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Related: http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/ http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/ I always thought this was a pretty good visual representation of budge

• Perceval 17y ago
  It's not that good really. The site you linked to only displays the discretionary budget. The NYTimes infographic is much better, because it also includes all mandatory spending. Mandatory spending is over 50% of the entire federal budget, and includes pretty much all of the 'welfare state': social security, medicare, medicaid, unemployment and other income supplements, veterans' benefits, student loans, and on down the list. Displaying only discretionary spending is a rather tendentious way of representing the federal budget, because it makes defense spending look like the largest expenditure. Such graphs are usually linked to by people decrying U.S. militarism or imperialism or the military industrial complex. This is not to say that the U.S. does or does not spend too much on the military, but simply to point out that the visual effect of cutting out over 50% of the budget biases people's perceptions and provides undue support for politicized arguments.