Fat Cats

I have a confession to make. . . I absolutely LOVE to eat! I like to grow food . . . I like to cook food and best of all . . . I like to EAT food. I like Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Italian, Greek, Hawaiian, American, and even British food. There’s almost no type of food I don’t like. Food is energy. Food is comfort. Food can be given as gifts. Food is culture. Food is entertainment.

Butt, there’s a problem . . . I gain weight . . . it’s a recurring battle. I don’t usually try fad diets, because I like to eat a variety of foods (see above paragraph :). What works for me to lose weight is counting calories. I’ve done it so much that I can glance at a plate of food and tell you its count within 50 calories. For this reason, I don’t fool myself by saying I’m gaining weight because I’m getting OLDer. I KNOW how much I’m eating, and it’s more than I need! My sister showed a web site to me that gives calories for thousands of food items. It’s www.FitDay.com. On the website you can graph your calories as well as protein, carbs and fat. When I saw that my fat consumption percentage looked like Pac-Man, I changed my snack habits!

We all know what it really takes to lose weight . . . eating less, exercising more, enough sleep, some willpower, and the patience of a Chilean miner.

How MUCH more do you need to exercise? It depends on how much you’re eating.

Like sweets?
Snickers Bar, 280 calories . . . . . . . . . . 45 minutes of jogging
Chocolate cake, 400 calories . . . . jog for over an hour

Like Pizza?
Meat Lover’s Pan Pizza, 3 slices, 990 calories . . . . . jog for about TWO HOURS!

Like to drink?
Two glasses of wine, 300 calories . . . bike for 45 minutes
A restaurant margarita, 540 calories . . . bike for an HOUR and 20 minutes

“Knowledge is Power”. . . so knowing the calories IN your food . . . and the time it takes to BURN those calories . . . can make it easier to NOT eat extra calories in the first place.

Spending is the same way.

A new 50 inch HD flat-screen TV . . . . work for over two and a half weeks (at minimum wage).

A new truck . . . . . work nearly a THOUSAND hours (at middle class income).

It’s easier not to SPEND it in the first place!

Middle income is between $40,000 and $95,000 annually, making the middle-middle $67,500. The two U.S. “stimulus packages” in 2008 and 2009 totaled nearly 950 billion dollars. To pay for it (at 2009 tax rates) the government needs the taxes from over 100 TRILLION hours* by those middle-middle taxpayers . . . but since most people have deductions on their taxes, it’s probably double that number of hours.

That’s JUST for the stimuli . . . not for anything else the government spends. Our government borrowed money to give a “stimulus” on the theory that spending would invigorate the economy. If so, what happens with the reverse is true, and money is taken FROM the economy to pay back the money BORROWED for the stimulus?

It’s easier to NOT EAT the candy than to burn it off. It’s easier to NOT SPEND money than to earn it back, or pay it back with interest.

We need some fiscal Jenny Craigs in Congress.

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*Income taxes on $67,500 is almost $20,000, without deductions. An annual salary of $67,500 is $32.45 per hour. Income tax takes out 29% (not counting social security). This means the government gets over $9 an hour from each of those worker-hours. Divide that into 950 billion and that comes to over a TRILLION middle-class-worker-hours.

Some say taxes should be raised on the rich, not the middle class. Here’s an article that actually recommends raising taxes on the rich. If you read it thoroughly (to the end) you will see the author says:

“. . . the hit to the weathly [sic] won't make that much of a dent in our national debt . . . but you have to start somewhere. . . . . even if tax hikes on the rich don't generate that much revenue they are important symbolic gesture.”

So . . . I ask . . . if raising taxes on the rich won’t make a dent, and raising taxes on them is just a “start” . . . where will they have to go to raise taxes?

There is ample historical evidence that lowering certain tax rates actually brings in MORE. However, some people in charge don’t care about bringing in more money for government programs, they care more about their idea of “fairness” which actually reduces revenues collected. Again, I ask . . . if they can’t amass enough from upper income folks for new spending programs, where are they going to get the revenues needed?

Don’t be fooled into thinking they can pay for all their new entitlement programs by “soaking the rich.” They can’t . . . it’s a bait-and-switch.
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Photo is from one of my favorite web sites, "LOL Cats."

Want a good pre-Halloween scare? Check out the US Debt clock: http://www.usdebtclock.org.