You Don’t Know Percentages

When what you read is:

Debt increase by presidents: Reagan 186%, Bush 54% Clinton 41% Bush II 72% Obama 23%. /source CBO [from Twitter].

Does your brain translate it to this:

It turns out those percentages don’t add up to the actual national debt value, so the numbers seem wrong.  But when someone shows you percentages get out your spread sheet or calculator to make sure that you’re not being had.  If you say that Obama has had less spent during his presidency or that Clinton was a spendthrift or any number of other things based on percentages you’re probably doing it wrong.  And yes, this is showing billions and trillions [the formatting isn’t quite right in the copy/paste].

Due to the compounding values of those debt numbers this massive expenditure of “only” 23% is rather ‘off’.  Additionally Obama’s presidency is not over, so calling this one is a bit premature.

I say we call them all out for being fools with the financial resources.  Additionally: congress(es) is (are) also responsible for this.