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_2010...
Here is one here:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1903_2010...
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.
In other words, the biggest problem with our social systems is theft. The money was used over two generations to buy votes.
edit: it's interesting to try to calculate it roughly, but, it seems fair to estimate that the politicians have spent an inflation adjusted $30+ trillion beyond their means over the last 70 years ($16 trillion public debt, plus the money that should have been put aside and earning interest from SS and Medicare etc).
Medicare on the other hand is a different story. Costs are growing too high to make it sustainable. But that doesn't have to do with the efficiency of the program itself vs. other insurance companies - it's actually quite a bit efficient than private insurers. The problem seems to be the broader U.S. system of health cost/benefits compared to other countries. We spend more and get less.
It's actually a drag now, as it has been paying more in benefits than it receives for the past few years.
Yes, I know about the bonds. Paying them back is a drag because they weren't used to create profitable assets.
I don't think it's an acceptable option to retroactively say that some of the Soc. Sec. taxes won't be paid back to Soc. Sec., and just kept for the general fund. If that happened, then it's basically been a regressive income tax all along, contrary to Reagan's assurances in 1983 that he wasn't making a regressive change to the tax code, because of the bonds. If that is likely to happen, then at least the regressiveness should be fixed ASAP by removing the $110k cap, because the only justification for the cap is that the money is earmarked for Social Security.
I didn't suggest that. I'm just pointing out that the "drag" has already started.
> and just kept for the general fund. If that happened, then it's basically been a regressive income tax all along
It's not a regressive tax because of the payout is capped too.
In fact, it's actually a progressive tax because of the way that payout works. The ROI for folks who pay the minimum is pretty good. The ROI for folks who hit the cap is horrible.
That said, some subgroups do worse/better than others. The worst is probably black men. They don't live long enough to get the payouts. I think that white women are the big winners.
> If that is likely to happen, then at least the regressiveness should be fixed ASAP by removing the $110k cap, because the only justification for the cap is that the money is earmarked for Social Security.
Actually, the designers of SS put in the cap because they thought that it was the best way to protect SS from political fights.
Are you planning to remove the benefits cap as well? If not, it's just another tax and rich people are going to care. SS's designers wanted rich people to ignore SS.
If you do remove the benefits cap, then you get to explain why Ross Perot gets $400k/year in benefits.
I think that SS's designers got that part correct. The payout formula needs some tweaking.
I agree. My point is that the problem exists now.
> I don't think it's an acceptable option to retroactively say that some of the Soc. Sec. taxes won't be paid back to Soc. Sec.,
I didn't suggest default. I'm just pointing out that the "drag" has already started.
> and just kept for the general fund. If that happened, then it's basically been a regressive income tax all along
It's not a regressive tax because of the payout is capped too.
In fact, it's actually a progressive tax because of the way that payout works. The ROI for folks who pay the minimum is pretty good. The ROI for folks who hit the cap is horrible.
That said, some subgroups do worse/better than others. The worst is probably black men. They don't live long enough to get the payouts. I think that white women are the big winners.
> If that is likely to happen, then at least the regressiveness should be fixed ASAP by removing the $110k cap, because the only justification for the cap is that the money is earmarked for Social Security.
Actually, the designers of SS put in the cap because they thought that it was the best way to protect SS from political fights.
Are you planning to remove the benefits cap as well? If not, it's just another tax and rich people are going to care. SS's designers wanted rich people to ignore SS.
If you do remove the benefits cap, then you get to explain why Ross Perot gets $400k/year in benefits.
I think that SS's designers got that part correct. The payout formula needs some tweaking.
If the money really is going to be repaid to the Social Security system and used exclusively for benefits, then I agree it's a different situation, more of a quasi-retirement-account.
SS is not a general revenue tax - taxes don't have contribution-based payouts.
If you're suggesting that SS payouts should be completely means tested, you're opening the biggest can of worms. The SS recipients that complete means testing would most affect are among the most politically active people in America.
When I was younger, I used to argue against SS and the like as old-people welfare. I didn't see why my money should go to to folks who were better off than me. My age-cohorts disagreed.
Soon the subsidies will start flowing my way....
Did you miss this part of my comment?
> in the case, which is vaguely proposed on and off, that Social Security will never get the money back from its mythical "lockbox", and instead the money will be retroactively turned into just general-treasury money
Especially in the last Social-Security-reform debate a few years ago, there were serious proposals that the Social Security tax surplus notionally held in bonds will never be repaid to Social Security, and therefore reform proposals should be made which allows SS to be solvent under the assumption that it will never get its bonds repaid.
If that happens, a significant part of the past 20 years' Social-Security tax money will not be used for SS payouts, but will be kept by the general treasury. In that case, SS will retroactively have been, in part, a regressive general-revenue tax.
If 100% of the Soc. Sec. money collected is eventually used to pay Soc. Sec. obligations (i.e. SS is able to call its bonds), then my argument doesn't apply. I'm not confident that will happen, though.
32.9 != over half. Including Medicaid gets 43, still not over half. Not likely to give much credence to rest of your claims.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa022033
"The gap between U.S. and Canadian spending on health care administration has grown to $752 per capita. A large sum might be saved in the United States if administrative costs could be trimmed by implementing a Canadian-style health care system"
This probably doesn't even include the added cost to businesses of having to employee additional HR staff to coordinate the insurance and reimbursement accounts.
Every politician interested in job creation should be pro universal/single payer/socialised healthcare. The financial burden of administering and paying for private insurance has to be a significant burden for both small and large businesses.
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_... and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoSBqs6y8uM
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.
The npr graph from the parent post is extremely misleading, and understates the US military budget by roughly a factor of 2. Huge portions of the "non-military" budget entries are covers for military spending.
For example, the npr graph counts $141 billion dollars in VA health care for soldiers, but this isn't listed as part of the military budget. The same games are played with weapons r&d (often budgeted to the Dept. of Energy). Our recent Dept. of Homeland Security contains a great deal of military spending as well.
When one separates the budget by spending intent rather than the politicized department budgets in the above graph it becomes quickly apparent why we don't have good social services -- we're spending it all on military.