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> I said "latched onto" specifically because someone else said it first. Though they said "about 1980". Wrong, try actually comprehending the thread. I was bei

> I said "latched onto" specifically because someone else said it first. Though they said "about 1980". Wrong, try actually comprehending the thread. I was being generous, they said "mostly until 1970". 1980 is higher than most of the 70s. I could have taken an average of every year in the 70s, and 1980 is 1.5% higher than that. So if I did that it would have shown nearly 2x the rise. > It's only different if you choose the two covid years. There are several years before and one year after that are all lower than the 1990-ish zone. So it's different if you choose something different as you did which is okay, but apparently if I do it it's wrong. > Because of 2020 and 2021. Unless you expect another anomaly like that to happen in the next handful of years, it's obscuring the real trend. And the 90s were low because of Clinton's historic expenditure reduction, which is an outlier too. You want me to remove my outlier so your outlier can look better by comparison? > The numbers are slowly climbing over the last decade, but after a big period of decline in the first part of the last 40 years, and we're still below where it used to be. The numbers have steadily been increasing over a century, and even in the past 45 years, certainly from the 1970s, they have been rising. Exactly as I said in my original post.

Dylan16807 2y ago
They were going down for an entire decade. You can't remove an entire decade and then say "steadily rising" even if you have good evidence it was an outlier. The numbers also went down 6 years in a row in the wake of the 2008 spike. And if you don't treat covid as an outlier, then the numbers went down massively from 2021 to 2022! Treating 2020-2021 as normal years works against your argument more than it works against mine.
- starspangled 2y ago
  > They were going down for an entire decade. You can't remove an entire decade and then say "steadily rising". I certainly can, over a century. > The numbers also went down 5 years in a row in the wake of the 2008 spike. Yes, that's how long it took to reduce spending and it still didn't bottom out at pre-2008 levels. This all contributes to the trend of increasing expenditure relative to GDP. > And if you don't treat covid as an outlier, then the numbers went down massively from 2021 to 2022! Treating 2020-2021 as normal years works against your argument more than it works against mine. No it doesn't. It still didn't drop to pre-covid levels.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    > No it doesn't. An 8 percent drop since the covid peak, oh sorry I mean a 19 percent drop, ruins the claim of "steadily rising". And on top of that it drops below the 1982-1996 levels. That's not a steady rise. The two long series of dropping values make up more than a third of the last 40 years. > It still didn't drop to pre-covid levels. Good thing nobody claimed that.
    - starspangled 2y ago
      > Government expenditure as a proportion of GDP has been rising steadily for a century and is now approaching 40%. From IMF: https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA. The recent trend is shaky due to Covid, housing crash, maybe dot com crash, etc., but it looks like it's probably still trending upward. Is true. > The two long series of dropping values make up more than a third of the last 40 years. The trend over the past 40 years is rising. > Good thing nobody claimed that. You tried to because you disingenuously tried to say that the drop would "disprove" my argument. You don't even understand what my argument is, and fixating on nitpicking the definition of "steadily" is just hilariously insane. Like, we can see WWI and WWII in those figures, I'm not trying some weasel word sleight of hand to fool people into believing I meant monotonically increasing, as though the actual increase doesn't prove my point in substance. The point I replied to said this: > 1. There are claims that federal spending is out of control. How do you square that with the fact that spending as a percentage of GDP is only slightly elevated compared to the historical average going back to at least the 1970s, with the main deviation in the past few years coming from the after-effects of the pandemic? At least the 1970s. Every one of the full 4 decades after the 1970s was substantially higher than the 1970s, taken as an average (which is slightly weird but it'll do). And not just slightly elevated, the next lowest decade is more than 6.25% above the 70s, and the rest are 10-11% above. Getting angry about the numbers is really just clutching at straws because you don't seem to like the conclusion. Try arguing with some facts you actually have on your side if you don't like it so much.
      - Dylan16807 2y ago

Dylan16807 2y ago

They were going down for an entire decade. You can't remove an entire decade and then say "steadily rising" even if you have good evidence it was an outlier. The numbers also went down 6 years in a row in the wake of the 2008 spike. And if you don't treat covid as an outlier, then the numbers went down massively from 2021 to 2022! Treating 2020-2021 as normal years works against your argument more than it works against mine.

starspangled 2y ago
> They were going down for an entire decade. You can't remove an entire decade and then say "steadily rising". I certainly can, over a century. > The numbers also went down 5 years in a row in the wake of the 2008 spike. Yes, that's how long it took to reduce spending and it still didn't bottom out at pre-2008 levels. This all contributes to the trend of increasing expenditure relative to GDP. > And if you don't treat covid as an outlier, then the numbers went down massively from 2021 to 2022! Treating 2020-2021 as normal years works against your argument more than it works against mine. No it doesn't. It still didn't drop to pre-covid levels.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  > No it doesn't. An 8 percent drop since the covid peak, oh sorry I mean a 19 percent drop, ruins the claim of "steadily rising". And on top of that it drops below the 1982-1996 levels. That's not a steady rise. The two long series of dropping values make up more than a third of the last 40 years. > It still didn't drop to pre-covid levels. Good thing nobody claimed that.
  - starspangled 2y ago
    > Government expenditure as a proportion of GDP has been rising steadily for a century and is now approaching 40%. From IMF: https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA. The recent trend is shaky due to Covid, housing crash, maybe dot com crash, etc., but it looks like it's probably still trending upward. Is true. > The two long series of dropping values make up more than a third of the last 40 years. The trend over the past 40 years is rising. > Good thing nobody claimed that. You tried to because you disingenuously tried to say that the drop would "disprove" my argument. You don't even understand what my argument is, and fixating on nitpicking the definition of "steadily" is just hilariously insane. Like, we can see WWI and WWII in those figures, I'm not trying some weasel word sleight of hand to fool people into believing I meant monotonically increasing, as though the actual increase doesn't prove my point in substance. The point I replied to said this: > 1. There are claims that federal spending is out of control. How do you square that with the fact that spending as a percentage of GDP is only slightly elevated compared to the historical average going back to at least the 1970s, with the main deviation in the past few years coming from the after-effects of the pandemic? At least the 1970s. Every one of the full 4 decades after the 1970s was substantially higher than the 1970s, taken as an average (which is slightly weird but it'll do). And not just slightly elevated, the next lowest decade is more than 6.25% above the 70s, and the rest are 10-11% above. Getting angry about the numbers is really just clutching at straws because you don't seem to like the conclusion. Try arguing with some facts you actually have on your side if you don't like it so much.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago