Fun with Numbers!

A recent article on Cracked.com has shown me that much more can be explained by numbers than I previously knew. It turns out:

1. Ass judging is not subjective, and I can now prove that you have a sick ass if given enough time to inspect and calculate.
2. My, what some label "chronic and excessive," drinking isn't actually impacting my vision of the women to the extent that most speculate.
3. Happiness is an equation, and I got a "D" in calculus, explaining the depression.

But after I got done laughing and playing with numbers, I read a few numbers (and number like constructs) that weren't as happy.

14%. That is the current approval rating of Congress according to CNN. Gallup's poll from December 2010 actually had it more like 13%. This means that if you live in a small family (like mine) it is actually statistically more likely that none of you like Congress than even one of you like Congress. I've been assured that this number really doesn't matter though, because it hasn't been better than 50% in forever (almost not a joke), certainly not as long as I've been alive, and voter turnout in non-presidential election years is still sputtering in at around 37%, so Congress is sure that we will bitch but never actually get off our asses and spend five minutes to vote, let alone revolt.

3 Trillion Dollars. This is what might be cut depending on what "Super Committee" (who drops the name Super Congress?) decides. There is approximately 1 trillion up front, and then Super Committee might drop up to two more, or Congress gets to fuck everyone else pretty hard. Oh, the national debt is over $14 trillion. And these cuts aren't from that, they're from the debt that we're building up yearly, so in reality all they've done is take our rocket ship and turn it into an F-18.

93.09 Million Dollars. That's how much tax money goes to paying members of Congress this year. That's actually a low-ball figure, since I just took the money made by a normal member of Congress and multiplied it by 535 (how many Congressman there are). Whips, party leaders, and members on committees get different amounts of money. Also, they get healthcare and a pension, something most people don't get, especially since the economy has tanked. Speaking of which...

AA+. Not shitting you, this is the new credit rating of the United States. Not necessarily a number, but as ridiculous as any grade. This actually comes after we finished setting up a plan. I'd like to quote what Standard and Poors (S&P) thinks of our leaders:

"The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy."

...at least I'm not alone in my beliefs. Oh, but the only change is the Dow Jones tanking. Unsourced statement, but I feel like I saw somewhere that it did.

$1.25/day. International poverty line. In other countries you are expected to be able to survive on $1.25 a day. In the U.S., a single person is supposed to live on just over $10k, and a family of four is just over $22k. Remember, your local Congressman makes almost 10x as much as a four person family at the poverty line does!

Thank God for Democracy!