Balance after 30 years?
I am struggling to compute this problem. You are planning to make annual deposits of $4,800 into a retirement account that pays 10 percent interest compounded monthly. How large will your account balance be in 30 years? We are allowed to use excel. I understand that the percentage has to be .1/12 to get it into a monthly rate. I also get that since there are 30 years and 12 periods each year, the number of periods is 360... or maybe I'm doing this right.. Any ways please help with explanation! First correct answer gets 5 stars!
Ways to balance the budget?
Spending less is a great idea, until dependent people find out you're cutting THEIR special program. It's the nature of people who think they are entitled and come before everyone else. Time to tighten our belts and make some sacrifices. The problems that can occur will be public outcry because they're so used to getting handouts. Government does not prioritize well so good luck with the spending less. Increasing tax revenues by raising taxes is a generally bad idea. They are trying to squeeze blood from a stone -- we cannot take it anymore, and all they do is continue to increase their budgets with more tax hikes coming down the pike. Printing more money is not the solution, and pretending that a stimulus bill will help boost our economy is a pipe dream. It never, ever works. Lower taxes, less government. Some day even democrats will understand this.
How would you cut $1.5 Trillion from the Federal budget over ten years (which is only $150 billion annually)?
I assume (based on the question math) that you are talking about cutting $150 trillion over 10 years.This is not the same as cutting $150 billion per year.You could cut Social Security (old age and survivors fund) to zero starting in the year 2020.You could also cut CHIP, Subsidies for Obamacare, all SNAP benefits, and Military Pensions starting right now.You could cut Medicaid entirely starting in 2025.The thing about cutting any of this is that if you do so without cutting inlays or revenues meant to fund them, you would be voted out of office in a heartbeat. Furthermore, you may be voted out anyway, since you’d be cutting programs without actually reducing the deficit much.And on a deeper point, if you did reduce the deficit, you’d run the risk of creating private debt bubbles which have caused our last several recessions, since a growing private sector needs more money to operate, and the only two places to get more money are through public debt or private debt (read up on sectoral balances). Recessions tend to cause major regime changes in democracies.Mostly, you shouldn’t be looking at cutting spending. The only budget that’s possibly really bloated is the military, but even it serves a purpose (guaranteed jobs for millions of people). Unless you replaced the biggest federal jobs program in existence with something else that also creates jobs (meaning you’ll still be spending), you’re going to increase a lot of other costs. It would be nice to have fewer soldiers and missiles, and to instead have more roads, bridges that aren’t falling down, and post offices that are open on Sunday, but apparently paying someone to sit around waiting for a war is worth a deficit, but actually doing something productive is not…
Who was the last US President to balance the budget and leave a surplus when he left office?
The last president to leave office with a surplus was Clinton. Al Gore warned Americans during the election campaign that Bush would wipe out the surplus. He was right....
How will Bernie Sanders expand social programs and balance the budget? I know that he has plans to drastically reform the tax code, but can anyone give specific numbers?
Balancing the federal budget is the last thing you want to do in a growth economy for a nation that prints its own money. Sanders has never said anything about balancing the budget. His reasonable approach is to keep it within tolerable limits like it has been for decades. Now, even if you look at yesterday's hit piece that Bernie's programs will cost $18 trillion over 10 years, understand that federal spending will approach $40 trillion in that same time period. This is not additional spending on Bernie's stuff, he's simply suggesting we reallocate our spending to programs that provide a greater return on investment.My numbers do not include Social Security because it has nothing to do with the federal debt or the annual budget. Social Security is a standalone program with its own income (payroll tax) and outlays (entitlement payments). Sanders is proposing expanding Social Security because it's very popular among an overwhelming majority of Americans. He plans to keep it solvent by raising the cap from $115K to $250K. Right now you pay a flat payroll tax on everything you make up to $115K then you pay no more into Social Security. It's the most regressive tax there is. Sanders is suggesting we raise that number to $250K, make it less regressive and make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years. *****Edit*****There were some comments attached to this about debt so I'm bringing one response here to my original answer."...the debt thing is difficult for most people to understand because we want to think the government operates as a household. But households can't print their own currency. When the U.S. issues debt, it creates bonds called Treasury Bills. These are put into the financial institutions and sold to individuals and sometimes other countries. The government then puts that extra money into circulation while agreeing to pay off the bond in 10 years. In year 1 it pays interest on the bond, year 2... until year 10 when it pays off the principle. These bonds are your money market and certificate of deposit accounts. This is how the government finances economic growth. If it hadn't put that extra money into the system, then as the population increases (as it always does) there would be too few dollars chasing too many goods. We'd have insane inflation and negative growth. Debt is necessary and it's just one side of a balance sheet. One man's debt is another man's investment."
Will the Liberals ever balance a budget (without tax increases)?
I infer that the jest of your troll is to emphasize the superiority of Republican fiscal policy over that of the Democratic policy. So with that assumption let’s look at some facts. Let’s look at the budget deficits/surpluses and the changes from year to year as a real measure of policy and the decreasing the deficit or generating a surplus is good. Increasing the deficit is bad. Further let’s assume that the president actually has significant influence so that this “assigning” of “good” and “bad” can be assigned based upon the president that “created” that budget. Therefore, this year 2017 is actually an Obama budget and 2018 will be Trumps first budget that he’d receive credit for under these assumptions.Based on the above and for the period of my lifetime ONLY (1958 forward) we can note the following:Surplus’s Generated - Democrats 5 - Republicans 0Deficit Spending Decreases - Democrats 12 - Republicans 13Deficit Spending Increases - Democrats 9 - Republicans 20No Changes - Democrats 0 - Republican 1So the Dems have 17 pluses to the Reps 13 pluses and the Dems have 9 minuses to the Reps 20 minuses. Thus the Dems are plus 8 and the Reps a Minuse 7 - a 15 year spread over a 60 year period. SIGNIFICANT???? I think so.If you repeat something often enough they become “alternative facts”. This is what has happened to the “democrats are the tax and spend party” Mantra of the republican party. The results of the budgets that have been generated over the last 60 or so years (this is my analysis so I get to determine the length and that is simply my lifespan of 1958 forward) simply do not match the mantra/alternative facts spewed forth from the republican party.I’d offer that the true fiscally conservative party is the Democratic Party.To directly answer your question Liberals (aka Democrats) have generated a budget surplus 5 times in my lifetime - Conservatives (aka Republicans) have generated a surplus 0 times in my lifetime.Below is the detail of my analysis to if you wish to attempt to refute my analysis: