Driving Growth in Government spending

[Exterous]

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/what-is-driving-growth-in-government-spending/

Its a lengthy article but well worth the read. I noticed that the military spending didn't take as much as I would have thought (although I am not quite sure where the Iraq Afghanistan costs is being accounted for if it is)

It’s one of the most fundamental political questions of our time: What’s driving the growth in government spending? And it has a relatively straightforward answer: first and foremost, spending on health care through Medicare and Medicaid, and other major social insurance and entitlement programs.

 

[Atreus21]

Saw that earlier. I didn't think it was any major revelation after that NYT graph that showed total spending in bubbles.

 

[KB]

This is one reason why republicans have been so hot to cut entitlements. No savings were put away for them (trust fund was spent) and more people are retiring and living longer.

 

[Exterous]

Saw that earlier. I didn't think it was any major revelation after that NYT graph that showed total spending in bubbles.

Didn't ring a bell but the purple text coloring on google says otherwise. I must be getting old...

 

[SpatiallyAware]

47% of our voters are doing so primarily due to entitlement programs.

See my signature.

 

[piasabird]

This chart will not work, because we count spending and the budget in a different way now. We even compute inflation in a different way.

Everything was simpler in WWII weapons were also inferior. Then more people died also. We also bombed japan with napalm and burned everyone alive. Hitler had death camps and the Japanese and Germany used captives and civilians for slave labor. We have treated the terrorist and muslims a lot better than we have ever been treated.

In WWII we did not make giant armored jeeps and our tanks and tank rounds were not nearly as superior.

 

[IronWing]

Spending on SS was fully expected to increase as the Boomers reach retirement age. It will only get worse for the next decade or two as they retire. Healthcare spending has far outstripped inflation and will continue to do so until we decide we've had enough and decide to do something about it. We still spend far too much on torturing treating people who are about to die.

 

[CLite]

47% of our voters are doing so primarily due to entitlement programs.

See my signature.

Anyone who utters "47%" reveals themselves to be an imbecile. This number includes seniors who have paid taxes their entire lives, and also people in short-term jobs such as low-wage service industries during college/etc.

As an example, both my wife and I worked during our college careers in relatively low wage roles, earned enough to not be claimed as dependents but paid close to nothing in federal taxes. Currently we are well inside the top 5% of income earners in the US. It's amusing to think that while pursuing our education and working on the side we would have been the subject of disdain for not contributing to federal taxes.

As a general hint, no matter what side of the political spectrum you are on, if you parrot garbage mass-quoted in the media you probably are not doing enough critical thinking.