I’m surprised the article presents an argument that welfare spending has increased from 1980 ($1,015) to 2016 ($3,419) as if that’s a big increase without even

I’m surprised the article presents an argument that welfare spending has increased from 1980 ($1,015) to 2016 ($3,419) as if that’s a big increase without even mentioning inflation. Using the BLS CPI calculator: https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1015&year1=198001&year2=201601 https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1015&year1=198... $1,015 in 1980 is equivalent to $3,091 in 2016 dollars. So, it’s only a small relative increase, and as the article points out, it was mainly for Medicaid: > Most of this increase was due to health care spending, and Medicaid in particular. But even if we exclude Medicaid from the calculation, we find that federal investments in means-tested programs increased by 130 percent from 1980 to 2018, from $630 to $1,448 per person. $630 in 1980 has the same buying power as $2,007 in 2018. So it’s actually a reduction in spending outside of healthcare.