Federal government spending is out of hand. That’s my initial statement. Those of you who know me, know I don’t usually talk politics, so this may be a bit unusual for me. Bear with me for a minute or two.

As for the signing of the Constitution of the United States, all states were operating separately and without a set standard. The federal government was created to put an “umbrella” over all states: Now all states have their own rules and judicial branches, but they operate within a certain set of standards set forth in the constitution. That the federal government was not created to run everything is quite clear, since a system was set up for the protection of the power of the states through senators and representatives etc… However, all that changed when WWI started: Suddenly the entire nation was under siege, all its peoples were in danger, so we reacted. We reacted by spending billions of dollars and setting a tax. Know we all know that the declaration of independence discusses taxation–taxation without representation among others–and we know (or we used to know) that taxes were not necessary. But as soon as we started the war, we had to pay for all the guns and bombs and technology development and so on, so the federal government created a federal tax.

That tax has never been repealed, even though we finished the war long ago.

Take us forward to the year 1945. The second world war is over (basically) and from 1940 to 1946, our federal government increased it’s spending from 100 billion to 1,000 billion (one trillion) an increase of 1000%/factor of one/ten times as much. Our federal government has spent 500 billion dollars of money it didn’t have, so it increased taxation of the people, bypassing state taxes to create a higher federal tax. From there on out things just kept getting worse, federal spending increased from 1940 to 2000 to a total of nearly 2 trillion dollars–in 2006, an estimated 2.7 trillion dollars. Now, with the war in Iraq needing so much money, federal spending is increasing faster and faster.

I’m going to take a break from political talk, and discuss algebra for just a second. All of you remember functions from algebra? If we say f(x)=x+1 then if we say x=1, the function of x is 2. Remember that basic idea? Or if we say f(x)=2x and say x=2, the function of x=4. Okay, then we take the input and call it x, and the output we call y. Remember now? Let’s keep going for a little bit more: If we say that f(x)=x^2 and say x=2, y will be 4. If x=3, y=9. And if x=4, y=16. So we see that for whatever value of x, it’s output is increasing ‘exponentially’. An exponential increase graph looks like this:

Notice how the line on the right goes up faster and faster? That’s what an exponential graph looks like. As the line moves to the right, it moves faster and faster upward, so at x=20, y=400. And if x=200, y=40,000 and so on, reaching closer and closer to infinity.

All systems, natural or man-made, which reach for infinity eventually reach a point where such values are absurd. All systems which reach for infinity will fail.

The basic exponential increase of the federal taxation is (ignoring the huge spike during 1940′s): f(x)=(.0026x^2)+.1 Where y is the number multiplied by 100,000,000,000 to get dollars.

This goes off of two assumptions: The increase in federal spending is an even increase (it is not, it spikes and falls, so prediction is difficult), and initial value of federal budget. The initial value of the federal budget is not entirely accurate, but it is certainly close enough for armchair calculations. Let me take that little graph and zoom out a bit so you can see how quickly federal spending will increase:

Now, before you forget how big of a number that is, lets put it in real digits so you can see it: By 2050, the federal (federal only, remember you still have state and local taxes) tax will be: $5,800,000,000,000 Which in a more real amount, is enough money to buy over twenty three million houses at $250,000 each. Omaha had 165,731 housing units in 2000 A.D., with the amount of money spent in the 2050 federal budget, you could buy 139 Omaha’s.

I don’t think I need to say anything else to drive my point in, but I will. Let’s take the 2.7 Trillion dollar actual federal budget and compare it to the total number of people in America: 2.7 Trillion / 296 Million = $9121 per person. All I did was divide, and I found that if everyone paid equally, we would each pay $9,121 per year in taxes. Or let’s take a rich person’s income, lets say someone gets paid $200,000 per year. That’s a heck of a lot more than anyone I know makes, but we’ll go with it: 2.7 Trillion / 200 Thousand = 13,500,000 People. Each year, America pays enough taxes to pay very good salaries to over 13 million people. Remember once again, that’s not counting state and local people, just federal. There are an approximate 10 million people in Los Angeles in 2004, all of those people could be living very well-to-do lives on your federal tax alone.

If you have all those 13 million people who receive a salary of $200,000 a year in the government, and we divide those people by the total population, we get: 296 Million (U.S. Population) / 13 Million (paid government) = 22. For every 22 people in this country, we have one highly paid government official. Except we still have state taxes and local taxes, so that number is even lower, probably closer to 10 people per official.

Doesn’t this sound a little fishy to you? What are we spending our money on anyway? Oh, I know: NASA Nonsense = 16 Billion; War = 249 Billion; Department of Justice = 2.7 Billion; Department of Defense = 16 Billion; Homeland Security = 24 Billion; Etcetera… All just a bunch of nonsense designed to keep the country in debt.