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50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

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Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#51

Post by _delirium »

adventureful wrote: post #23
_delirium wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most amazing thing I take away from that chart, having lived in both Europe and the U.S., is how little the U.S. taxpayer gets for their money in comparison, I'm guessing because spending crept up slowly without any real planning. For example, the U.S., Canadian, and Norwegian governments each spend about 40% of GDP, but somehow Norwegians and Canadians get a much stronger set of social services (including state-…

A big part of our problems are the calculations that were used to justify Social Security and Medicare (over half our budget). Neither program was built to last more than two generations. The politicians that created them didn't care about that (FDR and LBJ), in typical intentional short-sightedness. Both programs were designed to be flush early so they could be plundered. Instead of having trillions sitting in a sov…

That's the funding side, but what I'm wondering is why we don't get more for the money we do spend. Norway and Canada spend about the same amount on state-funded medical care as we do, but they manage to provide universal coverage, whereas in the U.S. we spend all that money but I still have to buy private health insurance! Instead it goes into this patchwork of uncoordinated programs: Medicare, Medicaid, VA hospitals, reimbursements for unpaid ER visits, etc.

Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#52

Post by _delirium »

anamax wrote: post #37
parasubvert wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just not true with regards to Social Security. 100 years of projected life before dragging on other Federal finances and one major reform so far (another will be needed) is usually the sign of a successful government program. It's not in dire crisis: we will start to see it drag on other government finances in 20 years, as FICA will only fund about 75% of payouts once the trust fund is exhausted. Medicare on t…

> It's not in dire crisis: we will start to see it drag on other government finances in 20 years, It's actually a drag now, as it has been paying more in benefits than it receives for the past few years. Yes, I know about the bonds. Paying them back is a drag because they weren't used to create profitable assets.

That seems like a problem for the regular budget to sort out: Soc. Sec. basically has the money it needs for some decades, but the rest of the budget either needs significant cuts or tax hikes so that it can pay back Soc. Sec. what it owes it.

I don't think it's an acceptable option to retroactively say that some of the Soc. Sec. taxes won't be paid back to Soc. Sec., and just kept for the general fund. If that happened, then it's basically been a regressive income tax all along, contrary to Reagan's assurances in 1983 that he wasn't making a regressive change to the tax code, because of the bonds. If that is likely to happen, then at least the regressiveness should be fixed ASAP by removing the $110k cap, because the only justification for the cap is that the money is earmarked for Social Security.

Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#53

Post by nosse »

_delirium wrote: post #14
sien wrote: post #8

The other thing that would be good to see is the percentage of GDP that the spending represents. Here is one here: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1903_2010...

The most amazing thing I take away from that chart, having lived in both Europe and the U.S., is how little the U.S. taxpayer gets for their money in comparison, I'm guessing because spending crept up slowly without any real planning. For example, the U.S., Canadian, and Norwegian governments each spend about 40% of GDP, but somehow Norwegians and Canadians get a much stronger set of social services (including state-…

Norway is using about 7% of their gov budget to defense. U.S. 22% gotta show somewhere.

Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#54

Post by [deleted] »

rickyconnolly wrote: post #47
aurelianito wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite. The second gulf war was officially called OIL (Operation Iraqi Liberation). See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoSBqs6y8uM and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq#Military_...

It was called Operation Iraqi Freedom. OIF

[deleted]

Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#55

Post by aurelianito »

rickyconnolly wrote: post #47
aurelianito wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite. The second gulf war was officially called OIL (Operation Iraqi Liberation). See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoSBqs6y8uM and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq#Military_...

It was called Operation Iraqi Freedom. OIF

It was renamed as Operation Iraqi Freedom after the public relations nightmare it generated. Just look at the links I posted before.

Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#56

Post by fffggg »

_delirium wrote: post #14
sien wrote: post #8

The other thing that would be good to see is the percentage of GDP that the spending represents. Here is one here: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1903_2010...

The most amazing thing I take away from that chart, having lived in both Europe and the U.S., is how little the U.S. taxpayer gets for their money in comparison, I'm guessing because spending crept up slowly without any real planning. For example, the U.S., Canadian, and Norwegian governments each spend about 40% of GDP, but somehow Norwegians and Canadians get a much stronger set of social services (including state-…

There's a very simple explanation: Unlike all the countries you mention, the majority of our US tax dollars goes toward military spending.

The npr graph from the parent post is extremely misleading, and understates the US military budget by roughly a factor of 2. Huge portions of the "non-military" budget entries are covers for military spending.

For example, the npr graph counts $141 billion dollars in VA health care for soldiers, but this isn't listed as part of the military budget. The same games are played with weapons r&d (often budgeted to the Dept. of Energy). Our recent Dept. of Homeland Security contains a great deal of military spending as well.

When one separates the budget by spending intent rather than the politicized department budgets in the above graph it becomes quickly apparent why we don't have good social services -- we're spending it all on military.

Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#57

Post by smcl »

Anyone care to explain how medicare + medicaid (which don't apply to everyone) manage to consume 23.2% of the US budget - yet the UK's National Health Service, which does cover everyone, only takes up 10.7% of it's budget[1]. The NHS, for it's flaws, is starting to seem like a bargain.

[1] http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_health_care_budget_2009...

Update: i'm an idiot and read the "Public net debt" row instead (just skimmed to the bottom row and presumed that'd be a sum). The actual percentage is 17.09% which is considerably higher than I originally had it, but still a great deal less than the US.

Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#58

Post by streptomycin »

cpeterso wrote: post #21
tnuc wrote: post #15

Does this account for the changes in how spending is reported? Is all defense spending under defense? or is there a lot hidden under education and health? I have played with too many budgets to accept things like this at face value.

Good question. Does the "defense spending" category include the trillion dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? George W. Bush's administration conveniently swept the wars' costs into a "supplemental" budget separate from the DoD budget.

None of the graphs are from the Bush era, so your question is irrelevant.

Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#59

Post by knz »

_delirium wrote: post #51
adventureful wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big part of our problems are the calculations that were used to justify Social Security and Medicare (over half our budget). Neither program was built to last more than two generations. The politicians that created them didn't care about that (FDR and LBJ), in typical intentional short-sightedness. Both programs were designed to be flush early so they could be plundered. Instead of having trillions sitting in a sov…

That's the funding side, but what I'm wondering is why we don't get more for the money we do spend. Norway and Canada spend about the same amount on state-funded medical care as we do, but they manage to provide universal coverage, whereas in the U.S. we spend all that money but I still have to buy private health insurance! Instead it goes into this patchwork of uncoordinated programs: Medicare, Medicaid, VA hospital…

Don't forget administrative costs. An interaction with a medical professional in the US can involve multiple billing departments (the clinic, the lab, the actual doctor in some cases), your insurance company, any medical reimbursement schemes you may be involved with (HSA, VEBA etc), and your own time dealing with this mess.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa022033

"The gap between U.S. and Canadian spending on health care administration has grown to $752 per capita. A large sum might be saved in the United States if administrative costs could be trimmed by implementing a Canadian-style health care system"

This probably doesn't even include the added cost to businesses of having to employee additional HR staff to coordinate the insurance and reimbursement accounts.

Every politician interested in job creation should be pro universal/single payer/socialised healthcare. The financial burden of administering and paying for private insurance has to be a significant burden for both small and large businesses.

Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#60

Post by aleyan »

A more accurate description would have been 3 years of government spending in 1 graph. We have the US budget for each of those 50 years, then why throw out 47 data points and keep arbitrary 3?

This graph with it's hand picked years and tweens between the dates seems to show a monotonically decreasing defense spending which is a very wrong way to think about it. We have had a lull in defense spending after the end of the Cold War, but the last 10 years have seen an increase of more than 50% in dollar values of the defense budget.

I don't want to attribute malice to the creator of the graph for their selection (and exclusion) of the data points, but I feel being manipulated.

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