What you should really fear.
Hype vs. reality, a list of things the media splashes the headlines with, and the far more risky counterpoint.
(from a old copy of Newsweek.)
(2008) Murders in US, 14180 Suicides 33,289
(1999) Children Abducted By Strangers Children drowned
in swimming pools.
115 288
(2007) Burglaries 2.2million Identity theft 8.3million
(2009) Shark Attack 28 Dog bites 4.5 million ( my favorite)
(2008) Americans killed by &n
The seasonal flu number is particularly interesting considering the publicity surrounding the swine flu this past year.
I wish we could bring this home in some way, like police contacts for legitimate railfanning activities vs. police contacts for vandalism or other crimes on railroads.
(Ed, thanks! I guess death and taxes are the inevitable things, after all! Happy Father’s Day!)
Yes, that number was a little startling, but I imagine that because we have managed to increase the average lifespan, the number of elder folks who succumb to the flu will increase also.
The CDC places the very young and the very old in the highest risk category.
The pandemic panic seems to have faded though.
I thought that suicides were included in the homicide numbers.(It certainly is not a natural cause)
How about the number of people killed in grade crossing accidents vs highway intersection collisions?
Rgds IGN
From the FRA, thru March 2010
532
http://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/officeofsafety/publicsite/Query/gxrtally1.aspx
FRA for 2005.
3064
http://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/officeofsafety/publicsite/Query/gxrtally1.aspx
From the NHTSA for 2005
39189 fatal auto accidents.
http://www.car-accidents.com/pages/fatal-accident-statistics.html
The FRA is reporting accidents only not all are fatal, the NHTSA is reporting fatalities including passengers is the autos.
This one would not qualify in the last category, but certainly qualified as on the ‘railroad/railfan related’ list of things not to do around railroads that could go wrong;
http://darwinawards.com/stupid/stupid2007-14.html
FTA: "… New Jersey) On a warm summer day, I was walking along the lake with a childhood friend. We reminisced about youthful summer days spent fishing on the lake. A railroad track runs next to the lake. We used to put pebbles and pennies on the train tracks, and take cover as the train zoomed by and annihilated the objects.
My friend is a school teacher who dabbles in photography, and as we walked, he would take various nature shots. Every fifteen minutes or so, a train would fly by. My friend was suddenly seized by a creative urge to put stones on the tracks, and take a photo as the train ran over them. An action shot, he called it…"
Found this link: http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2002-22.html
How many times have YOU knelt down to listen for a train?
Here is the statistic that I would like to see:
For every 100,000 conflicting encounters between trains and motor vehicles at grade crossings, and for every 100,000 conflicting encounters between vehicles at road intersections and junctions, how many of each set of 100,0000 conflicting encounters result in collisions?
I expect that there would be far more collisions in the grade crossing set of encounters than in the road intersection set of encounters.
Yet logic might suggest the opposite because trains are easy to see and they blow their horn. I wonder if anybody has ever compiled that statistic.
Since someone mentioned taxes…
If you were a resident of my state, Minnesota, and filing single with a Federal Taxable Income of $40000:
Your taxes in 1995: $8172 federal, $2884 state.
Your taxes in 2009: $6194 federal, $2437 state.
Interesting how many people you hear who seem terrified that “big government” is swallowing more and more of their income in taxes now compared to “the good old days”.
[:)]
What rates are these? Single, Head of Household, Married filing jointly, etc.
What is not factored into this supposed decrease in taxes is the inflation factor of 14 years. 40,000 for a couple or family in 2009 is going to be in a lower tax bracket because it is a lot closer to the bottom tier of income than it was in 1995.
Now, what would be interesting is the tax amount of those earning $200,000+ in 1995 vs 2009. Most of our nation’s tax income is riding on the back of these payers.
Jay—before you ask, no I am not one of them.
You can’t compare 1995 dollars to 2009 dollars without adjusting for the decline in the value of the dollar. Look at the government percentage of GDP if you want to know what I’m concerned about. Not “terrified”, but concerned.
If you adjust for the decline in the value of the dollar then the relative taxes fall more. And what are you adjusting the value of the dollar relative to, the Yuan, the Euro, the Swiss Franc, or basket of what commodities?
You’re way to low on your taxes –
Add 6.75% your contribution to Social Security — $2,700 a direct tax
Add 6.75% your employer’s contribution to SS — $2,700 an indirect tax
Add Medicare tax at 3.5% — $1,400 a direct tax
Taxes not counted as taxes $6,800
AND, if you want to compare the 1995 US tax rate of 27.46% with the 40% of Italy (horrible you say), you must add in:
Your medical insurance cost of &nbs
Here, try this:
http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
It measures the buying power of the dollars earned. That’s what counts in the quality of life for the people.
A person earning $40,000 in 1995 would need to earn $56,300 in 2009 to have the same buying ability.
So to be meaningful you would need to take the tax bite on 40K in 1995 and compare it to the bite on 56.3K in 2009. You can’t do 40 to 40 and get a meaningful result. That’s what I said and I stand by what I said.
To quote your post: “The biggest portion of the US budget goes for war, not to it’s people.”
If one looks at spending by our government by comparing how much of GDP goes for “war” or defense uses you will find that we spend more on education.
Please forgive my negative viewpoint, but after spending twenty years as a public school teacher I believe we are getting a much better deal from our military then we are from the educational system. The level of education a student receives today is deplorable. (At least our military has managed to keep us safe from further 9/11-like attacks.) What has the education system done with the trillion dollars that was spent in 2010? Not much, I’m afraid. Today, the typical student can’t communicate clearly in written form, or read a classical piece of literature, but they know all about Brad Pitt and all the other entertainers and pop-culture icons.
To better explain my point, the military does not account for anywhere near the amount of GDP that is spent on education and the myriad of other social programs, or better yet: entitlements, that seem to sprout up like weeds in a farmer’s field. I believe that America spends about 4 to 5% Of GDP on defense.
As an aside, and please forgive me for saying so, but I wouldn’t be using Italy as an example of a well run nation. I’m glad you enjoy living there, as I know that it is a beautiful country, but, again, with all of its financial troubles, primarily caused by excessive spending on social programs, the day of financial reckoning is not far away.
Best regards.
According to the C.I.A. (and if we can’t trust them…), the United States ranks 25th in percent of GDP that is spent on military. I will admit that I was rather surprised that the percentage was so low! https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2034rank.html
The same source also indicates that the US has by far the most railroad mileage than any other country–we’re #1! Indeed, we have as many rail miles as #2 (Russia) #3 (China) & #4 (India) combined.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2121rank.html
Well said!
Umm – am I missing something here? What does the Federal BUDGET have to do with GDP?? I’m not an economist or anything close, but I fail to see why people are equating a budget amount with production or sales in the private sector. Does the FEDS spend more money on education than defense? Looking at some of the replies it seems so, although I hardly doubt it. Where are the FEDERAL schools outside of the military academies? The last time I looked they were on the state and local budgets and private donations, not on the Federal budget unless there are matching funds involved. A quick look on Wikapedia shows that 23% of the budget goes for defense, or $782 billion, the largest single block of cash there. Education isn’t even listed at all.
As for Italy, I’ve lived in the US for 62 years and here for only 5. However, I still stand by my original premise – that the largest block of the US’s budget goes to the military, not to social programs. I probably used the wrong phrasing, but that is what I meant.
Borrring! I hear this liberal stuff about our country behind Europe on the major media all day long and its enough. This is the greatest country in the world, bar none.
What does this discussion have to do with trains? Give it a break.
While taxes are one measure of quality of life, evaluating them is somewhat like looking at the trees and not seeing the forest. The big picture is government spending because it includes taxes in the future as well as the present.
There was a time when U.S. military spending was a relatively large budget item, but I think those days are behind us with the rounds of federal spending since the fall of 2008. The combination of financial bailouts, the GM bailout, the stimulus package, and the bailouts of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae has reached totals that seem to go beyond mere numbers, and have turned federal spending into an abstract concept.
The current G8 economic summit is finding a disagreement between the two opposing philosophies of stimulus spending and deficit reduction. The U.S. is pursuing the former philosophy. National leaders who believe that the latter philosophy is the way out of economic peril are worried that the U.S., by attempting to spend its way into prosperity, is going collapse its economy and bring down their smaller economies in the process.