76-16-B8

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Quiz

Transcript The READERS DIGEST recently printed a quiz by Ralph Kinney Bennett and, of course, provided the answers. Good thing, too, because there would have otherwise been a great many frustrated readers. I'm sure Mr. Bennett won't mind if I paraphrase his questions for brevity's sake and try them on you. To start with, which of the following items is the fastest growing cost item in the family budget; food, fuel, housing or something else? The answer is "something else", and the "something else" is government. In 10 years, the cost of living has gone up 40 per cent; taxes have risen 65 per cent. Question Number Two. Total government spending (federal, state and local) per household is close to 3,000, 5,000, 7,500 dollars? It's that third figure - 7,838 dollars -- to be exact -- for each household in the land. Question Three. The money government takes from one citizen to give to another -- redistribution of earnings? Is it one-fifth of the budget, one-third or one-half or impossible to determine? You are right if you settled for "half". It has increased 56 per cent in the last three years and now is 218 billion dollars -- a little more than half. There is so much talk about this next one I'm sure most of you will get it. The National debt -- the amount government spends over and above what it takes in -- is it 50 billion dollars, going down from the 200 billion it reached in the Viet Nam war; no debt at all; or more than 500 billion dollars? The answer. It's on its way to 600 billion dollars at a rate of one billion dollars a week. Listen carefully to this one. Mr. Bennett asks if the interest on the national debt has more than tripled in the last 10 years; or is equal to the combined budgets of California, New York, Michigan and Ohio, or is it more than double the total budget of the Department of Agriculture? Ready? The correct answer is yes to all three.. It has gone from 12 billion dollars in 1966 to 38 billion dollars today. It is the third largest item in the national budget right after domestic assistance and defense, and, at the present rate of increase, will reach 50 billion dollars in two years. The next one is a True or False. The Federal government has no significant outstanding financial commitments beyond those listed as part of the national debt? Quick, say false! I haven't time to list them all, but from TVA to social security almost a dozen other obligations of the Federal government amount to more than three trillion dollars, over and above the national debt. Another true or false was a statement that government borrowing has no effect on borrowing by private citizens and, of course, the answer is that government takes about half the capital we need for mortgages, buying used cars, and so forth. Mr. Bennett also asked if federal spending has grown faster, slower, or at least at about the same rate as our Gross National Product which has increased 275 per cent in the last 20 years? The answer. Federal spending has increased 400 per cent and state and local governments, 520 per cent. I haven't time for all the questions in the quiz, but one more had to do with the number of public employees, not counting military. Is it one out of 30 working Americans, one out of 17, one out of nine, or one out of six? The last is correct. Actually, the ratio is four and one-half private employees to one public employee. Have a nice day! This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 76-16-B8 Production Date 07/06/1977 Book/Page RPtV-179 Audio Youtube? No
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