Re: Couple new math jokes

From: Dave Rusin (rusin_at_vesuvius.math.niu.edu)
Date: 10/25/04 

Date: 25 Oct 2004 19:30:28 GMT

In article <2u2gqoF24v89kU1@uni-berlin.de>,
robert j. kolker <nowhere@nowhere.net> wrote:

>You are probably too young to remember the one and only Carter
>adminstration with is 21 percent misery index. Six percent unemployment
>and fifteen percent inflation rate. Until the Clinton adminsitration the
>only post Eisenhower surplus was scored by the Nixon Administration.

Well, this is really getting off-topic, but for accuracy's sake I
would like to point out that the US federal government's total debt is
actually a poorly-defined variable, mostly because one has to decide how
to handle transfers from the Social Security [retirement] system.

Official data from
   http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpdodt.htm
show that debt held by the public did indeed decline during the
Clinton years, but _total_ debt did not (mostly meaning that expenses
were less than revenues only if you turn a blind eye toward the fact
that the government was not squirrelling away the Baby Boomers'
Social Security payments, leaving an actuarial indebtedness which
will soon come home to roost. Those robust years would have been a
good time to pay down the existing debt in anticipation of future
retirements, but alas, this was not done.)

Of course under the present administration, the IOUs are piling up
at an incredible rate. The total debt is
   $7,429,843,833,987.43
as I write today, an increase of about 31% over the last 48 months.
(The increase in the preceding 48 months was about 8.6%.)

Older data are available on a companion page,
   http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opd.htm#history

dave

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