The Major Leagues vs Congress

Trust, money and power put into perspective.

Q: What are the reasons for the resistance against increasing taxes, despite the ability of the wealthy to afford it in the USA?

A: It’s really simple.

Be honest and ask yourself the following question. Who do you trust more? Your NFL team, or your Congress? Now I understand that you might live in Cleveland and it’s an unfair question. But I also know that Cleveland fans hate Pittsburgh fans, and they honestly wish that the Browns would beat the Steelers every time. On the other hand, forget the NFL and think LeBron, you know, back in the day.

Here’s my point. If your NFL team were to win the Super Bowl ten years in a row. It would be worth maybe 20 billion dollars. That’s twice as much a the Cowboys today, and they are the biggest franchise. But let’s say you were the owner of the Yankees, the Dodgers, the Red Sox, the Warriors, the Knicks, the Lakers, the Rams and the Cowboys. All those teams together are still worth maybe 70 Billion on a good day. And really, that’s throwing in Taylor Swift and Beyonce for the hell of it.

Seventy Five Billion, period.

Now let’s talk about Congress, which has the power to tax.

In 2023, Congress passed 12 regular appropriations bills as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, totaling approximately $1.7 trillion in discretionary spending. This includes $858 billion in defense spending and $800 billion in non-defense spending. Additionally, Congress also passed other supplemental appropriations, such as the $21 billion emergency supplemental funding to address public health and other urgent needs. The overall package represents an increase in funding compared to the previous year, addressing a wide array of sectors, including defense, public health, climate change, and infrastructure .

One Trillion Seven Hundred Billion.

So let’s just pretend that Congress wanted to increase taxes just 4% and just for one year. That would be, classs..?

Very good, Bueller. $68 billion. Now obviously I’m just talking about the Feds. Not the states. But in one year the Federal government has the power to buy up all of the major teams in all of the major leagues, plus Beyonce and Taylor Swift. Are you starting to get an idea of how much power that is? And do you trust Congress more than the NFL, NBA, MLB and our biggest pop stars put together?

Oh wait. I forgot. That’s just discretionary spending. I wasn’t including mandatory spending.

In total, mandatory spending is typically around two-thirds of the federal budget. For fiscal year 2023, the total mandatory spending was projected to be around $3.8 trillion, making it the largest portion of the federal budget by far.

So really we’re talking about a total federal outlay of $5.5 trillion.

Five Trillion Five Hundred Billion.

That’s not net worth. That’s every year. When you’re a billionaire, you know, like Beyonce or Taylor Swift, you have spent your entire life to earn and keep that kind of net worth. The Federal government does five thousand times that much in income every year. That’s taxpayer money. That’s our money.

So how much power does Congress have? Enormous power. Not just power to tax and spend, but to change the law on what it’s legal to do in America. For that we pay taxes. That’s the rent for living in America. So how much do you trust Congress? Are they keeping up the property? Should they raise the rent? Should we just give them more power and money? Can we afford it? Do we have a choice? Yes. Actually we do.