Does this graph of Federal spending surprise you?

[SlipperySlope]

Just came across this graph of US Federal spending on Wikipedia:





One thing in particular that surprised me was how low our interest payments are (only 4.63%). For some reason I thought they were much higher.

Another (small) surprise was how little goes to education. But then again almost all education is locally funded.

Department of Defense spending - well - we all know about that.

Anything else?

[maxsolomon]

1. It makes Defense Spending look like a reasonable portion of the whole

It's not.
http://www.warresisters.org/files/FY2011piechart.pdf

[SlipperySlope]

3. I don't think it looks reasonable.

What is reasonable about saying "we spend as much on killing people as we do taking care of our elderly"?

I like seeing the graph of everything together. It puts it all into perspective for me.

[maxsolomon]

5. did you look at my link?

it's a far larger portion of the budget than social security + medicare. a lot of the cost is squirreled away in trick accounting.

?w=418

then compare it to the amount spent on militaries by the rest of the planet.



then think about the military as a giant welfare program - for defense contractors, their employees, for soldiers and their families, etc.

[sandnsea]

2. That's why they add SS and Medicare

Which is paid for by ALL of our FICA, at least those of us who make under $100,000.

But when you calculate the budget that is paid for with federal taxes, you know, the taxes "poor people don't pay", well the picture is quite a bit different.

You only see this graph when they want to cut social spending.

When they want to cut taxes, you only see the federal tax graph.

[MadHound]

4. No, once more they are covering up just how much we spend on the military

One has to really dig into the budget to find it, because it is essentially hidden. For instance, the department responsible for maintaining, repairing and stocking our nuclear fleet isn't the Department of Defense, but rather it comes under the Department of Energy (since they are the go to authority for every nuclear) This is common throughout government, NASA takes care of military satellites, etc.

Thus the money spent on our military is diffused and hidden, but if one does the digging, you'll find that our military spending is actually over fifty percent of our budget.