President Obama has just signed a $790+ billion “stimulus” package for the economy, but do you really believe that will actually help our local economy (or just make government bigger, increase the debt and put more burden than ever on the rest of us)?

If you want to see where the money is being spent (your share of the $2,600 per capita increase in the federal debt) for the “Economic Stimulus Bill” read the following summary:

• Senate Final Stimulus Bill Summary

Articles:
• Oregon Governor Targets Federal Stimulus Dollars
• Senate Stimulus Bill

Your fair share?

The State of Oregon will have to compete for it’s share of the $30 billion slated for the states. At last count Jackson County was slated to receive only $400,000 of that money.

Since the federal debt is increasing at $2,600 per capita for this single expenditure alone (that’s a future obligation for each individual in the country, every man, woman and child), wouldn’t it be a better idea to organize our own local capital and resources to provide for our own needs instead of relying on government to do this for us?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to stop relying on the federal government to bail us out, and start doing this ourselves?

So let’s do the math.

According to the 2006 census Jackson County has a population of 197,071 (updated to 198,615 according to recent statistics on the county website). In effect each of us in Jackson County owes an additional $2,600 to the Federal Reserve Bank (or roughly $520,000,000 given a population of 200,000). That’s a lot of money theoretically leaving Jackson County (if indeed the Fed ever called in the debt).

If each of us in Jackson County had the ability (and the desire) to pool our own local capital of $2,600 per capita and funded our own developments and capital projects (instead of the trickle down effect from Washington DC), we’d have a capital fund in excess of $520,000,000 (that’s right millions of dollars, five times the annual budget of the City of Ashland) instead of a mere trickle down of $400,000 from the Economic Stimulus Plan.

Something is terribly wrong with this economic picture.

• Problem 1 is we cannot create money out of thin air the way the government and banks do.
• Problem 2 is government spending at this magnitude will not only increase the debt per capita, but devalue the currency (meaning you’ll get less bang for the buck, in effect less purchasing power). This will make the economy worse, not better for most of the people.

Yet all those smart people in Washington DC (and a few newly elected) don’t seem to understand the consequences of such spending for the rest of us. You get my drift?

Now, it’s up to us to do something about it.

How can we refocus our efforts to the LOCAL AND REGIONAL community? What positive and hopeful visions and projects would you like to bring to the table and invest your time, effort, energy and resources (including money)?

U.S. Public Debt

The United States total public debt, commonly called the national debt, or U.S. government debt, is the amount of money owed by the federal government of the United States to holders of U.S. debt instruments. Debt held by the public is all federal debt held by states, corporations, individuals, and foreign governments, but does not include intragovernmental debt obligations or debt held in the Social Security Trust Fund. Types of securities held by the public include, but are not limited to, Treasury Bills, Notes, Bonds, TIPS, United States Savings Bonds, and State and Local Government Series securities.[1]

As of February 12, 2009, the total U.S. federal debt was $10.76 trillion [2], or about $37,703 per capita. Of this amount, debt held by the public was roughly $6.45 trillion.[3] In 2007, the public debt was 36.8 percent of GDP [4], with a total debt of 65.5 percent of GDP.[5] The CIA Factbook ranked the total percentage as 23rd in the world.[6]

Public debt is the amount owed by the government to its creditors, whether they are nationals or foreigners. External debt is the debt of all sectors of the economy (public and private), owed to foreigners. In the U.S., foreign ownership of the public debt is a significant part of the nation’s external debt. The Bureau of the Public Debt, a division of the Department of the Treasury, calculates the amount of money owed by the national government on a daily basis.[7][8][9][10] Source: U.S. Public Debt

The estimated population of the United States is 305,670,162 so each citizen’s share of this debt is $35,252.68. Source: U.S. Debt Clock