Useless Information

I saw this quote on Facebook and I was a little skeptical because of its popularity.  I don’t disagree with the sentiment but I’m not sure the numbers are real or that it’s from Dave Ramsey

“If the US Government was a family, they would be making $58,000 a year, they spend $75,000 a year, & are $327,000 in credit card debt. They are currently proposing BIG spending cuts to reduce their spending to $72,000 a year. These are the actual proportions of the federal budget & debt, reduced to a level that we can understand.” – Dave Ramsey

Then I became more skeptical when I saw this on Facebook.

If the US Government were a family & their household income was $55,000 per year, they’d actually be spending $96,500—$41,500 more than they made! That means they’re spending 175% of their annual income! So, in 2011 they’d add $41,500 of debt to their current credit card debt of $366,000! – Dave Ramsey

Two different sets of numbers starts to qualify it as an urban legend. Does anyone know the source of the stats? Did Dave Ramsey provide either of them? I looked on Snopes.com but they didn’t have anything about it. At least it’s not being attributed to Albert Einstein.