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Veelox | 1 year ago

The US government spent $6.1 TRILLION dollars in 2023. I don't think raising taxes is the solution to the government offering a more competitive wage.

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fragmede|1 year ago

Is your entire argument that it's a really big number? Are we afraid of big numbers? How much do you think it should spend? It's the federal government, they do a lot of stuff. Stuff costs money. We can complain about how they spend the money, or that the money is being wasted or stolen, but pointing out that it's a big number isn't a very convincing argument.

xnyan|1 year ago

That number is meaningless without also considering US GDP (even if you write trillion in caps). The US averages about 14% government spending as a fraction of GDP, placing it at ~90/140. For the size of the US economy, spending should be significantly higher.

opo|1 year ago

You are ignoring state government expenditures.

>...The US government's Bureau of Economic Analysis as of Q3 2023 estimates $10,007.7 billion in annual total government expenditure and $27,610.1 billion annual total GDP which is 36.2%.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_Uni...

>For the size of the US economy, spending should be significantly higher.

The percentage shot up during the Covid spending and is still slightly above the historical average.

paulmd|1 year ago

Is this actual spending, or are you rolling pass-through savings programs into this? Cause the caveat there is people always seem to want to count the outflow but not the associated inflow…