Some Statistics Regarding Government Spending
In Fiscal Year 2007, the U.S. federal government’s revenue was $2.57 trillion, but it spent $2.73 trillion. This means that the federal government had to go into a debt of $160 billion just for 2007. Now, spending more than taking in is not a new phenomenon with our federal government, this has been going on for many, many years. If we look at the Gross Federal Debt (or National Debt), we see that except for a few minor exceptions, it has continued to grow every year since 1940.[1] The exception years were 1947, 1948, 1951, 1956, 1957, and 1969.
Taking on more debt every year is not necessarily a problem if the U.S.’s economy is growing faster than the rate of rise of the debt, because a rapidly growing economy can absorb or pay back the debt as long as the debt is not growing too fast. Therefore, a better measure is the Gross Federal Debt as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Indeed, the problem is not necessarily that bad. Since 1940, there were 35 years (about half of the time) in which the ratio of (Debt/GDP) actually decreased. Unfortunately, most of those years occurred before 1980. As a matter of fact, only six of those 35 years occurred since 1980. They were 1981, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001. There was none after 2001. The ratio (Debt/GDP) reached a low of 32.6% in 1981, and gradually rose to about 65-70% in recent years.
Making Sense of the Price of Gasoline
What are the reasons for the huge profits of the big U.S. oil companies in 2007, and are they justifiable? We have probably all heard of the huge profits that the big U.S. oil companies made in 2007. For example, the 2007 profits of the big five oil companies in the U.S. are:
ExxonMobil’s $40.6B was the highest profit ever made by a public U.S. company. It broke the previous record of $39.5B, established by ExxonMobil in 2006, which broke the previous record of $36.1B, also established by ExxonMobil in 2005.
Read More »