BL sent this:Tracking Your Federal Tax Dollars, Wall Street Journal, November 6, 2010
Enlightening. I was surprised at how high, relatively, interest on the national debt was.
Where's the FDA? Oh ... next to last, right below National Parks. So much for food safety.
I thought Food Stamps was high too, relatively, for one discrete program. Which got me thinking. It's really a subsidy, isn't it. It supports the agriculture sector, boosts our economy via (at least) consumer spending, as well as provides food assistance.
It's kind of like ... Say I have $10 of lemonade to sell. My father gives my sister vouchers to buy lemonade, but only my lemonade, which she does gladly. I am happy to be richer because I sold all my stock, my sister is happy to drink my lemonade, my father is happy to see his daughters happy. I can go out and buy more lemons which makes lemon growers happy. They can hire more workers to grow more lemons which reduces unemployment.
Probably lots of programs are like this ... defense spending, health care spending, even international food aid (boosts our agriculture sector, sets up future markets). Government spending is more like an engine for economic growth, than just a hand-out.
Okay, crude, but I'm not an economist. I'm sure there's a lot more to understand.
4 comments:
I hear them for the first time;
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Head Start Program
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
Interestingly distribution
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Aid_recipients._$_per_capita,_2007.PNG
This is an interesting graphic ... world aid recipients. So much you could say. I bet India and China move from being recipients in the near future.
Lots of money going to war. I wonder if the same people calling for lower taxes are the same calling for more war. Where should the cuts come? War and the support of the military, when you add up the individual amounts, are the highest amount.
War and the military...
It aches me to think we could have spent some of this money on education and healthcare. On roads and bridges. On national broadband. The list, oh my god, the list...
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