Among my friends, I’m known for my frugality. I budget scrupulously, log every purchase I make in a ledger and often forego even the littlest luxuries. But according to the recently launched Government Cost Calculator on MyGovCost.org, I’m in major debt.
Thanks to unprecedented federal spending, the current $13.4 trillion national debt will grow to more than $23 trillion by 2020, according to the Congressional Budget Office. As a result, according to the Calculator, I face a lifetime tax burden of $633,835. That figure doesn’t even represent my full debt obligation — just the taxes I will likely pay based on my level of educational attainment, age and current income. A few minutes ago, I was excited to be a 22-year-old, recent college graduate with a reasonable annual salary. I’m not as excited now.
But, according to its creators at The Independent Institute, including economists Emily Skarbek and Craig D. Eyermann, that’s the whole point of the Government Cost Calculator — to wake us up.
“Few of us can relate to the billion and trillion dollar figures thrown around in Washington,” Skarbek says in an introductory video to the Calculator.
The Calculator enables taxpayers to more clearly understand the impact of federal spending — and to decide whether they’re willing to accept it.
“Amid chaotic war strategies gone wrong, bailouts with minimal results and Social Security squeezing the livelihood out of our youth, do you know how many dollars’ worth of liability you owe?” the creators of the Calculator ask in a news release. “How much are you willing to incur before you decide that enough is enough — that it is time to take stock and make a stand?”
More than $600,000 seems pretty steep to me — especially when I consider where that money will go. According to the Calculator, I’ll pay more than $150,000 into Social Security, about $150,000 into Medicare and nearly $80,000 into Medicaid. Oh — and I’ll pay nearly $90,000 in interest and about $30,000 on government administration and personnel benefits.
That last number strikes me as especially interesting because that’s about how much money staff assistants on the Hill — many of whom are just my age — make in a year. In other words, I already subsidize my government-employed peers. That seems particularly unfair when I consider that, over the course of their lifetimes, if they continue to work for the government, they’ll make about 40 percent more than me in total compensation.
The bitterest pill of all? If I could have invested my tax dollars in the stock market instead of the government, based on the average annual return rates since 1871 for a normally diversified portfolio, I would have earned more than $4 million.
Tina Korbe is a reporter in the Center for Media and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation.
