The One Chart You Need to See…

RUSH: We’re gonna have to put this chart up at RushLimbaugh.com. It’s from Business Insider, Henry Blodget.

‘Here’s The Only Chart You Need To See To Understand Why The US Is Screwed.’ You’ve seen the chart, Snerdley? This all from Saturday. ‘We’re still working our way through Kleiner Perkins’ partner Mary Meeker’s excellent analysis of the financial condition of the United States. We’ll be breaking out some key sections in the next few days. In the meantime, here’s the one chart you need to see to understand why the US is screwed. This is the ‘income statement’ of the United States in 2010. ‘Revenue’ is on the left. ‘Expenses’ are on the right. Note a few things… First, ‘Revenue’ is tiny relative to ‘Expenses.’ Second, most of the expense is entitlement programs, not defense, education, or any of the other line items that most budget crusaders normally howl about. Third, as horrifying as these charts are, they don’t even show the trends of these two pies: The ‘expense’ pie is growing like gangbusters, driven by the explosive growth of the entitlement programs that no one in government even has the balls to talk about. ‘Revenue’ is barely growing at all.’ And what is obvious as well when you look at this is that there’s no way to solely grow our way out of this. There’s gonna have to be major spending cuts in entitlements.

So what I’m gonna do here, folks, I just turned the Dittocam off while I zoom in. I’m not gonna go through the process of having you watch me zoom in. But I’m gonna zoom in on this. All right. If you’re watching on the Dittocam, here we go. As you’re looking at this, the chart on the right is expenses. The pie on the right is expenses. The pie on the left is income. Now, look at that pie on the right with the blue, orange, and red slices. Those are the entitlements: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. Expenses. The others are defense, education, a bunch of other stuff thrown in there. The point being made is that the big pie is continuing to grow. These expenses are continuing to grow, grow, grow. The income on the left, pretty soon the comparison’s gonna be the size of the earth to the moon, as it keeps going.

And they’re right. You see this and it’s all you need to see to illustrate the problem that we have and to be able to recognize that growth alone is not gonna equalize these two pies in size. It’s going to require spending cuts. Now, on the big pie, of those three, the blue, the orange, and the red, Social Security’s 20%, Medicare is 22%, Medicaid, 22%, unemployment compensation, 16%. Social Security is 20%. Twenty-two percent is Medicare and Medicaid. Unemployment compensation is — this is striking — three-fourths as big as Social Security. The amount of money we are paying people not to work as an entitlement on this chart, looked at as an entitlement, is three-fourths the size of Social Security. (interruption) Just like what? Just like Europe. Just like Europe. On the income side, individual income tax rates are 41% of all income. Social Security tax, FICA, is 40%. Corporate income tax is 9%. There’s 10% other varied sources of income.

So we’ll link to that chart, and you’ll be able to see it at RushLimbaugh.com.