Spending more money

In 2007, the United States fell behind eleven other nations in the percentage of adults, ages 25 to 34, with an associate degree or higher. The top four were Canada (55.8 per cent), South Korea (55.5 per cent), Russia (55.5 per cent) and Japan (53.7 per cent). America (40.4 per cent) slightly trailed Australia (40.7 per cent). The data greatly exercised many politicians, starting with President Obama. Their argument is venerable: the country needs more people with college diplomas because our economic future depends upon highly skilled executives and workers, able to compete in a global economy. In short: more diplomas, more cash. Higher education apparently has no higher goal.

Why have we failed to produce more college graduates with all those "necessary" skills? On the surface, it seems to be the fault of high school teachers. This year, nationally, only 24 per cent of the high school students who took the ACT college entrance exam had the skills to pass first year college courses. Composite scores have fallen since 2007. Many high schools now offer a core curriculum designed to prepare those going on to college by requiring four years of English and three years each of math, science and social studies. Among those who took these special courses, however, only 29 per cent proved ready for college work.

Why not just spend more money on education? That's the emphasis of the Obama Administration. Well, how much is "more"? And where is the evidence that greater funding enhances test scores? Much of what Washington is now doing involves ties between Democrats and teachers' unions. It's a financial well that is never full. Just a few more billion dollars, the educators and politicos declare, and...and what?

It should be apparent that much of the problem facing high school teachers is social, economic, and moral. What can a teacher or a school do, for example, about students from broken homes, living in poverty, and swallowed up by the anti-intellectualism displayed in the media and by their peers? How can you raise the achievement levels of people who may well lack the basic intelligence to succeed in class? What can be done with those who would rather work off campus than study?
Increase teacher pay? Build larger, technologically sophisticated schools? Offer smaller classes? Inflate grades and lower academic standards to build student self-esteem? Harass or fire teachers who are not popular or whose students are not passing tests? Set state and national achievement goals? It has all been tried, and the results are abysmal.

Stephanie Banchero of the Wall Street Journal wrote recently, "there is still no solid evidence on how best to boost achievement." I would omit the word "best".

College professors are also under fire. A great many universities, colleges, and junior colleges in this country will admit students of any sort to bring in more money and boost the body count; in the American tradition, bigger is better. When large numbers of marginal students drop out or flunk out, the campuses are criticized for failing to meet the needs of young people and endangering the nation's future. Predictably, campus administrators assure state and federal government officials and private donors that if they only had better financial support more degrees could be awarded and all those "highly skilled" jobs of the future could be filled.

The University of Wisconsin System is a case in point. The system is huge, encompassing 13 four-year institutions, 13 community colleges, and a statewide extension network. Together they enroll more than 178,000 students and receive $1.1 billion annually from state taxpayers. Its leaders are requesting a budget increase this year of $86.3 million from the cash-strapped legislature. (The state faces a $2.5 billion budget deficit in the next two years, despite recent hikes in taxes and fees amounting to $5 billion.) To attract support, UWS floated a proposal in April to boost the number of degrees by 30 per cent over the next 15 years. The cost of the venture for the first two years is $22.6 million. In short, they are saying, Give us more money and there will be more diplomas.

System officials are vague about how they arrived at the $22.6 million figure and what exactly will be done to create a skilled labor force. We are told that the funds would pay for supporting more than 5,900 additional undergraduates, including more than 2,200 who would have normally dropped out after their freshman year. The proposal includes $10 million for grants designed to assist students from families earning less than $60,000 a year.

So, in some mysterious way, UWS top brass will admit more of the poor (many of its campuses already have largely open admission policies), retain dropouts, and see that almost everyone graduates. It sounds like a deal no one could refuse. Until you think about it.

One wonders how current academic standards will fare by admitting more people who are not currently attracted by higher education. An even larger mystery is how the campuses will make sure that such people get a diploma. Won't a larger number of silly courses and majors (e.g. turf management, film studies, mass communications, sports psychology) have to be created and expanded? And if that step is taken, how will it meet the future need for a skilled workforce?

Proponents of awarding a larger number of diplomas have nothing more sophisticated in their arsenal than the well-documented connection between college degrees and prosperity. They don't address the hard question about what majors are making the most money. (Will the new people study engineering or medicine?) They don't discuss the ability, motivation, and socio-economic realities of those who are to be recruited and retained. Nor do they want to talk about academic quality and grade inflation. Only about a third of the nation's faculty positions are tenure-track, meaning that underpaid graduate students and ad hoc professors, desperate to be popular and employed full-time, handle much of the teaching on many campuses. How eager will they be to flunk anyone in an environment that emphasizes a higher graduation rate?

In Wisconsin, the case for more degrees is especially weak, for the problem here is not that we are graduating too few but that too many graduates leave the Badger State to go elsewhere. From 1989 through 2006, according to education policy analyst Thomas G. Mortenson, some 506,000 bachelor's degrees were awarded in Wisconsin. But from 1989 through 2007 the state suffered a net-migration of 128,492 people with bachelor's degrees. Mortenson reports that only six states suffered the loss of more graduates than Wisconsin.

Today, 25 per cent of state residents have a bachelor's degree or higher. That's about two percentage points lower than the national average. Ah, but for only $22.6 million, the University of Wisconsin System will begin a project to grant more diplomas. How exactly? And if that is achieved, how will anyone keep the graduates in the state? And if they stay, how will we know that they are "highly skilled" and ready to boost the economy?

It's all so glib and cynical. Taxpayers deserve better from people with diplomas.

Source

Americans spend money

Source

February 10, 2008

Spend all my money

Drake Bennett has an interesting and nuanced article in the Boston Globe Ideas section on money and happiness. To make a long story short, money can buy us some happiness, but only if we spend our money properly. Instead of buying things, we should buy memories:

A few researchers are looking again at whether happiness can be bought, and they are discovering that quite possibly it can - it's just that some strategies are a lot better than others. Taking a friend to lunch, it turns out, makes us happier than buying a new outfit. Splurging on a vacation makes us happy in a way that splurging on a car may not.

"Just because money doesn't buy happiness doesn't mean money cannot buy happiness," says Elizabeth Dunn, a social psychologist and assistant professor at the University of British Columbia. "People just might be using it wrong."

Dunn and others are beginning to offer an intriguing explanation for the poor wealth-to-happiness exchange rate: The problem isn't money, it's us. For deep-seated psychological reasons, when it comes to spending money, we tend to value goods over experiences, ourselves over others, things over people. When it comes to happiness, none of these decisions are right: The spending that make us happy, it turns out, is often spending where the money vanishes and leaves something ineffable in its place.

Any attempt to put these findings into practice, however, has to contend with the subtle but powerful ways money itself channels our thinking, and the ways it plays on human attitudes about sharing and scarcity. Recent studies have suggested that merely thinking about money makes us more solitary and selfish, and steers us away from the spending that promises to make us happiest.

Why don't things make us happy? The answer, I think, has to do with a fundamental feature of neurons: habituation. When sensory cells are exposed to the same stimulus over and over again, they quickly get bored and stop firing. (That, for instance, is why you don't feel your underwear.) This makes sense: the brain is an efficient organ, most interested in the novel and new. If we paid attention to everything, we'd quickly be overwhelmed by the intensity of reality. Unfortunately, the same logic applies to material objects. When you buy a shiny new Rolex watch, that watch might make you happy for a few days, or maybe even a week. Before long, however, that expensive piece of jewelery becomes just another shiny metal object - your pleasure neurons have habituated to the luxury good. (Of course, your Rolex can become a problem for everybody else, since it raises the material expectations of all those poor souls wearing less expensive watches. These people now feel inferior, since their Timex has been devalued by the costlier item. [Such luxury items are known as "positional goods," since part of their appeal is that they signal your social position.] Multiply this same psychological phenomenon across a full range of consumer products - from clothes to cars, stereos to shoes - and you can begin to see the "hedonic treadmill" that afflicts people in developed countries. Not only do their brain cells automatically adapt to their state of wealth, but those same neurons are constantly being bombarded with a new set of expensive expectations. Of course, not everybody can afford a Rolex or a Lexus, which means that we are constantly being disappointed.)

That, in a nutshell, is why material possessions don't make us happy. As Bennett points out, however, investing in pleasant experiences is a much better alternative:

Money spent on experiences - vacations or theater tickets or meals out - makes you happier than money spent on material goods. Leaf Van Boven, an associate psychology professor at the University of Colorado, and Thomas Gilovich, chair of the psychology department at Cornell University, have run surveys asking people about past purchases and how happy they made them.

"We generally found very consistent evidence that experiences made people happier than material possessions they had invested in," says Van Boven.

Why? For one thing, Van Boven and Gilovich argue, experiences are inherently more social - when we vacation or eat out or go to the movies it's usually with other people, and we're liable also to relive the experience when we see those people again. And past experiences can work as a sort of social adhesive even with people who didn't participate with us, providing stories and conversational fodder in a way that a new watch or speedboat rarely can.

In addition, other work by Van Boven suggests that experiences don't usually trigger the same sort of pernicious comparisons that material possessions do. We like our car less whenever we catch a glimpse of our neighbor's newer, nicer car, but we don't like our honeymoon any less because our neighbor went on a fancier one.

Another virtue of experiences is that, while material things get diminished over time (we habituate to the pleasure, and then have to deal with the inevitable repairs), pleasant memories tend to become more pleasant. We forget about the delayed flights and jet lag but remember the lush rainforest hike, or the fancy meal in Paris. The vacation might be long gone but it's still making us happy.

Source

Earn money on youtube

YouTube is probably one of the most popular services online. But, how do you incorporate its use in helping you to make money online?
1. Add Premium Partners’ Videos on Your Blog or Site. If you have an Adsense account, log in and get the code for ‘video units’. You can create a YouTube Video Player and customise it according to various categories, key words, and content providers.
2. Run affiliate ads on YouTube videos. Chris on Making Money Scoop has some tips on how to do this using various tools.
3. Provide regular quality video content. Perhaps, you can become a ‘premium’ publisher and Google will split ad revenues with you.
4. Start a video blog or site that features various YouTube content. These blogs and sites can be anything from cute animal videos to craft tutorials. Then, run relevant ads and affiliate programmes on your blog or site.
5. Accept direct ads on your YouTube content. If you upload your own videos on a regular basis and you have a decent following, you might want to accept ads on your videos.
6. Enrich your sales using YouTube videos. If you sell an item on an online shop and you are able to compliment your listings with YouTube videos, then it will be useful. Also, you can link to your sales page on your YouTube. This might help bring video viewers to visit your sales page.

So, do you use YouTube at all in your online business? Can you think of other ways to use YouTube videos to help you to make money online?

How the government spends money

Are you having a hard time paying your bills, making your mortgage payments, or putting your kids through college? You need to know how much of your hard-earned income the government is skimming off and diverting into handouts to immigrants and illegal aliens.



You can read the depressing details in the new 70-page document called "The Economic and Fiscal Impact of Immigration" written by Edwin S. Rubenstein. A Manhattan Institute adjunct fellow with a mile-long scholarly resume, he has been doing financial analysis ever since he directed the studies of government waste for the prestigious Grace Commission of 1984.

The bottom line, which you need to know for your own bottom line, is that U.S. taxpayers are giving more than $9,000 a year in cash or benefits to each immigrant, a third of whom are illegal aliens. That's $36,000 for each immigrant household of four.

Since the U.S. has 37 million immigrants, legal and illegal, the national cost was more than $346 billion last year, which was twice our fiscal deficit. The cost of immigrants is so high because, as Rubenstein writes, "Immigrants are poorer, pay less tax and are more likely to receive public benefits than natives."

Big Brother hasn't told you this bad news, perhaps because the government doesn't want you to know why your paychecks are shortchanged. Even the huge amnesty bill that was defeated last year didn't contain one word about its budgetary consequences.

The financial burden that immigrants impose on education starts with the 3.8 million K-to-12 students enrolled in more-expensive classes for the non-English-speaking. When we add up the costs of hiring specialized teachers, training regular teachers, student identification and assessment, and administration costs, the total amounts to an estimated $1,030 per pupil, or $3.9 billion.

Of the 48.4 million pre-K through 12 public school children, 9.2 million or 19 percent are immigrants or the children of immigrants. In the next few years, immigration will account for virtually all the increase in public school spending.

Look at the $1.5 billion cost of incarcerating 267,000 criminal aliens in federal prisons. That's not the worst of it; prison capacity is limited, so 80,000 to 100,000 other criminal aliens have been prematurely released to prowl our streets.

Criminals also impose heavy private costs on their victims. Rubenstein estimates the losses of income and property, hospital bills, and emotional suffering at $1.6 million per assault- or property-crime offender.
Rubenstein's report includes all sorts of costs that other observers conveniently ignore, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit. EITC gives an average cash payment of $1,700 per year to 1 in 4 immigrant households.
The emergency medical treatment given free to illegal aliens is another enormous cost, causing some hospitals and emergency rooms to close. Emergency means any complaint from hangovers to hangnails, gunshot wounds to AIDS.

Even after some restrictions were imposed in 1996, 24.2 percent of immigrant households receive Medicaid, whereas the figure for native-born Americans is 14.8 percent. Rubenstein calculates that Hispanics account for 19.2 percent of Medicaid enrollment, while they are 13.7 percent of the U.S. population.

The FHA has had a policy of increasing home ownership among low-income immigrants and therefore approved FHA mortgages on homes with a down payment of only $200 to $300 and marginal income. Since mortgagors have so little invested in the house, they can walk away from it when they can't meet the payments, and this has resulted in neighborhoods of abandoned, boarded-up housing.

Refugees are a large and growing fiscal burden because they become immediately eligible for generous taxpayer-paid benefits. Evidence shows they stay dependent on these programs and start chain-migrating relatives under the "family reunification" law.

The Interior Department spends millions of dollars to clean up the mountains of trash discarded by illegal aliens crossing into California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Some immigration advocates peddle the notion that immigration will solve the future financial burdens of Social Security. Rubenstein shows how foolish is this prediction because today's low-wage workers will surely become tomorrow's expensive retirees.

Another cost that few talk about is that immigrant workers depress the wages received by native-born Americans, and that causes a $100 billion shortfall in federal tax revenue. Harvard University Professor George Borjas found that each 10 percent increase in the U.S. labor force from immigration reduces wages of native-born Americans by 5.25 percent.

Some liberals are trying to tell us to fight a recession by bringing in more immigrants, but that would only raid the pockets of U.S. taxpayers to support more millions of non-taxpayers. It's hard to say which is more outrageous: the diversion of Americans' personal income into cash handouts to foreigners, or the federal government's policy of concealing the fiscal impact of immigration.

Source

Earning more money

Get paid for your opinions in focus groups 

But there’s another popular way to get paid for your opinions these days, and many people are earning full-time income doing it.

 

It’s called a focus group – and in fact, it’s been used for decades by marketing firms and other companies hoping to gain public opinion about new products, brand names and other subjects.

 

How do focus groups work?

When selected for a focus group, you are generally invited to meet in-person with a group of other people, generally coordinated by a market research firm. The meeting can last a few hours or all day, with lunch and short snack breaks.

 

Generally, the people coordinating the focus group will present certain products or subjects to the group. For example, they might even show a TV commercial that hasn’t yet been shown to the public. Participants in the group are then asked to talk to each other about the commercial, how they feel, what they think, etc. They may also be asked to write down their thoughts privately.

In general, there will be several people watching the focus group from the background, taking notes on what the participants say and do.

 

How much money can I make?

The money you make is generally dependent on how long the focus group lasts. For example, you might be paid anywhere from $100 to $500 for an all-day focus group – with free lunch, coffee, snacks, etc. Some may pay by the hour, between $10 to $40 an hour, again depending on how much “work” is involved.

 

How do I join a focus group?

A quick Google search for “focus groups” will reveal many different companies that specialize in helping people find focus groups in their area. Be sure to research each company carefully, as there are many imposters online that simply charge you to join their network but never actually find a focus group for you.

 

Also, keep in mind that many focus group companies may not select you if you have been in another focus group within the previous few months. However, many times, if the subject of the focus group is not at all related to the previous ones you’ve participated in, then you may be eligible.

 

Earning a full-time income from focus groups may take some time. But if you could use an extra few hundred dollars every once a while, it’s a great way to get an extra paycheck just for expressing your opinions.

Source

Natural gas prices today

What No One Else Has Caught... Yet

I'll make this short.
Here’s what no one else will tell you with regards to natural gas: Buy it — or miss the historical September run.
You see, it doesn’t matter what the bears say. It’s time to buy natural gas while no one’s looking.
Just as I called the $4 bottom on natural gas on May 19, I’m calling for natural gas to rally once again…
“You’ve heard it all before: Supply is outpacing demand… Our ability to horizontally drill for shale gas has made the supply picture seem unlimited... the short-term outlook is bleak,” I said back in May.
“But those are all fine examples of herd-mentality thinking. Contrarians, like us, though, are buying hand over fist.”
And we were right. Natural gas would spike well above $5 in coming weeks.
But, as expected, the bears are coming out again as natural gas pulls back. And as a result, they might miss out on the buying opportunity of a lifetime.
This may be because they don’t want to watch the charts:
Notice that every September — even in the steep 2008 sell-off — natural gas has spiked big.
And the reason for this annual spike is simple: Summer is typically the worst time for natural gas consumption, setting up the perfect trade for natural gas stocks around the month of September as consumption turns up.
Last summer, for example, natural gas suffered. But once September rolled around, natural gas roared from $2.50 to more than $5 by January 2010.
And it will do the same thing this year.
In fact I’m buying as much natural gas as I can right now in Pure Asset Trader… and I advise you to do the same.
But how do you know when exactly to pull the trigger? 
One way is to watch for MACD (moving average convergence divergence) and DMI (directional movement indicator) to crossover and agree. When they do, it's time to pull the trigger.
Let’s start with the Dow, as an example...

Take a look at the MACD and DMI on this chart of the Dow.
Notice in this chart the noticeable drop from 11,200. As soon as the Dow began to show signs of cracking at the top, DMI- (red line) crossed above DMI+ (blue line).  At the same time — and this is important — MACD (12, 26), the blue line, crossed under MACD (9).
When the two agreed, we had confirmation of a big move on the way, and the market collapsed. Used alone, these two indicators — when in agreement — are powerful tools.
Here’s how we’ve used them to find natural gas stocks.
Knowing that natural gas stocks historically pop in September, we can also use MACD and DMI to determine our exact entry price. Let’s use PetroQuest (PQ) as an example here.

Notice in the chart that MACD was already displaying a bullish signal (MACD blue line was above MACD red line). We just needed DMI+ (blue line) to cross above DMI- (red line) and we had bullish confirmation for upside.
Once we got that in late August/early September in 2009, we bought and watched the stock pop from $4 lows to more than $8 in less than two months.
A 100% gain in no time at all…
It can be that easy.
In the next few weeks, we'll be issuing a brand-new report that details more quick-gain investment opportunities... So keep an eye out on your inbox.

Stay Ahead of the Curve,

Ian L. Cooper

Energy and Capital

Student debt 2010

The Student Loan Corporation (NYSE: STU), today announced that stockholders of The Student Loan Corporation (“SLC”) voted to adjourn the special meeting of stockholders called to consider resolutions to: (i) approve the sale of certain of SLC’s assets to SLM Corporation (“Sallie Mae”) and (ii) adopt the Merger Agreement among SLC, Discover Bank (“Discover”) and a subsidiary of Discover and approve the merger pursuant to which SLC will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Discover and each SLC stockholder will receive $30.00 per share of SLC common stock.

The special meeting of stockholders will be reconvened at 11:30 a.m. on December 16, 2010 at 399 Park Avenue, 12th Floor auditorium, New York, New York 10022. The record date for the meeting remains November 1, 2010. Stockholders who have previously submitted their proxy or otherwise voted and who do not want to change their vote need not take any action.

The Student Loan Corporation also announced that at a hearing on December 1, 2010, the Court of Chancery in the State of Delaware entertained a motion for a preliminary injunction and a motion for partial summary judgment made by the plaintiffs in the consolidated putative class action challenging the Company's previously announced transactions with Discover, an affiliate of Sallie Mae and Citigroup Inc. Following the hearing, the court declined to grant either of the plaintiffs’ motions, thus permitting the special meeting of stockholders and eventual closing of the transactions to move forward.

Source

United States debt

On this page you will find a history of the national debt balance of the United States, from 1791 until the end of the 2010 fiscal year.

Historical End of Fiscal Year US Debt Balances 1791-2010

Year

Nominal Dollars

Real Dollars (2010)

1791

$75,463,477

$1,754,964,581

1792

$77,227,925

$1,755,180,114

1793

$80,358,634

$1,785,747,422

1794

$78,427,405

$1,568,548,100

1795

$80,747,587

$1,392,199,776

1796

$83,762,172

$1,373,150,361

1797

$82,064,479

$1,414,904,810

1798

$79,228,529

$1,414,795,161

1799

$78,408,670

$1,400,154,821

1800

$82,976,294

$1,430,625,759

1801

$83,038,051

$1,431,690,534

1802

$80,712,632

$1,647,196,571

1803

$77,054,686

$1,481,820,885

1804

$86,427,121

$1,600,502,241

1805

$82,312,151

$1,524,299,093

1806

$75,723,271

$1,352,201,268

1807

$69,218,399

$1,306,007,528

1808

$65,196,318

$1,124,074,448

1809

$57,023,192

$1,018,271,286

1810

$53,173,218

$949,521,750

1811

$48,005,588

$800,093,133

1812

$45,209,738

$741,143,246

1813

$55,962,828

$766,614,082

1814

$81,487,846

$1,006,022,790

1815

$99,833,660

$1,406,107,887

1816

$127,334,934

$1,958,998,985

1817

$123,491,965

$2,024,458,443

1818

$103,466,634

$1,783,907,483

1819

$95,529,648

$1,647,062,897

1820

$91,015,566

$1,685,473,444

1821

$89,987,428

$1,730,527,462

1822

$93,546,677

$1,732,345,870

1823

$90,875,877

$1,893,247,438

1824

$90,269,778

$2,051,585,864

1825

$83,788,433

$1,861,965,178

1826

$81,054,060

$1,801,201,333

1827

$73,987,357

$1,608,420,804

1828

$67,475,044

$1,533,523,727

1829

$58,421,414

$1,358,637,535

1830

$48,565,407

$1,156,319,214

1831

$39,123,192

$978,079,800

1832

$24,322,235

$623,647,051

1833

$7,001,699

$179,530,744

1834

$4,760,082

$122,053,385

1835

$33,733

$843,325

1836

$37,513

$872,395

1837

$336,958

$7,658,136

1838

$3,308,124

$76,933,116

1839

$10,434,221

$242,656,302

1840

$3,573,344

$89,333,600

1841

$5,250,876

$131,271,900

1842

$13,594,481

$357,749,500

1843

$20,201,226

$594,153,706

1843

$32,742,922

$963,027,118

1844

$23,461,653

$690,048,618

1845

$15,925,303

$455,008,657

1846

$15,550,203

$444,291,514

1847

$38,826,535

$1,021,750,921

1848

$47,044,862

$1,306,801,722

1849

$63,061,859

$1,801,767,400

1850

$63,452,774

$1,762,577,056

1851

$68,304,796

$1,951,565,600

1852

$66,199,342

$1,891,409,771

1853

$59,803,118

$1,708,660,514

1854

$42,242,222

$1,083,133,897

1855

$35,586,957

$889,673,925

1856

$31,972,538

$819,808,667

1857

$28,699,832

$717,495,800

1858

$44,911,881

$1,181,891,605

1859

$58,496,838

$1,539,390,474

1860

$64,842,288

$1,706,376,000

1861

$90,580,874

$2,264,521,850

1862

$524,176,412

$11,395,139,391

1863

$1,119,772,139

$19,306,416,190

1864

$1,815,784,371

$25,219,227,375

1865

$2,680,647,870

$35,741,971,600

1866

$2,773,236,174

$37,989,536,630

1867

$2,678,126,104

$39,384,207,412

1868

$2,611,687,851

$40,179,813,092

1869

$2,588,452,214

$41,749,229,258

1870

$2,480,672,428

$41,344,540,467

1871

$2,353,211,332

$42,021,630,929

1872

$2,253,251,329

$40,236,630,875

1873

$2,234,482,993

$40,626,963,509

1874

$2,251,690,468

$43,301,739,769

1875

$2,232,284,532

$44,645,690,640

1876

$2,180,395,067

$44,497,858,510

1877

$2,205,301,392

$45,943,779,000

1878

$2,256,205,893

$49,047,954,196

1879

$2,349,567,482

$51,077,553,957

1880

$2,120,415,371

$45,115,220,660

1881

$2,069,013,570

$44,021,565,319

1882

$1,918,312,994

$40,815,170,085

1883

$1,884,171,728

$40,960,254,957

1884

$1,830,528,924

$40,678,420,533

1885

$1,863,964,873

$42,362,838,023

1886

$1,775,063,014

$41,280,535,209

1887

$1,657,602,593

$37,672,786,205

1888

$1,692,858,985

$38,474,067,841

1889

$1,619,052,922

$38,548,879,095

1890

$1,552,140,205

$36,955,719,167

1891

$1,545,996,592

$36,809,442,667

1892

$1,588,464,145

$37,820,574,881

1893

$1,545,985,686

$37,706,967,951

1894

$1,632,253,637

$41,852,657,359

1895

$1,676,120,983

$42,977,461,103

1896

$1,769,840,323

$45,380,521,103

1897

$1,817,672,666

$47,833,491,211

1898

$1,796,531,996

$47,277,157,789

1899

$1,991,927,307

$52,419,139,658

1900

$2,136,961,092

$54,793,874,154

1901

$2,143,326,934

$54,957,100,872

1902

$2,158,610,446

$55,348,985,795

1903

$2,202,464,782

$55,061,619,550

1904

$2,264,003,585

$55,219,599,634

1905

$2,274,615,064

$56,865,376,600

1906

$2,337,161,839

$57,003,947,293

1907

$2,457,188,062

$57,143,908,419

1908

$2,626,806,272

$62,543,006,476

1909

$2,639,546,241

$62,846,339,071

1910

$2,652,665,838

$60,287,859,955

1911

$2,765,600,607

$62,854,559,250

1912

$2,868,373,874

$65,190,315,318

1913

$2,916,204,914

$64,804,553,644

1914

$2,912,499,269

$63,315,201,500

1915

$3,058,136,873

$66,481,236,370

1916

$3,609,244,262

$72,184,885,240

1917

$5,717,770,280

$96,911,360,678

1918

$14,592,161,414

$211,480,600,203

1919

$27,390,970,113

$346,721,140,671

1920

$25,952,456,406

$282,091,917,457

1921

$23,977,450,553

$292,407,933,573

1922

$22,963,381,708

$298,225,736,468

1923

$22,349,707,365

$286,534,709,808

1924

$21,250,812,989

$272,446,320,372

1925

$20,516,193,888

$256,452,423,600

1926

$19,643,216,315

$242,508,843,395

1927

$18,511,906,932

$231,398,836,650

1928

$17,604,293,201

$225,696,066,679

1929

$16,931,088,484

$217,065,236,974

1930

$16,185,309,831

$210,198,828,974

1931

$16,801,281,492

$240,018,307,029

1932

$19,487,002,444

$309,317,499,111

1933

$22,538,672,560

$375,644,542,667

1934

$27,053,141,414

$443,494,121,541

1935

$28,700,892,625

$455,569,724,206

1936

$33,778,543,494

$527,789,742,094

1937

$36,424,613,732

$551,888,086,848

1938

$37,164,740,315

$571,765,235,615

1939

$40,439,532,411

$631,867,693,922

1940

$42,967,531,038

$671,367,672,469

1941

$48,961,443,536

$730,767,813,970

1942

$72,422,445,116

$965,632,601,547

1943

$136,696,090,330

$1,730,330,257,342

1944

$201,003,387,221

$2,481,523,299,025

1945

$258,682,187,410

$3,116,652,860,361

1946

$269,422,099,173

$3,027,214,597,449

1947

$258,286,383,109

$2,532,219,442,245

1948

$252,292,246,513

$2,272,903,121,739

1949

$252,770,359,860

$2,318,994,127,156

1950

$257,357,352,351

$2,318,534,705,865

1951

$255,221,976,815

$2,144,722,494,244

1952

$259,105,178,785

$2,123,812,940,861

1953

$266,071,061,639

$2,180,910,341,303

1954

$271,259,599,108

$2,205,362,594,374

1955

$274,374,222,803

$2,230,684,738,236

1956

$272,750,813,649

$2,182,006,509,192

1957

$270,527,171,896

$2,097,109,859,659

1958

$276,343,217,746

$2,077,768,554,481

1959

$284,705,907,078

$2,140,645,917,880

1960

$286,330,760,848

$2,105,373,241,529

1961

$288,970,938,610

$2,109,276,924,161

1962

$298,200,822,721

$2,145,329,659,863

1963

$305,859,632,996

$2,184,711,664,257

1964

$311,712,899,257

$2,195,161,262,373

1965

$317,273,898,984

$2,203,290,965,167

1966

$319,907,087,795

$2,147,027,434,866

1967

$326,220,937,795

$2,132,162,992,124

1968

$347,578,406,426

$2,172,365,040,163

1969

$353,720,253,841

$2,105,477,701,435

1970

$370,918,706,950

$2,083,812,960,393

1971

$398,129,744,456

$2,140,482,497,075

1972

$427,260,460,941

$2,225,314,900,734

1973

$458,141,605,312

$2,245,792,182,902

1974

$475,059,815,732

$2,102,034,582,885

1975

$533,189,000,000

$2,158,659,919,028

1976

$620,433,000,000

$2,377,137,931,034

1977

$698,840,000,000

$2,513,812,949,640

1978

$771,544,000,000

$2,580,414,715,719

1979

$826,519,000,000

$2,482,039,039,039

1980

$907,701,000,000

$2,401,325,396,825

1981

$997,855,000,000

$2,392,937,649,880

1982

$1,142,034,000,000

$2,577,954,853,273

1983

$1,377,210,000,000

$3,013,588,621,444

1984

$1,572,266,000,000

$3,296,155,136,268

1985

$1,823,103,000,000

$3,690,491,902,834

1986

$2,125,302,616,660

$4,225,253,711,054

1987

$2,350,276,890,950

$4,511,088,082,438

1988

$2,602,337,712,040

$4,792,518,806,703

1989

$2,857,430,960,190

$5,021,847,030,211

1990

$3,233,313,451,780

$5,388,855,752,967

1991

$3,665,303,351,700

$5,864,485,362,720

1992

$4,064,620,655,520

$6,311,522,757,019

1993

$4,411,488,883,140

$6,653,829,386,335

1994

$4,692,749,910,010

$6,901,102,808,838

1995

$4,973,982,900,710

$7,115,855,365,823

1996

$5,224,810,939,140

$7,256,681,859,917

1997

$5,413,146,011,400

$7,354,817,950,272

1998

$5,526,193,008,900

$7,387,958,568,048

1999

$5,656,270,901,620

$7,403,495,944,529

2000

$5,674,178,209,890

$7,182,504,063,152

2001

$5,807,463,412,200

$7,152,048,537,192

2002

$6,228,235,965,600

$7,549,376,928,000

2003

$6,783,231,062,740

$8,037,003,628,839

2004

$7,379,052,696,330

$8,511,018,104,187

2005

$7,932,709,661,720

$8,853,470,604,598

2006

$8,506,973,899,220

$9,196,728,539,697

2007

$9,007,653,372,260

$9,471,770,107,529

2008

$10,024,724,896,900

$10,146,482,689,170

2009

$11,909,829,003,500

$12,103,484,759,654

2010

$13,561,623,030,900

$13,561,623,030,900

Source