$96,000,000,000 is wasted by households in the US Per Annum.
I looked up to see how many households there were on this site. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html
So a quick calculation makes that $7,386.32 per year per household.
or at an average of 2.6 people per household, $2840.90 per person.
That's $54.63 per week per person.
That's disgusting.
You can add to that the waste from restaurants at the same amount per annum. So each person living in a household in the United States is responsible for an amazing waste of food of
$109.26 EVERY WEEK!
Thats unimaginable...
I would have a hard time spending that! No wonder so many people go scavenging in dustbins over there. Is there no shame about this?
And how can you go lose $30,000,000,000? How many backhanders?
How much looting off the government building sites?
Like I said, if the machine of government is so big, no-one knows what is actually happening in their own backyard, you just live in cloud cookoo land.
When it's your tax paid and used at a local level, and you want to scrutinise every bit of building and expenditure your local councils make, you soon realise if there is a big gap between what you pay in tax, and what you get for it.
I would suggest you tax paying Americans get on top of this. Your Big Brother state is definately not looking after you, and do a home economics class, you could save yourself a minimum of $2840.90 each per year on wasted income. Plus the savings I outlined in my previous post on making some simple cutbacks.
Remember you paid tax on your wages to get the money, then paid tax on the food you are wasting. so for every $ you spend, you have to earn $2 to spend it.
That means you are giving your government $2840.90 in direct or indirect Tax to throw away that food!
For a household of 2.6 people in the tax bracket this means an earned income is throwing away $14,205.50 of their earned income altogether.
Add that to the $8728 gross income from the previous post on how to get your household budget to go further without feeling pinched,
and this amounts to a total gross saving of....$22,932.50
How much do you people earn that you can waste this much income? Add the credit card charges to that if you spend it on a card, thats another $229.32, even if you pay of your card every month! And you still paid the tax on that money!
If I divide this figure by the current exchange rate this is what it looks like to us Brits.
23,391.14 USD = 14,254.56 GBP
Exchange rate: 0.609400
Rate valid as of: 31/8/2011
This is a minimum wage in the UK!
I looked up how much minimum wage is in America and its $7.25 per hour.
So there are a heck of a lot of people on minimum wage just scraping by, and about 20% of America on ridiculously high incomes with a lot of homes, all living in debt on borrowed money.
These minimum wage earners provide 80% of the tax revenue as well, as the 20/80 rule applies. So if the 80% on minimum wage have to pay 10% of their income in tax and social security ... let me just check the website above for the 2009 employment figures...
Households, 2005-2009 112,611,029
Persons per household, 2005-2009 2.60
Per capita money income in past 12 months (2009 dollars) 2005-2009 $27,041
Median household income, 2009 $50,221
Persons below poverty level, percent, 200914.3%
So I would expect each household to pay 20% direct tax over $25k so that's $5044.20
multiplied by the number of households, less 14.3% who are in poverty and shouldn't pay tax anyway.
= $4322.88 x households = $486,803,965,043.52 This is before corporate taxes and business taxes, general household rates, and utility charges.
2010; 15 Trillion was spent in drug wars. I think it might be a good idea to legalise it and tax it, considering the financial crisis you are in, you will have to suffer the consequences of people using whether you tax it or not! At least with some sort of regulation, registered users, and a better health and safety practice you get less drug deaths, and the state doesn't have to pay for people in prison. Let the criminals sort out the budget deficits!
See this page of stats! You got $14.6 Trillion Debts!
http://federalbudget.com/
It's the same with all crime really, it's just a counter-economy. It's no different to wrecking ships and privateering a couple of centuries ago. We managed to get a hold on that.
We liked a bit of wreck now and again. However one wreck had the Jersey Lillies on it in cargo going to Holland. There were a lot of locals that died because they ate them thinking they were onions... Then we worked out they were flower bulbs, and we now have the famous Jersey Lilly to sell to the tourists.
Anyway I am getting bored with this at the moment.
Mmmm...Here's a nice page of statistics. It seems the regular wage is about $20 per hour. So that's comparitive to our minimum wage when you think you are only getting 33 hours work a week. Less the extra tax.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
This is why I still maintain it is better to have one good wage earner, who is getting a non deflated income, and a home economist who makes sure that person gets looked after.
When you actually realise that our purchasing power as wage earners had been halved in the last 45 years, (Check out my salty crisps blog a few days ago) This is the reason we are now in the situation where households have to have 2 wage earners to bring in the same amount of purchasing power. However this purchasing power is significantly reduced by the costs of both wage earners 'costs' in going out to work.
As responsible individuals, each of us has to make the choice on how we live, and how we apportion value to the things we 'need'. For the most part it seems the 'need' is to look good, rather than having a sound household budget that keeps your outgoings below your income.
I was told the best rate for a small loan is about 9% over 5 years at the moment. Say you wanted to buy a good second hand car at this rate of interest at $10k.
You would pay an additional $4572.20 (nearly 50% more!) for the pleasure of having a car with a nice new smell in it. Why not just change the seat covers on the old one if it still works, and buy a can of 'new car smell' and spiv it up once a month. That's all the second hand car market do!
Having a parent at home means you don't have to pay childcare, buy expensive pre-packed food, employ a cleaner, and travel that average of 25.5 minutes to work in two cars.
Better to drop the wage earner and kids off to school, do a part time job, or get into the swapping economy, and have a far better quality of life.