4 ms·
Where your money goes
- afsina 15y agoI wonder if the graphic is normalized for inflation
- patio11 15y agoYes, that is what "in today's dollars" means.
- Tichy 15y agoSomehow that chart strikes me as dishonest. They should show more details about the entitlements. It's always easy to create a chart that compares something specific with "everything else" so that "everything else" looks extremely large.
- yummyfajitas 15y agoThis site gives more details: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2010_US_total http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2010_US_total "Entitlements" probably just means SS and medicare.
- rauljara 15y ago"The main function of our government is to write checks to middle-class and wealthy voters." Unless I'm reading those graphs wrong (pretty sure I'm not), even though a smaller share of entitlement checks are going to the very poor, a majority of entitlement spending is going to the bottom two fifths, and a plurality to the bottom fifth. Which doesn't sound like "middle-class and wealthy voters" to me.* That quote seems to be the basis of the entire rest of the post. Starting off with a false premise is not a good way to build a case. *yes, some of the people in the second fifth are middle-ish income. But someone who is in the second fifth, but closer to the first is still pretty poor.
- anamax 15y ago> Unless I'm reading those graphs wrong (pretty sure I'm not), Unless the graphs show "overhead and expenses", you are. Govt spending on the poor supports a large number of middle-class administrators and the like who get a huge fraction of the money. Never confuse inputs with outputs.
- rauljara 15y agoHate to be that guy, but citation needed. I don't know about all of the entitlement programs, but according to the AMA+, the official cost of medicare overhead was 3.1% in 2005. Which does not sound like a "huge fraction" to me. I don't know about other entitlement programs. I am always open to evidence. + http://healthcarereform.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004083 http://healthcarereform.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourc...
- cs702 15y agoAgree -- the whole argument starts off with a false premise. I'm not surprised. The author, John Cochrane, a 'freshwater economist' (look it up), always sounds to my ears like a broken record: I can usually guess, a priori, what position he will take, and often even what his arguments will be, in response to any economic issue -- occasionally by torturing the facts, as in this case. To his credit, sometimes he can change his mind -- here's an example: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/anti-keynesian-revisionism/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/anti-keynesian-r...