Let's do the MTS, since its now out for the entire fiscal year.

First, on gross spending: Federal total spending was $6,751,552 million, a 10.6% increase from last year.  Those who claim that "spending has been held to the previous level" are lying; the previous year was $6,134,526.  It not only was higher it skyrocketed and this is a direct 10.6% increase that either comes from inflation or taxes.

So how about taxes?

Well, this year they totaled $4,918,736 million, a 10.8% increase from last year.  So guess what -- you were taxed ridiculously more too, and thus yeah, it came straight out of your pocket.

Surprised?  Guess who sets the amount of every single tax?  Congress.  Your congressperson, to be specific, and your two Senators.  All of them decided and executed on screwing you blind to the tune of a 10.8% increase.  Now some got more of it and some less, but that's the number across everyone.

Incidentally taxes assessed on "corporations" are actually paid by the customers, and that's you so spare me the "fair share" nonsense as the larger and richer the corporation (e.g. WalMart) the more-likely it came straight out of your wallet.

The total deficit (that is, spending minus revenue) was $1,833,816 million, an increase of about 7.5% from last year.  Note that this is directly inflationary; every dollar the government spends must either be borrowed or taxed and the rate of change from last year to this year was about 7.5%.  Thus anyone trying to claim that "inflation was 2%" is full of it; the government is in fact deliberately imposing a roughly 7.5% inflation rate on you and again Congress is the source of every single dollar of it and thus personally and individually responsible.

Politicians love to claim that Social Security is "bankrupting" things or will be "protected" at all costs, especially when in a political campaign.  But in point of fact FICA, the tax in question, though it has two parts if you look at it carefully enough funds both Social Security and CMS -- Medicare and Medicaid.  Medicaid is not funded at all technically but is in the same department and thus it is only fair to count it as part of that which is not paid for since that too is a voluntary matter on the part of Congress.

The MTS does not make breaking these out part of its remit due to the split (on/off budget) nature but the data is trivially dissected, so let's do that.

The total Social Insurance and Retirement receipts less unemployment and "other retirement" (e.g. Railroads) was $1,652,998 million.  We know the FICA tax rate is 15.3%; if you are a W2 employee you have half of that deducted (the rest is paid by the employer and legally cannot be shown on your check stub, however you in fact pay it because otherwise you'd get it in cash.)  If you're self-employed you have to pay both pieces.  We also know that the Medicare rate is 2.9%.  Social Security caps off but Medicare does not, and the good news is that we can take these from the MTS and add them.

Social Security receipts were $1,265,154 million.  The rest of the $1,652,998 is Medicare tax, more or less (there is a bit of cross-year adjustment that takes place) but this means that CMS gets $386,858 million in funding.  You'll see why this matters in a minute -- yes, that's all the money taken in for CMS via taxes.

So what gets spent?  Well, Social Security retirement is $1,304,397 billion (including $5,860 million to railroaders) and disability payments were $156,511 million (including administrative costs) for a total of $1,460,908 million.

Social Security, on a cash deficit basis, was 86.6% funded.

In other words it ran a roughly 13% cash operating deficit.  If we raised the 6.2% tax to 7% that would entirely close the gap.  That's right, if we did that the program would be cash-neutral with no other changes.  We could also lift the cap somewhat and do the same thing, or some blend of the two.  Those who say we cannot protect Social Security are lying, and further, as the Boomers die the benefit payments will fall off; I'm on the tail end of it and I'm 61 so that fall-off will be beginning soon and within the next 20 or so years it will be basically complete since as an actuarial matter most Boomers will be dead.

SOCIAL SECURITY IS NOT THE PROBLEM; IT IS QUITE-TRIVIALLY ADDRESSED AND IN FACT IT IS ENTIRELY POSSIBLE THAT THE "KNEE" POINT WILL BE REACHED AND THUS SAID PAYMENTS WILL START TO DECLINE BEFORE THE EXISTING BOND PORTFOLIO IT HOLDS IS EXHAUSTED.

So why all the screaming?

Because nobody wants to take on CMS, which is where the problem is.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spent a staggering $2,222,161 million last year.  Remember, they only took in $386,858 million in offsetting tax receipts so on a cash basis they are only 17.1% funded!

In fact $1,835,303 million of the Federal Deficit came directly out of CMS.  

Wait a second.... the total deficit was $1,833,816!

In other words literally all of the deficit is in this one program.

All of it.

The entire problem resides here and its even worse than the MTS propounds because Medicaid, which is part of CMS, is a federal/state program and only part of the expense is captured in the MTS; the rest is in State spending and again there is no tax against which said spending resides at the State level either.

Plenty of people are hollering about interest expense and yes, on a gross basis that crossed $1 trillion this year.  There is an offset in that some of it is against the bonds held by Medicare and Social Security, that is equivalent to taking a $20 from one pocket and putting it in the other and thus is properly accounted for that way, since the funds are owed within the government itself.  Nonetheless the reason that interest expense keeps going up is the operating deficit which has to be financed, that financing is immediately and directly inflationary and all of it is in CMS.

I've been raising a stink about the progression of this problem all the way back to the 1990s when I first identified it while running MCSNet.  The only way to reverse it is to neuter the medical monopolies and radically drop costs.  Leverage included  an entire section on this and this article, which expands on that greatly (along with the follow-up on what implementation could look like which is a link at the bottom) would cut said expenditures by roughly 80%.

A commensurate cut in spending would occur in the private economy.  This would be very disruptive in the short term but it would also work through and resolve the budget problem and debt issues over the intermediate term.  Doing so would, after the adjustment took place (and yes, asset prices would reset downward -- by quite a lot in some cases) result in a flood back into the US of both manufacturing and service jobs because the imputed tax from both inflation and this insane cost, which every person in the US bears along with every employer, would be dramatically reduced.

Roughly a decade ago I had the opportunity to present the forward projection -- which has been nearly 100% accurate now for the last 30 years and continues to be, to Senate staffers for a few minutes.  They all knew already; I was not breaking news to them.  The implication of course was that due to the pressure groups and lobbying with no effective pushback by the citizens in the other direction they were not going to act as they feared losing their jobs in the next election.

It would have been easier and less-disruptive to deal with this 30 years ago -- then 20, and then 10.

We didn't.

Obamacare was an attempt to paper over this but it was doomed to fail because the underlying issue was not "insurance" (in quotes because medical "insurance" isn't; you can't insure a house against fire if it is already on fire) it is cost and without taking a chainsaw to that, and the only sane way to do that is to enforce 100+ year old anti-monopoly laws across the board with criminal penalties, not fines, you cannot control cost.  Small incremental changes will do nothing because of the magnitude of the problem and how long it has been permitted to continue, never mind that all the "claimed" changes by every Administration back to Obamacare and then forward have done nothing to change the trajectory no matter who is in office.  Biden and Harris' game-playing with Medicaid is making it worse but that is not the root of the issue either; it is literally everywhere within the medical system.

If this is not stopped on an immediate basis, not with empty promises to be "enacted over 10 years" as has always been the case up until now, the collapse of hospital systems and medical care generally is assured.

Time's up.

Starlink, specifically.

I've spent the last while driving through a lot of very-rural areas.  These are places where the average home is a trailer or a rather-poor condition and older home; the people there do not have much money.

$120/mo is too much.  And on the poles out there I am seeing fiber being pulled but not yet terminated, so this opportunity will wind up being filled that way and thus to compete with it you have to be cheaper on a long-term basis.

Starlink might be able to do that if it pencils; I do not know if it does.

Consider the current $50 "roam" 50GB package.  Too expensive.  But a $30/mo offering limited to 50Mbps, with a $5/mo permitting not-while-moving roaming add-on that can be added and dropped as desired (e.g. "take it with you to the next apartment, rental or on the road in your cheap RV or even car if you get evicted, but you can't use it while moving) would sell and it would remain viable once the glass shows up.

It will never beat the glass but a lot of people in that situation find the difference between $350/year and $600/yr to be enough to make the difference between "I can afford it" and "I can't."

People in the middle class and above don't think this way but the person living off Dollar General and EBT do.  $20-30/mo is a couple of cheap 12-packs of beer, some smokes or a couple of packs of gummies or pre-rolls full of THC and yeah, at that margin it matters.

The question is whether it pencils.  You have to keep it from being attractive to the guy who has the money to pay the $120, and limiting throughput to 50mbps does that.  But -- its enough for an SD stream or two, all the web browsing and Youtube or similar on an inexpensive computer.  It will definitely not do the job for content download, gaming and similar things but those people aren't in that market and restricting it so it can't be used that way means those who can afford the better service will buy it and you won't cannibalize the higher end of the market.

This is one of the puzzlers that I have with Elon and many of his offerings.  He walks right past market opportunities like this which makes no sense unless his goods and services simply can't be sold at an operating margin that works within those price points.

If it can't then Starlink is a niche product that increasingly gets crowded out as fiber deployment expands and all the electric utilities are pulling glass along with their wires for their own telemetry.  It is faster and impervious to most damage other than physical destruction including by lightning where CATV is not, and in addition it requires repeaters at longer increments and with less power consumption.

Now this won't apply in some other nations -- but I bet it does within the EU and other industrialized nations as well -- and that's where people have higher per-capita incomes necessary to pay those higher bills.

Within the next five to ten years from what I am seeing all over the place as I travel most rural electric customers will have this option.  The places I saw on this last trip where it obviously being deployed but not yet finished were astounding to me.  We're talking about very remote rural places -- and the utilities are putting in large loops of "reserve" so when there's damage such a tree taking out electric lines in a storm they can fix it with no splices back to the next repeater or distribution block.

This of course makes sense because the actual glass itself is quite cheap while the rest is not.

Nobody's going to pay $120/mo for service when the competitor is $50-60 and symmetrical gigabit where Starlink is ~200mbps down and asymmetrical.  This is the same problem the cable operators have; as the power companies do this they're in trouble because their 200/10 or 400/10 service for $80-100/mo is uncompetitive against 1g/1g for $50-60.  Starlink can't match the price and win because of the hardware requirement and its not competitive on price/performance for the "full" service either, so it has to be somewhat cheaper and enough so that it bites into the marginal money available to lower-income people or within the next few years all that's left is marine, roaming and the few who are truly off-grid in the US, which is damn few of the general population.

Expecting more rate cuts?

Well, now both the CPI and employment report say you're nuts.

Now the markets say yes -- and in fact they already have with the IRX (13 week bill) trading at 4.53% right now.  So in point of fact the markets, which always drive rates (not The Fed), are indeed trading below Fed Funds.

Worse, the TNX, the 10 year, is still trading at 4.1% this morning meaning the 13/10 year is still deeply inverted.

Now add into this not one but two serious storms and the damage they have caused -- which of course will spike demand for all manner of things.  Have we forgotten the most-basic economic equation, MV = PQ?

Well guess what -- you're about to learn it again because it certainly appears nobody in the Executive has even heard of it.

Self-rescue.

How many times do you need to see it before you believe it?

People don't take these threats seriously and then they get either seriously harmed or die.  The good news is that technology and warning have both seriously improved in the last 100 years; those who are killed by a natural disaster are down huge, 90% or more, over the last 100 years.

Hurricanes, for example, were many times detected only on approach and thus by the time you knew there was serious trouble coming it was too late to do much in advance.  There were a huge number of them that nobody knows about at all because other than a hapless ship that wandered too close nobody ever saw the "fish spinners."  Today we have satellites and thus anything incipient is known when it starts; this is an enormously good thing.

But there are many disasters that give little or no warning.  That it was going to rain a lot in the path of Helene was known; that a cold front was going to drop the sort of moisture it did in front of it into many of the mountain areas was not accurately forecast nor could it be.  But -- that it was raining heavily in the two days previous was certainly something you could take note of.  The "set up" for what happened is very similar to what occurred in 1916 -- and so was the outcome.  Similarly we can tell when there's a risk of tornadoes in a given area today but not exactly where one will form or strike.  Earthquakes are, with few exceptions, 100% no-warning events.  You can determine you live in a seismic zone (e.g. New Madrid, San Andreas, etc.) but there is no way to know when the event will occur.

Many people believe that a "100 year flood" only happens every 100 years.  False, but even if it was true how long ago was 1916?  Uh, yeah.  No, a "100 year flood" means that there is a one percent chance each year and each trial, that is, each year, is independent just as is a coin toss and thus that one year did or did not have a flood has no bearing on whether the next year will.  To be more-accurate (I fat-fingered this originally, so this is corrected) you have a 99% chance per-year it won't flood.  So if you live in a place that has a "100 year flood" risk over a 30 year mortgage there is a 73.97% chance you will not get flooded -- and a 26% chance you will.  If you do get flooded in year 10 the risk of it happening again over the next 20 is about 18%.

That's right -- you have a one in four risk of getting hosed over 30 years of living somewhere under that threat and if you do get hit in year ten you have an approximately one in five-and-a-half risk of getting nailed again over the next 20 years if you stay!

By the way if you're in a place considered a five hundred year flood area the odds aren't much better; its 99.8% likely per year you will not flood but cumulatively, over 30 years you still have about a six percent risk of getting screwed.  You probably think you are almost-certainly safe because 1 in 500 would put such events at least five human lives apart and thus "it ain't gonna happen."  You're wrong.

These are mathematical facts.

Second, when and if it happens the help, whatever it, will go to the highest-density places first.  It has to because all resources are finite and thus the correct move is always to help the most people fastest and first.  This is the way triage is and its not cruel or anything of the sort; it is simply doing the best for the most you can with what you have available.  But do not mistake the fact that those resources will go there means you want to be there; if there are one million people in an area you're one in a million and if only 100,000 can be helped you have a 1 in 10 chance of getting that assistance.  90% of the time you still go without and while the more-isolated place might not get any help for two weeks if you're in the 90% it doesn't matter, does it?

Concentrate your efforts on the basics of human need because in a disaster that's what matters most and expect even in a population area to be able to self-provide for at least a week.  The first and most-basic human need is air; if you can't breathe it you're dead.  Fires and toxins are real risks, but they're also ones that when it comes to breathable air your best option is to run at the first hint of trouble no matter where you are.

Second is drinkable water.  Assuming you are not inordinately stressed you might make three days.  You're probably worthless in two days and children are more susceptible to serious dehydration because their skin area is larger on a percentage basis, so they typically cannot make it past two days and are effectively useless in one day.  Do not expect help to reach you under any circumstance until roughly that amount of time and perhaps more.  Even with "local" relief that ignores exhortations to not go help personally (like here after Helene) it still will take that long because until people can get in there that's just how it is.

Any allegedly "fresh" water source after a disaster has to be presumed contaminated and unsafe unless you have the means to treat it, and there are chemical contamination risks that cannot be reasonably mitigated in a disaster situation at all with water at ground level.  If you have a traditional hot water heater and your home or other residence is physically intact you have somewhere around 50 gallons of usable water in it.  It should still be filtered with a Sawyer and/or treated with Aquamira drops (yes, buy both well in advance!) before consumption, particularly after a few days, but it will not be full of contaminants because it was full of clean water when the system went down.  Keep a short hose around for this purpose and make sure you turn off the electrical or gas feed so once you start using it when water is restored it does not "dry fire."  If you do not have any source of stored water (e.g. you have a tankless system and didn't fill anything in advance) then bottled water is your next and last resort.  Everyone needs to be prepared to deal with this all the time; even if you're on a private well if there's no power the pump won't work (more on that in a minute.)

Third is personal shelter from elements, which includes clothing and similar.  Enough to be out of the wind and elements (e.g. rain, etc.) is frequently enough but not always.  Being wet, particularly in wind, can nail you with hypothermia even in moderately cool temperatures and in colder temperatures it is rapidly deadly.  Some of this is beyond your control and if your housing is destroyed in adverse circumstances securing from that problem is, after immediate threats (e.g. incoming flash flooding) your first priority.  Tools of some description, all the way down to a pocket knife, make a difference -- perhaps a really big difference.  Having some preparation against this (e.g. a shell rain jacket, disposable space blankets, etc.) is inexpensive and everyone should have at least some elements of that available at any time.

The last utter essential is personal protection.  It would be nice if people didn't try to take advantage but some will.  Remember that the option to accept a "lesser injury" does not exist when there is no prompt medical care available, and there won't be in this situation.  Exactly what you choose to do in this regard is a personal choice and I won't go into it on this side of the blog but it is critical to remember that any significant injury can trivially wind up being fatal if you can't get medical attention for a day or two.

The rest is very situational but these first points are not.

Expect communications by "ordinary means" to be unavailable.  This time around Starlink worked when nothing else did -- if you had power available.  No power?  You're still screwed.  And don't kid yourself as to the requirements either; those units require quite a bit of juice, about 100 watts which is non-trivial.

Note that in an actual emergency where ordinary communications (e.g. your cellphone) are unavailable any means of transmission, on any frequency, is legal to summon aid to prevent the imminent loss of either life or property.  One of the cheapest means of doing this is any of the HAM-capable Beofeng radios -- the model 5RM is one of the better options, but hardly the only one, they are entirely portable and can charge over USB.  They are not, however, waterproof -- there are major-manufacturer ones (e.g. ICOM) that are up to and including being submersible but they're a lot more expensive.  Note that while listening is always legal without any sort of license at all it is illegal (and the FCC means it) to transmit on Ham bands without at least (for these) a Technicians license -- however in an actual emergency where serious and imminent threat to life or property exists and regular communications are unavailable it is lawful to use anything you can manage to talk to anyone on any frequency.  

§ 97.403 Safety of life and protection of property.
No provision of these rules prevents the use by an amateur station of any means of radiocommunication at its disposal to provide essential communication needs in connection with the immediate safety of human life and immediate protection of property when normal communication systems are not available.
§ 97.405 Station in distress.
(a) No provision of these rules prevents the use by an amateur station in distress of any means at its disposal to attract attention, make known its condition and location, and obtain assistance.
(b) No provision of these rules prevents the use by a station, in the exceptional circumstances described in paragraph (a) of this section, of any means of radiocommunications at its disposal to assist a station in distress.

In advance look up the local repeaters in your area and program them in.  Repeaters are typically located up high, have decent power and someone who is competent operating and maintaining them.  You can listen lawfully any time you want; if you can hear a repeater you can probably get to it, and the Hams that operate them will put a lot of effort into getting those back on the air expeditiously because they are one of the key means of communications in emergencies.  Also program in 146.520Mhz as a last-ditch; that is the universal North American (US and Canada) simplex (non-repeater) calling frequency and if there are Hams in the area with a radio on standby in an emergency if you're in range they will likely be able to hear and talk with you.  The best strategy with one of these in an actual emergency, after one attempt to reach the local repeaters, is to check once an hour on the hour listening for others; remember that once the battery is depleted the radio is worthless without a charge and it takes a lot more power to transmit than receive.  Don't waste the power you have in the unit if there is no charging source.

This is a literal $30 piece of equipment that can save your life; if you have an EPIRB/PLB that works in extreme emergencies as well but they're expensive and these are not plus once you set off an EPIRB/PLB it is "used" as the battery will be depleted and since it sends coordinates you have to stay put once you set it off or they go where you no longer are.  Just be aware of the limitations of whatever backups you have but do have one or more.

Another thing to know: Starlink is working on direct to phone links.  How far away that is for general use (they're testing with T-Mobile now) I do not know, but for low-bandwidth (e.g. text message) applications in the next few years this probably will be available and again is a life-saving thing if and when it enters operation.  The hardware is not cheap for "regular" and "mini" "full" Starlink kits (~$600 or so) and the bad news with them is that at present they cannot self-provision, so in an emergency you can't turn it on if you have one stored at your location.  Starlink may eventually fix this (and should, as it makes "terminal sitting in box" a VERY useful emergency communications device) but as of right now with no way to get to the Internet separately on a non-active unit you can't activate it.

Carbon-based fuels and all that run on them are your friend in such a circumstance.  Generators, chainsaws, heavy equipment and similar all run on carbon fuels.  Note that gasoline should be rotated at least once a year if stabilized and non-ethanol and yes, you do not want ethanol in the fuel if at all possible for this use.  If you're even modestly away from civilization or could be cut off from power for any extended period of time two 5 gallon cans you rotate at least once a year (put them in your car and go get new fills) is an excellent emergency investment, assuming your residence survives.  Those of us who have lived in Florida know darn well that those gas cans can be life-savers when a hurricane destroys the power feed to your area.  That little generator will keep your refer and a few lights going.  Consider the inverter models if you don't have one already and are only after real emergency use (e.g. the refer and a few lights, or your fuel-driven furnace controls and blower) -- they sip fuel compared to the older "straight" models under light loads; a refrigerator cycles on and off and modern LED lights consume almost nothing power-wise.  Instead of close to a gallon an hour these will often run anywhere from three to eight hours on a gallon of fuel.  Any generator needs to be exercised, with a load on it, every couple of months for 20 minutes or so because you must know it will start if you need it.

If you're on a well without prior planning your pump will not work on a backup generator; the starting current requirements are too high.  You can put a soft starter in and if you have a 240V capable generator you should as with one a modest generator will run your well pump.  Without a soft starter look at the label on the pump motor for "LRA" (locked-rotor amps) as that's what the generator has to be able to deliver without tripping on a "surge" basis or it will not start it.  Microair makes a suitable unit (they have both 120V and 240V units available; there are other brands for RV use that will work for 120V pumps but most well pumps are 240V.)

In colder climates pay attention to your heat source(s) and a backup for whatever you use for heat is not a suggestion.  Heat pumps are worthless without utility power; they simply draw too much power to run reasonably on a backup generator, except perhaps on a natural-gas fueled whole-house unit.  A gas or propane furnace will run on a small generator if you have a transfer switch for it which is quite inexpensive and you should put one of those in for that specific reason even if you don't have a larger generator and transfer switch (which are expensive) setup.

Note that just now the media is full of stories about "full time" and "in major area" response on the ground.  Its been over a week since the storm hit and had cleared off and just now we're seeing reports of government helicopters, larger aircraft and similar supplies for relief -- up until now it has all been private parties doing it because they want to help those in the area and government relief, with few exceptions, has been, like in so many other cases, absent.

In short expect that even in a heavily-populated area you are on your own for a week and had better be able to deal with that.  In a less-populated (or rural) area it will likely be two weeks or more before you have anything approaching reasonable access to relief efforts, and thus you need to be prepared for two week to a month of being cut off.  If you live somewhere that access can be seriously damaged (e.g. there is only a single mountainside secondary road that reaches your location) you need to be contemplating how you'll deal with that if the road is seriously compromised or destroyed and either have a plan to deal with it or be prepared to bug out if there's any possibility of it happening -- even if the odds are very low.

Take this seriously folks and realize that you cannot outrun either a mudslide/flash flood or storm surge.  Surge is something you have some warning with as hurricanes are well-forecast but flash floods are in many cases akin to tornadoes and while the conditions that can lead to them are usually forecast the event itself often occurs with very little warning.  Both move at speeds that are wildly faster (double or more!) than you can run and in any vehicle if you encounter even one obstruction trying to flee it will overtake and kill you.  The only sane option is to not be there, but if you're trapped where there's no good way out then you have to be able to deal with whatever happened until you can either cut your way out or relief can get to you and in the first days to a week or so the most-likely people to be able to and who will help you are private individuals who live in the area -- not the government in any form whether federal, state or local.

Now after you've read all this above and let it soak in for a bit go into your bathroom or kitchen and do an assessment of your medicine cabinet.

What happens if everything in that cabinet is gone and you can't get more?  If you can do something about that and don't all the above may well mean exactly nothing.

Next take off all your clothes and find a mirror in your house.  Have a good look and don't lie to yourself.

If you have to hike 5 miles over rough terrain to get water and haul enough back for a couple of days for the people in your household can you do it?  Incidentally that requirement is roughly a gallon per person, per day and each gallon masses 8lbs so you're talking about "rucking" 35-40lbs (with the pack) on the five-mile return if there are four people in your household.  If you have to do it, and can't, you will die.  Or if you need to do the same thing with 3-4 gallons of gas for a generator (you do have one, right?) to run your well pump for a few days and keep the refer operating -- can you?