9 ms·

50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

82 points by mshafrir 14y ago

adviceonly 14y ago
Unfortunately this graph primarily just shows that government handouts to citizens in the form of safety net programs, medicare, and medicaid have gone up in percentage, that defense has gone down in percentage, and that we don't spend enough (in my opinion) on public transportation- but it only looks at three years! Instead, look at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation's graphs, like this one of our debt and projected debt: http://www.pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0024_federal-debt-full.aspx http://www.pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0024_federal-debt-full.asp... The Peterson foundation used to be an NPR donor. I don't know whether they still are.
- ekianjo 14y ago
  I am not sure exactly at what level you wish there would be more spending on public transportation, but spending money in that field could be a big waste of cash in the US. It's way too big and too decentralized. It makes sense in some countries (in Japan, for example, all cities are on the coast because nobody builds stuff in the mountains, so it's easy to connect the dots), but public transportation would not work well outside of a few big cities in North America. Even in France, the bullet trains lines cost way too much versus their planned profits. Some will not be profitable for another 20-30 years! And that's assuming that, by then, it's still the best way to get from A to B. It's all about getting votes in the end, it does not make economic sense at all.
  - delackner 14y ago
    You have made a few simple basic errors of data that lead to some very incorrect conclusions. The bulk of the US population live in areas that have population densities at or even sometimes (NYC) above European levels. The entire state of california (not exactly high density at all, given the bulk of the state is just open space) has an average population density slightly higher than Spain, a country that managed to build a national High speed rail network. The entire eastern sea-board is at roughly european density levels as well. No one is suggesting we build a bullet train that goes to North Dakota. As for "not being profitable for another 20-30 years", you are arguing from a very short-term mindset about national infrastructure, but also you are pre-assuming that infrastructure should be directly profitable. This is not a commonly agreed idea, rather there is fierce disagreement between fiscal conservatives who think the government shouldn't do ANYTHING, and those (like most of europe) who believe the government should undertake large "public-good" projects precisely because they are not directly profitable, but they are PUBLIC GOODS. Universal health care is also "not profitable" directly, but the benefit to society of having everyone live decades longer is massive increased economic output, to say nothing of increased quality of life. The network effect of having efficient rail transportation balloons the entire economy. This is why governments pay for big infrastructure: everyone benefits and the direct revenue and direct costs are high enough to be uninteresting for investors.
  - nknight 14y ago
    You don't get it. This isn't just about connecting urban centers (which we could, in fact, do a much better job of), it's about getting real, meaningful transit even in places like Los Angeles. Some of these cities rival many countries in population, and have density levels reaching toward Gibraltar. New York is by far the "shining" beacon of mass transit in the US, but even its infrastructure is deteriorating. We don't build transit here not because it wouldn't work, but because of purely political factors. It's a punching bag for the anti-tax brigade and the NIMBYs (most also in the anti-tax brigade) go apeshit if they think public transit might bring a brown person to their neighborhood. The horror!
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
woodchuck64 14y ago
Reality has a liberal bias.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- ars 14y ago
  So does entropy (i.e. over time entropy increases). That doesn't mean it's a good thing, so this is a very poor argument.
- J3L2404 14y ago
  Time has a liberal bias. Last generation's liberal is this generation's moderate.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
    - Lukeas14 14y ago
      Fiscally I think you're correct as people's views are heavily affected by economic cycles. As the current young generation gets old we'll remember how the recession affected us as we entered the workforce. We'll also have to deal with the debt by then resulting in a more fiscally conservative electorate than we have now. Socially, we've been consistently getting more and more liberal since the country was founded. Gay marriage is the latest example. Despite North Carolina, polls have shown that support for gay marriage is very much generational.
  - btilly 14y ago
    Not true. A right wing lower taxes point of view 55 years ago was to drop the top taxes on rich people from over 90% to about 70%. A right wing lower taxes point of view now is to drop taxes on rich people from 15% to 10%. And anyone who thinks that having more tax brackets with much higher top tax rates is viewed as a radical.
- tsotha 14y ago
codemac 14y ago
"Everything else" is a bit big, and seeing the trends over time is far more interesting than at 25 year intervals.
sien 14y ago
The other thing that would be good to see is the percentage of GDP that the spending represents. Here is one here: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1903_2010USp_13s1li011lcn_F0t_US_Government_Spending_As_Percent_Of_GDP http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1903_2010...
- _delirium 14y ago
  The most amazing thing I take away from that chart, having lived in both Europe and the U.S., is how little the U.S. taxpayer gets for their money in comparison, I'm guessing because spending crept up slowly without any real planning. For example, the U.S., Canadian, and Norwegian governments each spend about 40% of GDP, but somehow Norwegians and Canadians get a much stronger set of social services (including state-provided healthcare and much cheaper education) within the same budgetary level. It seems U.S. spending has gotten to similar levels without actually having any sort of solid planning, so taxpayers are left in the worst of both worlds: 40% of GDP spending, but somehow you still have to buy everything yourself (like health insurance or college), because the state hasn't figured out how to provide it for that price. There are some exceptions; e.g. healthcare for the elderly is covered, and the interstate highway system is good. But not as much as I would expect for that size budget.
  - aurelianito 14y ago
    Gas is subsidized by wars in the US. If you keep that in mind, the value that they get from their money is not that low. Edit: Please do not down-vote just because you don't agree. The second Gulf War was explicitly called OIL (Operation Iraqi Liberation). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq#Military_aspects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq#Military_... and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoSBqs6y8uM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoSBqs6y8uM
    - aneth 14y ago
      This is a claim that requires some justification. Gas in many countries is far cheaper than in the US, and the reason it is more expensive in others is heavy taxation and regulation, not lack of coercive negotiations.
hansef 14y ago
So basically: less defense, more insurance, less infrastructure and research. This is the trifecta of basic public goods the federal government is well-suited to provide. Would be nice to tip the scales more in favor transportation infrastructure and basic research grants, with less spent on boondoggle defense programs (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/tag/f-22/ http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/tag/f-22/) and subsidizing out of control growth in health care costs vs. other first-world nations (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-an-mri-costs-1080-in-america-and-280-in-france/2011/08/25/gIQAVHztoR_blog.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-an-m...) though.
_delirium 14y ago
Interesting that, contrary to what I had assumed, social security is completely flat in its budget share from 1987 to 2011.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  The baby boomers start hitting full retirement age in 2012. Will be interesting to see the same stat in 5-10 years.
  - adventureful 14y ago
    Yep, 20,000 boomers a day retiring over the next 15 years or so. A fiscal disaster.
- asmithmd1 14y ago
  Yes, but it is just about to zoom up as the baby boomers start retiring over the next 20 years. It is a double wammy to the budget because they will switch from paying in to pulling out.
  - _delirium 14y ago
    True, though Reagan somewhat planned for that with the 1983 Social Security tax hike, which was designed to pull in ~20 years of higher baby-boomer Soc. Sec. tax revenue to pay for their retirements. Hence the huge surpluses Soc. Sec. has been running for some years, to accumulate a few trillion out of which to pay for their retirements (if it weren't for that, Soc. Sec. tax could've been a lot lower over the past 20 years purely to break even year-to-year).
- nhebb 14y ago
  This is one of the reasons that I don't like graphs of governments spending shown as percentages. There is an inherent spin in the chart. If federal spending increases relative to GDP, but the constituent components of the chart remain relatively flat percentage-wise, then it misleads people to interpret the spending as flat, when it isn't.
ktizo 14y ago
Should be titled '3 years of government spending in one graph' as it seems to completely fail in putting the figures into context by skipping intervening years, so we have no idea from this whether this is representative, or cherry picked for effect.
tnuc 14y ago
Does this account for the changes in how spending is reported? Is all defense spending under defense? or is there a lot hidden under education and health? I have played with too many budgets to accept things like this at face value.
- adventureful 14y ago
  No, a lot of defense spending is not hidden under health. $850x billion is spent on the military. That has doubled since the mid 1990s, and so has everything else roughly. Now, if you want to consider whether the CIA is an arm of the military, that's a fair issue. If you want to look into the drug trade and how much money the US Government makes from that, that's another fair issue. Also, should the NSA be considered a military wing, because it has a $80 billion budget all by itself.... If you count those types of police state entities, then the military spending is another 5% of the budget.
- cpeterso 14y ago
  Good question. Does the "defense spending" category include the trillion dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? George W. Bush's administration conveniently swept the wars' costs into a "supplemental" budget separate from the DoD budget.
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    "The figures in the graph include veterans' benefits as well as funding for current operations."
    - gruseom 14y ago
      That suggests that the off-budget wars were not included. Edit: never mind. I was referring to what they call the "unfunded" wars under GWB but the graph obviously doesn't include those years.
  - nnnnnnnn 14y ago
    No, the graph clearly does not include the supplementary spending. I ran the numbers for this a while back, and the supplementary extra-budget DoD spending in the Bush years raised the DoD expenses from 22% to nearly 40% in some cases. Military expenditures are much higher than 22%, even in 2011. These budget numbers hide much military spending in other budgetary components -- for example, veteran's benefits or military scholarships will fit into another category (Medicare, everything else, etc). Statistics that put military spending at a quarter of our budget never include these costs. A big part of this "change" comes from a budgeting game which hides military costs in other budgets. Contrary to claims in the article, VA benefits and medical claims did exist as an expense 50 years ago -- but they were directly part of the Defense budget at that time.
panthera 14y ago
And here's another graph of government spending effectiveness: cato.org/images/testimony/coulson-2-9-11-2.jpg Imagine if that were - Price vs. Hard Drive space, OR - Price vs. Computer Chip We would be paying more for slower computers! Yet when the government spends, and produces outcomes like these, the cry is always for "more funding." To make this concrete, many people on HN are involved in startups. If you showed prospective investors numbers like the kind in that graph -- for something you produced -- you would be walking away without a check.
- ajross 14y ago
  I'd feel better about that graph if it wasn't so horribly spun. The vertical scale is showing a delta from the original value, not the value. It looks like an exponential explosion in spending when it's actually about 3.5x since 1970. Honestly, if I were an investor and a startup tried to sell me that chart, I'd walk out of the room. The broader point is valid, though. Education policy in the US sucks. But the details matter a whole lot -- we're spending on the wrong things (tests, security) and not on the things that are known to make a difference (e.g. teacher salary -- make it competetive with other professions and you'll get better teachers). It's far more complicated than the libertarian "Gov'mnt spending bad, hur, hur, hur." line.
  - ekianjo 14y ago
    No need to ridicule libertarians like that. There are different kinds of libertarians, different movements, and not all have such simple ways of thinking. At least libertarians invite criticism in the field of inflated government spendings.
    - mkr-hn 14y ago
      I thought libertarians were a fringe group of idiots until someone on HN said they were libertarian while saying something sensible. It's been hard to fight the habit of ignoring them. It doesn't help that the Koches and their institute are cited in the stupid babbling of the more vocal ones.
NHQ 14y ago
The authors says "Federal spending has grown roughly as fast as the overall economy over the past 50 years." And then immediately after that says spending climbed from 18% of GDP to 24% of GDP, which is a 33% increase.
- nnnnnnnn 14y ago
  There are many other mistakes. The author also says "Fifty years ago Medicare and Medicaid didn't even exist, and federal spending on other health-related services made up a tiny sliver of the whole" This is only true because 50 years ago veteran's benefits and many other related military benefits were part of the defense budget. In 2011 this amounted to $141 billion dollars. Cite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Other_spending http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Ot... This alone represents a false 20% reduction to the "Defense" budget, at the expense of increasing the appearance of social services budgets. If one adds up all defense related spending not by Federally published categories but by actual expenditures then the picture changes radically -- and it looks a lot closer to the budgets of yesteryear.
artsrc 14y ago
Nominal interest is different than real interest. Inflation reduces the real size of debt. Inflation was higher in the 80's.
SagelyGuru 14y ago
Does the 'defense' figure include offense?
smcl 14y ago
Anyone care to explain how medicare + medicaid (which don't apply to everyone) manage to consume 23.2% of the US budget - yet the UK's National Health Service, which does cover everyone, only takes up 10.7% of it's budget[1]. The NHS, for it's flaws, is starting to seem like a bargain. [1] http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_health_care_budget_2009_1.html http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_health_care_budget_2009... Update: i'm an idiot and read the "Public net debt" row instead (just skimmed to the bottom row and presumed that'd be a sum). The actual percentage is 17.09% which is considerably higher than I originally had it, but still a great deal less than the US.
aleyan 14y ago
A more accurate description would have been 3 years of government spending in 1 graph. We have the US budget for each of those 50 years, then why throw out 47 data points and keep arbitrary 3? This graph with it's hand picked years and tweens between the dates seems to show a monotonically decreasing defense spending which is a very wrong way to think about it. We have had a lull in defense spending after the end of the Cold War, but the last 10 years have seen an increase of more than 50% in dollar values of the defense budget. I don't want to attribute malice to the creator of the graph for their selection (and exclusion) of the data points, but I feel being manipulated.

82 points by mshafrir 14y ago

Unfortunately this graph primarily just shows that government handouts to citizens in the form of safety net programs, medicare, and medicaid have gone up in percentage, that defense has gone down in percentage, and that we don't spend enough (in my opinion) on public transportation- but it only looks at three years! Instead, look at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation's graphs, like this one of our debt and projected debt: http://www.pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0024_federal-debt-full.aspx http://www.pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0024_federal-debt-full.asp... The Peterson foundation used to be an NPR donor. I don't know whether they still are.

ekianjo 14y ago
I am not sure exactly at what level you wish there would be more spending on public transportation, but spending money in that field could be a big waste of cash in the US. It's way too big and too decentralized. It makes sense in some countries (in Japan, for example, all cities are on the coast because nobody builds stuff in the mountains, so it's easy to connect the dots), but public transportation would not work well outside of a few big cities in North America. Even in France, the bullet trains lines cost way too much versus their planned profits. Some will not be profitable for another 20-30 years! And that's assuming that, by then, it's still the best way to get from A to B. It's all about getting votes in the end, it does not make economic sense at all.
- delackner 14y ago
  You have made a few simple basic errors of data that lead to some very incorrect conclusions. The bulk of the US population live in areas that have population densities at or even sometimes (NYC) above European levels. The entire state of california (not exactly high density at all, given the bulk of the state is just open space) has an average population density slightly higher than Spain, a country that managed to build a national High speed rail network. The entire eastern sea-board is at roughly european density levels as well. No one is suggesting we build a bullet train that goes to North Dakota. As for "not being profitable for another 20-30 years", you are arguing from a very short-term mindset about national infrastructure, but also you are pre-assuming that infrastructure should be directly profitable. This is not a commonly agreed idea, rather there is fierce disagreement between fiscal conservatives who think the government shouldn't do ANYTHING, and those (like most of europe) who believe the government should undertake large "public-good" projects precisely because they are not directly profitable, but they are PUBLIC GOODS. Universal health care is also "not profitable" directly, but the benefit to society of having everyone live decades longer is massive increased economic output, to say nothing of increased quality of life. The network effect of having efficient rail transportation balloons the entire economy. This is why governments pay for big infrastructure: everyone benefits and the direct revenue and direct costs are high enough to be uninteresting for investors.
- nknight 14y ago
  You don't get it. This isn't just about connecting urban centers (which we could, in fact, do a much better job of), it's about getting real, meaningful transit even in places like Los Angeles. Some of these cities rival many countries in population, and have density levels reaching toward Gibraltar. New York is by far the "shining" beacon of mass transit in the US, but even its infrastructure is deteriorating. We don't build transit here not because it wouldn't work, but because of purely political factors. It's a punching bag for the anti-tax brigade and the NIMBYs (most also in the anti-tax brigade) go apeshit if they think public transit might bring a brown person to their neighborhood. The horror!
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

woodchuck64 14y ago

Reality has a liberal bias.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ars 14y ago
So does entropy (i.e. over time entropy increases). That doesn't mean it's a good thing, so this is a very poor argument.
J3L2404 14y ago
Time has a liberal bias. Last generation's liberal is this generation's moderate.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - Lukeas14 14y ago
    Fiscally I think you're correct as people's views are heavily affected by economic cycles. As the current young generation gets old we'll remember how the recession affected us as we entered the workforce. We'll also have to deal with the debt by then resulting in a more fiscally conservative electorate than we have now. Socially, we've been consistently getting more and more liberal since the country was founded. Gay marriage is the latest example. Despite North Carolina, polls have shown that support for gay marriage is very much generational.
- btilly 14y ago
  Not true. A right wing lower taxes point of view 55 years ago was to drop the top taxes on rich people from over 90% to about 70%. A right wing lower taxes point of view now is to drop taxes on rich people from 15% to 10%. And anyone who thinks that having more tax brackets with much higher top tax rates is viewed as a radical.
tsotha 14y ago

codemac 14y ago

"Everything else" is a bit big, and seeing the trends over time is far more interesting than at 25 year intervals.

sien 14y ago

The other thing that would be good to see is the percentage of GDP that the spending represents. Here is one here: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1903_2010USp_13s1li011lcn_F0t_US_Government_Spending_As_Percent_Of_GDP http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1903_2010...

_delirium 14y ago
The most amazing thing I take away from that chart, having lived in both Europe and the U.S., is how little the U.S. taxpayer gets for their money in comparison, I'm guessing because spending crept up slowly without any real planning. For example, the U.S., Canadian, and Norwegian governments each spend about 40% of GDP, but somehow Norwegians and Canadians get a much stronger set of social services (including state-provided healthcare and much cheaper education) within the same budgetary level. It seems U.S. spending has gotten to similar levels without actually having any sort of solid planning, so taxpayers are left in the worst of both worlds: 40% of GDP spending, but somehow you still have to buy everything yourself (like health insurance or college), because the state hasn't figured out how to provide it for that price. There are some exceptions; e.g. healthcare for the elderly is covered, and the interstate highway system is good. But not as much as I would expect for that size budget.
- aurelianito 14y ago
  Gas is subsidized by wars in the US. If you keep that in mind, the value that they get from their money is not that low. Edit: Please do not down-vote just because you don't agree. The second Gulf War was explicitly called OIL (Operation Iraqi Liberation). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq#Military_aspects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq#Military_... and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoSBqs6y8uM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoSBqs6y8uM
  - aneth 14y ago
    This is a claim that requires some justification. Gas in many countries is far cheaper than in the US, and the reason it is more expensive in others is heavy taxation and regulation, not lack of coercive negotiations.

hansef 14y ago

So basically: less defense, more insurance, less infrastructure and research. This is the trifecta of basic public goods the federal government is well-suited to provide. Would be nice to tip the scales more in favor transportation infrastructure and basic research grants, with less spent on boondoggle defense programs (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/tag/f-22/ http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/tag/f-22/) and subsidizing out of control growth in health care costs vs. other first-world nations (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-an-mri-costs-1080-in-america-and-280-in-france/2011/08/25/gIQAVHztoR_blog.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-an-m...) though.

_delirium 14y ago

Interesting that, contrary to what I had assumed, social security is completely flat in its budget share from 1987 to 2011.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
The baby boomers start hitting full retirement age in 2012. Will be interesting to see the same stat in 5-10 years.
- adventureful 14y ago
  Yep, 20,000 boomers a day retiring over the next 15 years or so. A fiscal disaster.
asmithmd1 14y ago
Yes, but it is just about to zoom up as the baby boomers start retiring over the next 20 years. It is a double wammy to the budget because they will switch from paying in to pulling out.
- _delirium 14y ago
  True, though Reagan somewhat planned for that with the 1983 Social Security tax hike, which was designed to pull in ~20 years of higher baby-boomer Soc. Sec. tax revenue to pay for their retirements. Hence the huge surpluses Soc. Sec. has been running for some years, to accumulate a few trillion out of which to pay for their retirements (if it weren't for that, Soc. Sec. tax could've been a lot lower over the past 20 years purely to break even year-to-year).
nhebb 14y ago
This is one of the reasons that I don't like graphs of governments spending shown as percentages. There is an inherent spin in the chart. If federal spending increases relative to GDP, but the constituent components of the chart remain relatively flat percentage-wise, then it misleads people to interpret the spending as flat, when it isn't.

ktizo 14y ago

Should be titled '3 years of government spending in one graph' as it seems to completely fail in putting the figures into context by skipping intervening years, so we have no idea from this whether this is representative, or cherry picked for effect.

tnuc 14y ago

Does this account for the changes in how spending is reported? Is all defense spending under defense? or is there a lot hidden under education and health? I have played with too many budgets to accept things like this at face value.

adventureful 14y ago
No, a lot of defense spending is not hidden under health. $850x billion is spent on the military. That has doubled since the mid 1990s, and so has everything else roughly. Now, if you want to consider whether the CIA is an arm of the military, that's a fair issue. If you want to look into the drug trade and how much money the US Government makes from that, that's another fair issue. Also, should the NSA be considered a military wing, because it has a $80 billion budget all by itself.... If you count those types of police state entities, then the military spending is another 5% of the budget.
cpeterso 14y ago
Good question. Does the "defense spending" category include the trillion dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? George W. Bush's administration conveniently swept the wars' costs into a "supplemental" budget separate from the DoD budget.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  "The figures in the graph include veterans' benefits as well as funding for current operations."
  - gruseom 14y ago
    That suggests that the off-budget wars were not included. Edit: never mind. I was referring to what they call the "unfunded" wars under GWB but the graph obviously doesn't include those years.
- nnnnnnnn 14y ago
  No, the graph clearly does not include the supplementary spending. I ran the numbers for this a while back, and the supplementary extra-budget DoD spending in the Bush years raised the DoD expenses from 22% to nearly 40% in some cases. Military expenditures are much higher than 22%, even in 2011. These budget numbers hide much military spending in other budgetary components -- for example, veteran's benefits or military scholarships will fit into another category (Medicare, everything else, etc). Statistics that put military spending at a quarter of our budget never include these costs. A big part of this "change" comes from a budgeting game which hides military costs in other budgets. Contrary to claims in the article, VA benefits and medical claims did exist as an expense 50 years ago -- but they were directly part of the Defense budget at that time.

panthera 14y ago

And here's another graph of government spending effectiveness: cato.org/images/testimony/coulson-2-9-11-2.jpg Imagine if that were - Price vs. Hard Drive space, OR - Price vs. Computer Chip We would be paying more for slower computers! Yet when the government spends, and produces outcomes like these, the cry is always for "more funding." To make this concrete, many people on HN are involved in startups. If you showed prospective investors numbers like the kind in that graph -- for something you produced -- you would be walking away without a check.

ajross 14y ago
I'd feel better about that graph if it wasn't so horribly spun. The vertical scale is showing a delta from the original value, not the value. It looks like an exponential explosion in spending when it's actually about 3.5x since 1970. Honestly, if I were an investor and a startup tried to sell me that chart, I'd walk out of the room. The broader point is valid, though. Education policy in the US sucks. But the details matter a whole lot -- we're spending on the wrong things (tests, security) and not on the things that are known to make a difference (e.g. teacher salary -- make it competetive with other professions and you'll get better teachers). It's far more complicated than the libertarian "Gov'mnt spending bad, hur, hur, hur." line.
- ekianjo 14y ago
  No need to ridicule libertarians like that. There are different kinds of libertarians, different movements, and not all have such simple ways of thinking. At least libertarians invite criticism in the field of inflated government spendings.
  - mkr-hn 14y ago
    I thought libertarians were a fringe group of idiots until someone on HN said they were libertarian while saying something sensible. It's been hard to fight the habit of ignoring them. It doesn't help that the Koches and their institute are cited in the stupid babbling of the more vocal ones.

NHQ 14y ago

The authors says "Federal spending has grown roughly as fast as the overall economy over the past 50 years." And then immediately after that says spending climbed from 18% of GDP to 24% of GDP, which is a 33% increase.

nnnnnnnn 14y ago
There are many other mistakes. The author also says "Fifty years ago Medicare and Medicaid didn't even exist, and federal spending on other health-related services made up a tiny sliver of the whole" This is only true because 50 years ago veteran's benefits and many other related military benefits were part of the defense budget. In 2011 this amounted to $141 billion dollars. Cite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Other_spending http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Ot... This alone represents a false 20% reduction to the "Defense" budget, at the expense of increasing the appearance of social services budgets. If one adds up all defense related spending not by Federally published categories but by actual expenditures then the picture changes radically -- and it looks a lot closer to the budgets of yesteryear.

artsrc 14y ago

Nominal interest is different than real interest. Inflation reduces the real size of debt. Inflation was higher in the 80's.

SagelyGuru 14y ago

Does the 'defense' figure include offense?

smcl 14y ago

Anyone care to explain how medicare + medicaid (which don't apply to everyone) manage to consume 23.2% of the US budget - yet the UK's National Health Service, which does cover everyone, only takes up 10.7% of it's budget[1]. The NHS, for it's flaws, is starting to seem like a bargain. [1] http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_health_care_budget_2009_1.html http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_health_care_budget_2009... Update: i'm an idiot and read the "Public net debt" row instead (just skimmed to the bottom row and presumed that'd be a sum). The actual percentage is 17.09% which is considerably higher than I originally had it, but still a great deal less than the US.

aleyan 14y ago

A more accurate description would have been 3 years of government spending in 1 graph. We have the US budget for each of those 50 years, then why throw out 47 data points and keep arbitrary 3? This graph with it's hand picked years and tweens between the dates seems to show a monotonically decreasing defense spending which is a very wrong way to think about it. We have had a lull in defense spending after the end of the Cold War, but the last 10 years have seen an increase of more than 50% in dollar values of the defense budget. I don't want to attribute malice to the creator of the graph for their selection (and exclusion) of the data points, but I feel being manipulated.