report found that consumers use cash more frequently than any other payment instrument, including debit or credit cards.

Forty percent of consumer transactions were made with cash, making up the single largest share, followed by debit cards at 25 percent and credit cards at 17 percent.

Getting rid of $100 bill would be no easy task. A Federal Reserve study a few years ago estimated that two-thirds of all $100 bills are held by foreigners. The dollar is the global reserve currency, used to settle almost all trade debts. Many foreign governments and their citizens hold dollars, much of which is in the form of $100 bills since they make storing and transporting large amounts of money easier. Many foreigners horde dollars during (or in case of) an economic crisis, when their own currencies are plunging in value.

The $100 bill is extremely popular. The only note that has wider circulation is the $1 bill — and just barely.

The financial authorities argue that eliminating cash would deter tax evasion, financial crime, terrorism, corruption and drug dealing.

Don’t fall for that hyperbole. The real reason is to control you and your money, while oppressing your freedom via financial repression.

The Debt Monster is Slowly, Steadily Devouring Us

“To contract new debt is not the way to pay old ones.” - George Washington

“To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.” - Thomas Jefferson

“Debt is the fatal disease of republics; the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.” - Wendell Phillips

Our next financial and/or economic crisis (one will lead to the other) will most surely be sparked by our unhealthy and unsustainable debt levels. The size of our various debts is practically incomprehensible. Numbers in the trillions just don’t square in the minds of most people.

For starters, one trillion is one-thousand billion. The physical size of $1 trillion is absolutely stunning. This infographic really helps put things in perspective (click on image to enlarge):



The total public debt reached $19.98 trillion by the end of 2016, which equalled 106 percent of gross domestic product. In essence, the nation’s debt is bigger than our entire economy.

To get some perspective on what $20 trillion looks like, check out this infographic:

It’s truly mind boggling, isn’t it?

Governments pay their debts with their income, in the form of tax revenues. That means we, the people, are on the hook for all government debts. The government will increase our taxes, if necessary, to pay those debts. Or, the government will inflate (and thereby devalue) the currency to make its debts more manageable.

However, taxpayers are also consumers, who have their own debts… and they are sizable.

Total consumer debt increased by $460 billion last year — the largest increase in almost a decade — bringing the total to $12.58 trillion. The record high of $12.68 trillion was reached in 2008, which nearly tanked the economy. Yet, after a period of deleveraging, consumer debt is once again on the rise, as if nothing was learned.

Yes, we are dangerously close to the whopping debt total that crippled the economy nine years ago, the after shocks of which are still resonating. Yet, the New York Fed expects household debt to reach its previous 2008 peak sometime this year.

When you combine the national debt (aka, total public debt) with consumer debt and all other forms of debt, things become really freaky.

Total credit market debt, which includes all forms of debt — financial sector debt, government debt (federal, state, local), household debt and corporate debt — has reached a staggering $66.1 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest Flow of Funds report. The total was $63.5 trillion at the end of 2015.

According to the latest BEA revision, nominal 2016 GDP was $18.86 trillion, an increase of $632 billion from 2015. However, total credit grew by $2.511 trillion last year. In essence, $2.5 trillion of credit/debt was issued to achieve just $632 billion in economic growth. As Zero Hedge points out, that means it “cost” $4 in new debt to generate just $1 in new economic growth in 2016!

These debt numbers have become so freakishly gigantic due to what is known as exponential growth, in which the amount being added to the system is proportional to the amount already present: the bigger the system is, the greater the increase. In the simplest terms, exponential growth means runaway expansion. Exponential growth can start off slowly, but result in enormous sums rather quickly.

For example, many economists and professors have long viewed a budget deficit of 3 percent as manageable and sustainable. Budget deficits are reflected as a percentage of gross domestic product. However, 3 percent of our $19 trillion GDP amounts to a $475 billion deficit. In other words, utilizing this historic standard, the government is now adding nearly $1 trillion to the debt every two years.

It's a situation that’s quite worrisome and problematic.

Another reason these numbers have grown to be so outlandish is that debt (aka, credit) is the foundation of our economic system. Without debt, there can be no growth because all money is issued as debt.

It’s a bizarre system in which some very bad outcomes are baked into the cake. Economic growth depends on credit/debt expansion, yet that expansion is outstripping growth by a 4-1 ratio. Maintaining the current system is mathematically impossible, yet we are plowing forward, headlong into the abyss.

As if the $20 trillion national debt and the $12.58 trillion consumer debt aren’t scary enough, there’s an even bigger, freakier number out there.

The federal government’s total of unfunded obligations — the gap between revenue and spending commitments — has reached a record $84 trillion.

Yes, you read that correctly — the U.S. government has $84 trillion in future obligations and it doesn’t have the funds to pay them. These unfunded commitments include programs like Medicare and Social Security.

The federal debt only includes what the government owes to Treasury holders. It doesn't take into account what's owed to seniors, veterans and retired government employees.

Even if we were only talking about the $20 trillion national debt and blindly dismissing these massive, unfunded liabilities, there is a big problem with manner in which it is discussed.

Many economists and analysts refer to our debt-to-GDP ratio, which is misleading since no country pays its debt with its entire economy. Debts can only be paid with revenues, or taxes. A country with high taxes can afford more debt than a low tax country. Debt to GDP does not account for that.

Forbes examined the debt-to-government tax revenue for the thirty-four OECD countries (the world’s developed economies), “Since that is the government’s income.” The U.S. is in third place (after Japan and Greece), with a debt to income measure of 408 percent.

As Forbes noted, “Only three developed countries in the world are in the red zone for national debt to income. The U.S. is one of those three.”

Forbes also noted the following:

"This does not factor the several trillion dollars owed to Social Security, yet it includes the Social Security taxes collected. If Social Security taxes are not counted, the U.S.’s debt to income ratio rises to 688 percent (still in third place). This tells you something about the likelihood of increasing Social Security taxes in conjunction with declining Social Security benefits.”

Despite these problems and these numbers being quite public, our elected leadership in Washington does nothing to address them.

The 2016 federal budget saw revenues of $2.99 trillion, with spending of $3.54 trillion, leading to a deficit of $552 billion.

The 2017 federal budget has revenues of $3.21trillion, with spending of $3.65 trillion, leading to a deficit of $443 billion.

In essence, the government collects $3 trillion annually in taxes, yet somehow that still isn’t enough.

As previously noted, economists have long argued that the U.S. could run annual deficits of 3 percent because our economy historically grew by about 3.28 percent annually. The annual economic growth made the additional deficit spending a wash.

However, there are two problems with this line of reasoning:

1. The U.S. economy no longer grows at a 3 percent-annual clip. Since 2001, GDP has reached at least 3 percent in just two years: 2004 (3.8 percent) and 2005 (3.4 percent). In every other year, through 2016, GDP failed to crack 3 percent, a number that was once considered customary. In 2016, the economy grew just 1.6 percent.

2. Even if the government reduced its deficit spending to match the lower economic growth, or even if it eliminated the deficit entirely, it would do nothing to address the underlying $20 trillion national debt. It would only stop adding to it. That would be a start, but it wouldn’t be a solution to this massive predicament.

Many Americans are entirely unaware of the scope of these problems and even those who are feel powerless to do anything about them. But these debts will eventiually, undoubtedly, blow up in our faces. Many of the things we take for granted will go away in the next crisis. Millions of jobs and homes will be lost. I believe the next crisis will make 2008 look like a dress rehearsal.

The best thing you can do is get out, and stay out, of debt. If the government won’t live within its means, at least we can.

And when the next crisis strikes, don’t expect the government to bail us out. Instead, expect them to demand that we bail them out.

The Fed is About to Perform a High Wire Balancing Act With No Net

During the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve took the dramatic step of initiating quantitative easing, or QE, after determining that dropping its key interest rate to zero wasn’t sufficient.

Following three successive rounds of these Treasury and mortgage bond purchases, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet ballooned to $4.5 trillion. That amounted to a fourfold increase from late 2008 to late 2014.

However, minutes from the Fed’s March meeting reveal that the central bank now plans to start selling off some of those assets this year, which is expected to drive up long-term interest rates.

The Fed has never done anything remotely like this before; it is in uncharted waters. There is no map for unwinding $4.5 trillion. No central bank has ever attempted anything so audacious and grand.

Though the Fed says the reductions will be “gradual and predictable,” and will be accomplished by “phasing out” reinvestments (meaning it won’t abruptly stop reinvesting these assets when they mature), its actions will undoubtedly send shock waves through markets.

While the Fed hasn’t actively increased its portfolio since ending QE3 in 2014, it has continued to roll over maturing Treasuries and reinvest principal payments from the mortgage-backed securities. If the Fed simply ceases to reinvest the payments it earns on these securities as they mature, that would automatically shrink its balance sheet.

The Fed raised its key rate, the federal funds rate, a quarter point in March, as well as in each of the last two Decembers (2015 & 2016). As of April 5, the funds rate stood at 0.91 percent. It had been stuck at a range of 0-0.25 percent from December 2008 to December 2015.

The federal funds rate — an overnight lending rate between banks — affects short term rates. Adjusting it higher or lower is the lever the Fed exercises to affect other short-term interest rates.

Though short-term rates are the most sensitive (or reactive) to changes in the funds rate, longer term interest rates can ultimately be affected as well, most especially in this instance.

Federal Open Market Committee members say they expect to make two more hikes in 2017 and three in 2018. But the Fed may not have to engage in any further increases to the funds rate if the unwinding of its balance sheet begins to tighten, as expected.

Releasing its long-term securities to the public would push down their prices and drive up their yields (bond prices and yields move in opposite directions).

The Federal Reserve does not typically control long-term interest rates. The market forces of supply and demand determine the pricing for long-term bonds, which set long-term interest rates. However, when the Fed begins to unload some of its long term bonds, that will begin increasing long-term interest rates.

To be clear, though the Fed doesn’t usually control long-term rates, the shrinking of its balance sheet will surely increase the yields of government bonds with longer maturities. When there is copious supply, prices fall and yields rise.

“The Fed’s portfolio includes $426 billion of Treasury securities set to mature in 2018, and $352 billion more that will mature in 2019,” reports Bloomberg, which is on top of the $164 billion of securities that will mature this year.

The Fed will attempt to manage this process as smoothly, cautiously and predictably as it possibly can. But shrinking its balance sheet could prove to be uneven and cumbersome.

When the Fed finally ended QE in October 2014, it did so in a measured and predictable manner, gradually lowering its bond purchases by $10 billion per month. When the central bank began to “taper” in December 2013, it was buying a whopping $85 billion of securities per month. By October 2014, those purchases had ended.

Similarly, the Fed will need to publicly commit to reducing its balance sheet by a certain dollar amount each month.

However, in order to do so, the economy must continue to at least hold steady, if not improve. An economic downturn would send the process into disarray and, ultimately, reversal.

In the meantime, when the biggest buyer of Treasuries and mortgage securities exits the market, mortgage rates are sure to rise. So will the borrowing costs of the federal government.

Additionally, when the Fed stops rolling over its securities, the Treasury will have to raise cash to pay back the Fed for those maturing securities.

That will cost the American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.

Fed's Easy Money Policy Enriches Big Banks, Creating Bubble That Will Result in Crisis

When you hear news that the Federal Reserve is “raising interest rates” (which occurred just weeks ago), the Fed is, in reality, raising just one interest rate: the federal funds rate.

The federal funds rate is the interest rate at which banks and credit unions (depository institutions) lend the funds they keep at the Federal Reserve to other depository institutions overnight. In essence, it is an overnight lending rate from one bank to another.

As of this week, the federal funds rate was yielding 0.91 percent. Just six months ago, it was 0.30 percent. Meanwhile, the 10-year Treasury currently yields 2.42 percent. That arbitrage is a really sweet deal for the Big Banks. The Fed prints money and essentially gives it to the Big Banks, who then loan it back to the government at a much higher interest rate. What a racket!

Since late 2008, the nation’s biggest banks have been receiving enormous sums of money from the Federal Reserve at near-zero interest rates. They are then able to invest this essentially free money in government bonds, collecting massive returns in the process. This results in pure profit, which is one hell of a business model.

Yes, the Big Banks are in the supreme and enviable position of getting virtually free money from the Federal Reserve, which they then loan out at interest.

It's no coincidence that the stock market took off like a rocket when the Fed initiated its zero-interest-rate policy, along with three successive rounds of quantitative easing. The S&P 500 doubled in value from November 2008 to October 2014, coinciding with the Federal Reserve's asset purchasing program.

This has led to massive speculation and malinvestment, such as the recent Snapchat IPO, for example.

What’s particularly amazing is that the Big Banks are using this nearly-free Fed money to buy billions worth of Treasury bonds, redirecting this money right to the federal government for its deficit spending.

"Including federally guaranteed mortgage-backed securities, banks now own $2.4 trillion of government bonds, which would be the most since the central bank began compiling data in 1973," Bloomberg reported in October. Obviously, that total has only grown in the ensuing months.

Yet, those bonds are eventually paid back, at interest, with taxpayer money. The Big Banks enjoy massive returns while doing zilch. They have done nothing and created nothing. They are simply riding the gravy train at taxpayer expense.

Think about that; billions of dollars are being loaned to the biggest banks, essentially for free. Those Big Banks then use all that nearly-free money to purchase Treasuries that currently pay 2.42 percent - 3.00 percent (30-year), resulting in huge gains for the Big Banks.

What borrower doesn’t love near-zero percent loans?

The government also loves this arrangement because it provides a buyer for hundreds of billions in Treasuries. It's a pretty cozy relationship, don't you think? It's kind of like your dad loaning you money so that you can spend it in his store and boost his sales.

It’s also called insanity.

The Fed’s cheap money policy has enabled the inexpensive financing of speculative, levered positions by Wall St. In short, the Fed has been financing concurrent stock, bond and housing bubbles, the likes of which flattened the economy in 2008-2009. And we're still trying to recover from that. All bubbles eventually burst, usually with devastating consequences.

Near-zero interest rates for the better part of the last decade have crushed savers, compelling many to chase the higher yields found in the equities markets. Low rates have also spurred a new housing bubble, sending home prices soaring above the levels that led to the last crash. This is largely keeping Millennials and other first-time buyers out of the housing market.

Of course, the stock markets are called “risk markets” for a reason. The hunt for yield has created “irrational exuberance” among investors and ballooned markets that will inevitably encounter a pin.

Investor optimism is now at its highest level since 2000, according to the latest Wells Fargo/Gallup Index survey. The herd mentality has taken hold, which is always the time to run for the exits. Unfortunately, not everyone will fit through the door, and the losses will be enormous.

During the current bull market, which began in March 2009 and is the second longest in history, the Dow Jones has more than tripled. This won’t go on indefinitely. We’re long overdue for much more than a mere correction. When this bubble inevitably pops, the resulting blast will feel like a Category 5 hurricane.

As the old saying goes, pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered. The Fed is leading the hogs right into the slaughterhouse and the Big Banks will profit from the massacre.

Outsized Defense Budget Poised to Become Even More Bloated

Let me state this up front: I’m glad the U.S. has the biggest, baddest military in the world and I hope it always stays that way. I have no problem with the U.S. being the top dog and the top spender, militarily.

The U.S. spends more money on its military, by far, than any other nation in the world. We’ve been No. 1 since the end of World War II and, in my estimation, that’s a good thing. I think we should always strive to remain No. 1.

However, I’m also in favor of fiscal prudence and responsibility. That’s why I’m concerned about Donald Trump’s call for a $54 billion increase in military spending in his recent Congressional address. Trump's new federal budget proposal calls for defense spending to jump 10 percent above its already world-leading level.

This increase would "push the Pentagon spending, already well beyond the Cold War average used to keep the now-defunct Soviet Union at bay, even higher,” writes National Security Analyst Mark Thompson.

The U.S. spent $596 BILLION on its military in 2015, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

That was more than the next seven countries (China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, United Kingdom, India, France and Japan) COMBINED.

Yet, in fiscal year 2017, US military spending is budgeted for an increase to $617.0 BILLION. Additionally, veterans' spending is budgeted at $180.8 billion and foreign policy / foreign aid spending is budgeted at $55.8 billion. All together, total U.S. government spending for defense is budgeted at $853.6 BILLION.

If that seems like a lot of money, it's because it is.

U.S. military spending in inflation-adjusted terms is higher than it has been since World War II, according to Miriam Pemberton, a research fellow and defense expert at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Here’s the rub: the national debt recently topped $20 TRILLION, and it is growing daily.

"The most significant threat to our national security is our debt," former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen famously declared in 2010. When the nation’s top military man said this, the national debt was just over $13 trillion.

Yet, the federal budget deficit is projected to add nearly $10 trillion to the federal debt over the next 10 years, according to projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Congressional Republicans, who have long sworn their allegiance to fiscal prudence and responsibility, will have to find a way to explain, endorse and rationalize a surge in military spending at the same time they are pledging large tax cuts for individuals and corporations, as well as huge cuts to much smaller budget programs.

Aside from the deficit, tepid economic growth is also a concern. Over the next 10 years, real economic output is projected to grow at an annual rate of 1.9 percent. No country can continually grow its debts faster than its economy, without leading to economic crisis.

The Defense Dept. knows that the military budget is bloated and wasteful. Everyone in Washington knows it.

The Pentagon commissioned a study, released in January 2015, which discovered $125 billion in bureaucratic waste.

However, the Pentagon quickly buried the study because it feared “Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget,” according to the Washington Post.

"Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.

"For the military, the major allure of the study was that it called for reallocating the $125 billion for troops and weapons. Among other options, the savings could have paid a large portion of the bill to rebuild the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal, or the operating expenses for 50 Army brigades.

"But some Pentagon leaders said they fretted that by spotlighting so much waste, the study would undermine their repeated public assertions that years of budget austerity had left the armed forces starved of funds. Instead of providing more money, they said, they worried Congress and the White House might decide to cut deeper.

"So, the plan was killed. The Pentagon imposed secrecy restrictions on the data making up the study, which ensured no one could replicate the findings. A 77-page summary report that had been made public was removed from a Pentagon website."

There are two primary excuses for more and more military spending. One of them is jobs.

Military contractors — such Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Gruman, for example — almost always build their hardware in multiple states. That way the jobs are spread over multiple congressional districts. Since no politician ever wants to vote to kill jobs, this is a very clever strategy. Creating jobs wins elections, while cutting them is always a losing proposition.

The other rationale/excuse is that, “The bad guys are going to get us.”

The Military-Industrial Complex and its political cronies have always created, and they always will seek to create, international bogeymen to advance their argument for new weapons, new wars and the continual flow of military contracts to weapons makers.

The justification is usually draped in the flag and sold as a matter of patriotism. According to this argument, if you support the military, you support more military spending. That makes you a patriot — a real American. If you don’t support more military spending, you are anti-American and a traitor.

It’s all so irrational, bogus and transparent, yet this argument is continually and reflexively made anyway. Many Americans still fall for it and even endorse it.

However, more spending doesn’t make the military stronger, better or more able.

“The only way to strengthen our national security is not to spend more money,” says Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, “but rather to reform the way the Department of Defense does business."

"It boggles the mind that the DoD cannot account for the hundreds of billions of dollars a year that it spends," says Davis. "A full twenty-six years after a federal law was passed requiring all parts of the federal government to provide Congress with an audit of its spending, there remains only a single government agency that has not complied: the Department of Defense. Even after being publicly rebuked by the Senate in 2013 for this failure—and wasting billions of dollars on failed auditing software—the Pentagon remains noncompliant.”

The U.S. already has the most powerful, most deadly, most advanced military in the history of humanity.

Given this reality, is it reasonable or rational for the US to spend even more money on its military?

I think the obvious answer is “no.”