[s0sa]

How are you arriving at these percentages? Show your work.

[rich_sasha]

How nicely you ask. I arrived at them by division.

Since you ask so nicely, it gives me pleasure to provide further details:

- This link discusses the 2025 EU budget: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-annual-budget... there are two numbers. It is unclear if the budget is the sum, or if one number includes the other. But let's add them for an annual budget of approx 250bn EUR

- EU GDP is around 20tn EUR according to this Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union (the nominal number)

- using division I arrive at 1.25% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_(mathematics)

For the US:

- This webpage: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... puts the federal spending at $6.66tn (hmm)

- Wikipedia again puts US GDP at around $30tn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States

- We arrive at federal budget spending of 22%

I'm not claiming these are the best or most up to date statistics, but this is a roughly 20x difference between US and Europe, and I understand the 2025 EU budget is particularly large.

The notion that EU bureaucracy is particularly expensive has no foundation in fact, AFAICT.

[s0sa]

As I suspected, there isn’t much there. What about individual member state expenditures (perhaps even limited to spending on things required by EU law)? OP’s point may have been silly, but this really isn’t any better.

[ghaff]

And add the per country spend that almost certainly exceeds per capita EU spend.