Obama’s Re-election and Monetary Reflation
Dedicated to the Memory of David F. Bendler
If Barack Obama wins re-election, he
will be between the fifth and fifteenth greatest president in history. If he wins with about the same number of
electoral votes that he won in 2008, he will be in the top ten. My money is on Obama, if for no other reason
than the Republicans will never elect another president after Bush, who stole
the office. The Republicans are in disarray and Obama’s foreign policy is
commendable.
The only problem is jobs and the
economy. The Republicans and others
claim the deficit is unsustainable. Is
this true? What is a $14 trillion debt?
The total
value of taxable real estate in New Jersey $1.336 trillion. If tax-exempt,
government, and other properties are included, not to mention one hundred miles
of Atlantic Ocean coast and beaches, the offshore fishing banks and half of New
York Harbor, a conservative estimate would put the value of New Jersey at $2
trillion. New Jersey is about 1/40th
of the United States, so a reasonable value for the land and buildings of the
country is $80 trillion, producing a $16 trillion GNP with a $14 trillion
debt. That’s like if you owned $800,000
worth of real estate, earned $160,000 a year and had $140,000 in debt, would
you consider yourself rich, or broke?
The
hysteria about the deficits is based on projected costs of social security, medicare, medicaid and pensions. So, the issue is not current debt, but future
productivity. Firing workers and not
investing in future infrastructure is a certain path to bankruptcy, as is
refusing to change policy.
In 1969, the GNP was $1 trillion. A 360K mainframe computer cost $15 million
without peripherals.
Today there are 160 million computers
in the United States. Just to be
conservative again, I don’t want anyone to accuse me of skewing figures to the
upside, let’s say there are only 100,000,000 computers. Most of these computers have 256 or 512
megabytes of ram, even several gigabytes; but again, let’s be conservative and
say they only have as much as an ipad, 128 megabytes.
What this means is that every
one of these 128 megabyte ipad sized computers is 360
times bigger than the 1969 mainframe. In
short, that means that today in the United States there is equivalent of 36,000,000,000
1969 mainframe computer capacity in the United States (and this does not even
count phones, calculators, watches and myriad other devices.) Seeing as mainframes cost $15 million forty
years ago, that means that the United States has installed computing capacity
worth $540,000 trillion in 1969 dollars, producing a GNP of only $16 trillion
in 2011 dollars.
So, is the United States broke? Creating jobs is the first priority. Anyone with an ipod,
iphone, laptop, room and a microwave can as well as a
millionaire did fifty years ago. But,
that means people need to be educated so they can enjoy life at a low level of
material, but high level of intellectual consumption.
Remember
to vote.
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