The Biden Administration's proposed budget for 2025 is a whopping $7.3 trillion (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/bidens-2024-us-government-budget-is-also-campaign-pitch-2024-03-11/). 

It's difficult to grasp the magnitude of $7.3 trillion. To put it in perspective, if the entire sum were to be divided equally among every man, woman, and child in America (including both citizens and immigrants, documented and undocumented), each person would be responsible for $21,470. This is in addition to the already staggering $102,547 in federal debt that the government has accumulated per person (https://www.pgpf.org/national-debt-clock). 

In order to get a better idea of how much money we’re talking about here, let’s look at what $7.3 trillion could buy.

One of the more expensive items in America's arsenal are aircraft carriers at a cool $13.3 billion each (https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-are-us-navy-aircraft-carriers-so-expensive-207813). With the proposed budget of $7.3 trillion, the US Navy could purchase or build 548 aircraft carriers.    

The cost to build the home of the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers SoFi Stadium is estimated at $5.5 billion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoFi_Stadium). For $7.3 trillion dollars you could build 1,327 SoFi Stadiums. That's enough for 1 in 3 colleges and universities in America to get a SoFi Stadium. 

For $7.3 trillion, you could build 3,173 Las Vegas Spheres, estimated to cost $2.3 billion to build (https://www.architecturaldigest.in/story/the-sphere-in-las-vegas-5-things-to-know-about-this-dollar23-billion-concert-venue/).  

How about nuclear power? How many nuclear power plants could be built with $7.3 trillion? Almost 1,000 nuclear power plants could be built for the cost of Biden's proposed 2025 budget, based on an estimated cost of about $7.5 billion each (https://www.synapse-energy.com/sites/default/files/SynapsePaper.2008-07.0.Nuclear-Plant-Construction-Costs.A0022_0.pdf). In 2017, 54 US nuclear power plants produced 805 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, enough to power 73 million homes. That's about 1,351,851 homes powered by each nuclear power plant. One thousand nuclear power plants could power over 1.3 billion homes; more than enough electricity to power a home for every single man, woman, and child in North and South America combined (1.1 billion people). 

Speaking of homes, for $7.3 trillion you could build nearly 18 million new homes at the national average cost of $408,000 each (https://www.houzeo.com/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to-build-a-house/). For perspective, that's nearly 5-times the number of housing units in New York City (https://data.census.gov/profile/New_York_city,_New_York?g=160XX00US3651000).   

I'm not advocating that the federal government spend $7.3 trillion in the ways described above. The purpose of this article is to try to help people understand the scale that they're talking about when the President proposes a federal budget of $7.3 trillion. 
 
For perspective, when President George W. Bush entered office in the year 2001 the entire US National Debt was $3.339 trillion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_public_debt). It took America 225 years to accumulate that much debt. In the 23 years since, America's debt has exploded to over $34 trillion (10-fold), and now the President is proposing an annual budget of $7.3 trillion; more than double the entire national debt in 2001. (https://www.pgpf.org/national-debt-clock).   

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said in a 60 minutes interview, "The U.S. federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal path. And that just means that the debt is growing faster than the economy. . . . I think the pandemic was a very special event, and it caused the government to really spend to ward off what looked like very severe downside risks. It's probably time, or past time, to get back to an adult conversation among elected officials about getting the federal government back on a sustainable fiscal path." (https://youtu.be/ImrKxlLJCEY?si=vbVlZuCMIRpP9shi&t=606) 

We need to remember how much money is being spent on the national credit card that our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren will be paying for with lower standards of living for their entire lives. The problem will continue to get progressively worse until the dollar collapses, or the federal government regains fiscal sanity. Which will come first is hard to tell at this point. 

There is no such thing as a scuba license, and there are no scuba police. Welcome to the libertarian world of recreational scuba diving. 

Co-invented by world famous explorer, writer, and documentarian Jacques Cousteau (who called his invention the Aqua Lung) SCUBA is an acronym for “Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.” This is the system that scuba divers use for breathing underwater, consisting of pressurized air tanks, valves, hoses, regulators, and buoyancy compensators. 

Scuba diving is a complex activity that demands specialized training for safety. Improper practices, such as holding your breath while ascending, can be life-threatening due to pressure changes. In the ocean, each 33 feet of depth corresponds to an additional atmosphere of pressure (14.7 psi). As a result, a balloon filled with one cubic foot of air at 33 feet deep will double in size when it reaches the surface, and from 66 feet deep, it will quadruple in size. Thus, when ascending from 66 feet, if you hold your breath, your lungs can expand to four times their original size, which is potentially deadly (and extremely painful). Deeper dives also require more air due to the compression of the surrounding water, leading to increased nitrogen absorption (the air we breathe is 78% nitrogen). This necessitates depth limits and safety stops to prevent nitrogen narcosis and decompression sickness. 

That all sounds extremely dangerous, and exactly the sort of activity that government would try to “make safe” via regulation. But recreational scuba diving is a mostly self-regulated industry that establishes safety standards through market forces. It does this quite well; In 2018, there were 189 worldwide scuba diving deaths out of approximately 2.85 million divers. In the US, Annual fatalities while scuba diving range from 2 to 14 per 100,000 (comparable to horseback riding and jogging). Even within those numbers, up to 50% of diving fatalities can be linked to acute cardiac events, often involving pre-existing risk factors like hypertensive heart disease, cardiomegaly, diabetes, obesity, advanced age, and smoking. 

The rest of the article can be read on Substack: https://rclp.substack.com/p/october-2023#%C2%A7the-libertarian-world-of-scuba-diving

I had the opportunity recently to scuba dive the Silfra Fissure in Iceland! This was a bucket-list item for me, and many divers like me!  

300+ feet of visibility and the sensation of floating in a water as clear as air was almost dizzying. 

The pictures, while spectacular, don't do it justice. It was a once in a lifetime experience! 

In the image above I am touching the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates simultaneously.