The above image comes from libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson's facebook page. Please click on the image so you can read it clearly and understand how it isn't quite as clever as Mr. Johnson seems to think it is.
OK, did you click on the image? Good. I'm not going to argue with the numbers listed for our national debt and budget, they seem pretty accurate to me. What I have a problem with is the comparison Mr. Johnson seems to be making between the national budget and a family budget. First of all the annual family income listed, assuming we are talking about a family of 4, seems quite low. If a family actually found itself in a situation where its income was so low as compared to its expenses the family would probably try to cut corners, but they wouldn't stop there. Maybe in this family the mother doesn't work? I bet if most American families found themselves in the situation described by Mr. Johnson they would not only try to cut expenses, they would also try to increase their revenues. Mom might decide to take a job. Maybe if Dad is the person working he would try and get a part time to job along with Mom taking a job.
It is doubtful that they would try to cut their budget by more than half , what would be required according to Mr. Johnson's example, because it is doubtful that they could afford to cut that much. To do so might involve getting rid of their car, which for many people would make it impossible to go to work. To cut their budget they would probably have to drastically reduce what they spend on food, and it is obvious from their total expenditures being only $38,200.00 that they aren't living too high on the hog. Because of this they probably couldn't afford to cut their food budget very much without sending their kids to bed hungry.
Now let's look at the family's total debt. I wonder if the $142,710.00 in debt they have is actually credit card debt. It seems like it would be more likely that most of this debt is explained by a mortgage. Why do they have such a high mortgage (I know, some of you are in parts of the country where this would be a very small mortgage, but stay with me on this)? Maybe they wanted to live in a good, safe neighborhood where their kids could play in the yard without hearing gun shots in the background and where the schools are safe and effective.
From the information on Mr. Johnson's facebook page it looks like he wants to manage our federal budget the way a family would handle their budget. I am all in favor of this. This would mean making reasonable spending cuts, but not cuts that would significantly harm members of our American family. Sadly there is no way reasonable spending cuts could lower our national debt quickly and so, just like our hypothetical family, we would need to look at increasing our revenue. Of course our nation can't take a second job and so the only option our government has is to increase taxes, and increase taxes in a major way, especially on those who can most afford to pay them.
Strangely Mr. Johnson doesn't want to make reasonable cuts and increase taxes. He wants to take care of the entire situation with spending cuts and no increase in revenue. So he wants our nation to go hungry and become homeless to conquer its debt problem, he just doesn't want to have to sacrifice any of his money, or the money of the corporations and wealthy individuals his ideas seem to mainly support. He thinks lowering taxes, i.e. cutting the family's income, and reducing regulations, i.e. allowing the family to let the grass in their yard grow out of control or keep a pet lion in the back yard, will solve our problems when cutting income and reducing regulations obviously won't help the family reduce their debt at all.
Mr. Johnson is comparing our national debt to a family's debt, and both problems could be solved using the same real world solutions. Sadly Mr. Johnson doesn't seem to want to solve the problem of our national debt, he just wants to protect the finances of those at the top of our economy. This hardly sounds like family values to me.
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