Math time!

Yeah, it's a week old, but this kind of snuck in under the ol' radar...

House moves to raise US debt ceiling

Washington, DC, May. 3 (UPI) -- The U.S. House has sent legislation to the Senate that would raise the federal debt limit to nearly $9 trillion, a $781 billion increase.

The House agreed to the increase under an automatically executing provision in the 2005 budget resolution approved by the House and Senate late last week.

The House officially sent the Senate a separate piece of debt-relief legislation increasing the limit as mandated by the self-executing provision in the budget resolution.

For now, we'll avoid trying to understand just what kind of "self-executing provision" smoothly allows us to slip another trillion bucks into the red. And let's not even get into this. Suffice it to say that irrationalities are the nature of the beast.

Let's play a game instead. We've all heard the little factoid that "if dollars were seconds, our deficit would put us back in the Ice Age." Yeah, you know what I'm talking about... I worked it out, and that's still accurate, although not for long. Anyhow, if half a trillion'll take you back there, why not see where a $9 trillion federal debt goes? Take a ride with me on the dimensional analysis gravy train.

9,000,000,000 sec * (1 hr/3600 sec) * (1 day/ 24hr) * (1 yr/ 365 day) = ......

285,388 years and some change. Decent.

The last Ice Age began about 20,000 years ago. From that number, we deduce that the "Ice Age" quip would have been accurate back when the national debt was a paltry $700 billion - during the late '70's. Cool. Now, where would almost 300,000 years back put us on the geological timeline? Right at the end of the reign of Homo erectus, our adventurous predecessor. Rock and roll. You may come back with "that's not so long ago....," but shit man, I can barely remember what I did yesterday. It's a long time.

Let's pretend that we cut spending now, totally. I know, we're already making absurd assumptions. Then suppose each of the 300 or so million people in this country agree to split the bill and drop ten bucks a month. That comes out to 36 billion a year. Hey, that's a hefty chunk of change, we'll have this thing paid off in no time! Wrong. Try 250 years. Not gonna happen.

The national debt is against actual monies spent. Where did it all go? Who cares! Where will the money come from to pay it off... now you're asking the right questions. I'm convinced that it's an absolutely insurmountable feat to reduce it at ALL, given our federal governments spending habits. Eventually the government will owe enough money to enough people that even the harshest tax measures won't be able to generate revenue for payments. Thus, I predict complete and utter world destruction via the collapse of the American economy when the state goes bankrupt and pulls us all down with it. I hope I'm alive to see it, because it's gonna ROCK!

P.S. True to Triumvirate form, I'm going to have to cross the Rubicon and kick some ass to get my fellow conspirators to post more often. Both plebs and patricii grow weary of Caesar's verbosity. Admittedly, the roles of Pompey and Crassus are difficult to play, but their voices are essential for maintaining legitimacy. Et tu, Gizmo?