Hamburgers, Salmon, and corn on the grill here. What’s on your grill?
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I’m not sure, but I am getting awfully hungry.
I was at a grilling event today with some people, and I was the only vegetarian there so I had veggie burgers on the grill lol.
Baby-back ribs and brats!
Hamburgers and salmon? That’s an interesting combo. 😉
Steaks with sauteed brussel sprouts and mushrooms.
I thought all Progressives were Vegans…so, Tofu on the grill.
Grease and dust from non-use.
Tomorrow’s a good day to dust that baby off.
Maybe so.
Nothing is on the grill here.
The NWS has issued a fire danger warning for our area.
I’ve noticed the foliage has become a bit crackly of late. It could be a problem later today with all the cooker-outers in the park.
Doing my morning reading, and I notice that Krugman says we borrowed the modern equivalent of $30 trillion to fight World War Two. I’m curious who we borrowed it all from. From the future in the form of War Bonds. From whom else?
Jewish bankers? The Swiss? Other war profiteers? 🙂
Wouldn’t the Swiss have invited attack and occupation if they had agreed to finance the allies? I admit, this is an area of history I have not studied.
I flat don’t know either. But I seriously doubt that Americans could possibly have bought the equivalent of 3 trillion dollars worth of bonds. Found this though.
[quote]Taxation
However, these agencies were often quite successful in achieving their respective, narrower aims. The Department of the Treasury, for instance, was remarkably successful at generating money to pay for the war, including the first general income tax in American history and the famous “war bonds” sold to the public. Beginning in 1940, the government extended the income tax to virtually all Americans and began collecting the tax via the now-familiar method of continuous withholdings from paychecks (rather than lump-sum payments after the fact). The number of Americans required to pay federal taxes rose from 4 million in 1939 to 43 million in 1945. With such a large pool of taxpayers, the American government took in $45 billion in 1945, an enormous increase over the $8.7 billion collected in 1941 but still far short of the $83 billion spent on the war in 1945. Over that same period, federal tax revenue grew from about 8 percent of GDP to more than 20 percent. Americans who earned as little as $500 per year paid income tax at a 23 percent rate, while those who earned more than $1 million per year paid a 94 percent rate. The average income tax rate peaked in 1944 at 20.9 percent (“Fact Sheet: Taxes”).
War Bonds
All told, taxes provided about $136.8 billion of the war’s total cost of $304 billion (Kennedy, 625). To cover the other $167.2 billion, the Treasury Department also expanded its bond program, creating the famous “war bonds” hawked by celebrities and purchased in vast numbers and enormous values by Americans. The first war bond was purchased by President Roosevelt on May 1, 1941 (“Introduction to Savings Bonds”). Though the bonds returned only 2.9 percent annual interest after a 10-year maturity, they nonetheless served as a valuable source of revenue for the federal government and an extremely important investment for many Americans. Bonds served as a way for citizens to make an economic contribution to the war effort, but because interest on them accumulated slower than consumer prices rose, they could not completely preserve income which could not be readily spent during the war. By the time war-bond sales ended in 1946, 85 million Americans had purchased more than $185 billion worth of the securities, often through automatic deductions from their paychecks (“Brief History of World War Two Advertising Campaigns: War Loans and Bonds”). Commercial institutions like banks also bought billions of dollars of bonds and other treasury paper, holding more than $24 billion at the war’s end (Kennedy, 626).[/quote]
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/tassava.WWII
according to this http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ there has been 1111.2% inflation since 1945 which would but the value of bonds raised in today’s $ at a bit over $2 trillion.