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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Contact: Joshua Leinsdorf