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-provided healthcare and much cheaper education) within the same budgetary level.
It seems U.S. spending has gotten to similar levels without actually having any sort of solid planning, so taxpayers are left in the worst of both worlds: 40% of GDP spending, but somehow you still have to buy everything yourself (like health insurance or college), because the state hasn't figured out how to provide it for that price. There are some exceptions; e.g. healthcare for the elderly is covered, and the interstate highway system is good. But not as much as I would expect for that size budget.
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.
No, a lot of defense spending is not hidden under health.
$850x billion is spent on the military. That has doubled since the mid 1990s, and so has everything else roughly.
Now, if you want to consider whether the CIA is an arm of the military, that's a fair issue. If you want to look into the drug trade and how much money the US Government makes from that, that's another fair issue. Also, should the NSA be considered a military wing, because it has a $80 billion budget all by itself.... If you count those types of police state entities, then the military spending is another 5% of the budget.
There are many other mistakes. The author also says "Fifty years ago Medicare and Medicaid didn't even exist, and federal spending on other health-related services made up a tiny sliver of the whole"
This alone represents a false 20% reduction to the "Defense" budget, at the expense of increasing the appearance of social services budgets. If one adds up all defense related spending not by Federally published categories but by actual expenditures then the picture changes radically -- and it looks a lot closer to the budgets of yesteryear.
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.
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.
Yes, but it is just about to zoom up as the baby boomers start retiring over the next 20 years. It is a double wammy to the budget because they will switch from paying in to pulling out.
This is one of the reasons that I don't like graphs of governments spending shown as percentages. There is an inherent spin in the chart. If federal spending increases relative to GDP, but the constituent components of the chart remain relatively flat percentage-wise, then it misleads people to interpret the spending as flat, when it isn't.
So basically: less defense, more insurance, less infrastructure and research. This is the trifecta of basic public goods the federal government is well-suited to provide. Would be nice to tip the scales more in favor transportation infrastructure and basic research grants, with less spent on boondoggle defense programs (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/tag/f-22/) and subsidizing out of control growth in health care costs vs. other first-world nations (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-an-m...) though.
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.
I'd feel better about that graph if it wasn't so horribly spun. The vertical scale is showing a delta from the original value, not the value. It looks like an exponential explosion in spending when it's actually about 3.5x since 1970.
Honestly, if I were an investor and a startup tried to sell me that chart, I'd walk out of the room.
The broader point is valid, though. Education policy in the US sucks. But the details matter a whole lot -- we're spending on the wrong things (tests, security) and not on the things that are known to make a difference (e.g. teacher salary -- make it competetive with other professions and you'll get better teachers). It's far more complicated than the libertarian "Gov'mnt spending bad, hur, hur, hur." line.
Should be titled '3 years of government spending in one graph' as it seems to completely fail in putting the figures into context by skipping intervening years, so we have no idea from this whether this is representative, or cherry picked for effect.
Unfortunately this graph primarily just shows that government handouts to citizens in the form of safety net programs, medicare, and medicaid have gone up in percentage, that defense has gone down in percentage, and that we don't spend enough (in my opinion) on public transportation- but it only looks at three years!
I am not sure exactly at what level you wish there would be more spending on public transportation, but spending money in that field could be a big waste of cash in the US. It's way too big and too decentralized. It makes sense in some countries (in Japan, for example, all cities are on the coast because nobody builds stuff in the mountains, so it's easy to connect the dots), but public transportation would not work well outside of a few big cities in North America.
Even in France, the bullet trains lines cost way too much versus their planned profits. Some will not be profitable for another 20-30 years! And that's assuming that, by then, it's still the best way to get from A to B. It's all about getting votes in the end, it does not make economic sense at all.
[+] [-] sien|14 years ago|reply
Here is one here:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1903_2010...
[+] [-] _delirium|14 years ago|reply
It seems U.S. spending has gotten to similar levels without actually having any sort of solid planning, so taxpayers are left in the worst of both worlds: 40% of GDP spending, but somehow you still have to buy everything yourself (like health insurance or college), because the state hasn't figured out how to provide it for that price. There are some exceptions; e.g. healthcare for the elderly is covered, and the interstate highway system is good. But not as much as I would expect for that size budget.
[+] [-] tnuc|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] cpeterso|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventureful|14 years ago|reply
$850x billion is spent on the military. That has doubled since the mid 1990s, and so has everything else roughly.
Now, if you want to consider whether the CIA is an arm of the military, that's a fair issue. If you want to look into the drug trade and how much money the US Government makes from that, that's another fair issue. Also, should the NSA be considered a military wing, because it has a $80 billion budget all by itself.... If you count those types of police state entities, then the military spending is another 5% of the budget.
[+] [-] NHQ|14 years ago|reply
"Federal spending has grown roughly as fast as the overall economy over the past 50 years."
And then immediately after that says spending climbed from 18% of GDP to 24% of GDP, which is a 33% increase.
[+] [-] nnnnnnnn|14 years ago|reply
This is only true because 50 years ago veteran's benefits and many other related military benefits were part of the defense budget. In 2011 this amounted to $141 billion dollars. Cite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Ot...
This alone represents a false 20% reduction to the "Defense" budget, at the expense of increasing the appearance of social services budgets. If one adds up all defense related spending not by Federally published categories but by actual expenditures then the picture changes radically -- and it looks a lot closer to the budgets of yesteryear.
[+] [-] smcl|14 years ago|reply
[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.
[+] [-] _delirium|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asmithmd1|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nhebb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waterlesscloud|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbell|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SagelyGuru|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hansef|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aleyan|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] panthera|14 years ago|reply
cato.org/images/testimony/coulson-2-9-11-2.jpg
Imagine if that were
- Price vs. Hard Drive space, OR
- Price vs. Computer Chip
We would be paying more for slower computers!
Yet when the government spends, and produces outcomes like these, the cry is always for "more funding."
To make this concrete, many people on HN are involved in startups.
If you showed prospective investors numbers like the kind in that graph -- for something you produced -- you would be walking away without a check.
[+] [-] ajross|14 years ago|reply
Honestly, if I were an investor and a startup tried to sell me that chart, I'd walk out of the room.
The broader point is valid, though. Education policy in the US sucks. But the details matter a whole lot -- we're spending on the wrong things (tests, security) and not on the things that are known to make a difference (e.g. teacher salary -- make it competetive with other professions and you'll get better teachers). It's far more complicated than the libertarian "Gov'mnt spending bad, hur, hur, hur." line.
[+] [-] codemac|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artsrc|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ktizo|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adviceonly|14 years ago|reply
Instead, look at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation's graphs, like this one of our debt and projected debt: http://www.pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0024_federal-debt-full.asp...
The Peterson foundation used to be an NPR donor. I don't know whether they still are.
[+] [-] ekianjo|14 years ago|reply
Even in France, the bullet trains lines cost way too much versus their planned profits. Some will not be profitable for another 20-30 years! And that's assuming that, by then, it's still the best way to get from A to B. It's all about getting votes in the end, it does not make economic sense at all.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] woodchuck64|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|14 years ago|reply
That doesn't mean it's a good thing, so this is a very poor argument.
[+] [-] tsotha|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] J3L2404|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]