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Comment by Veelox | Hacker News Reader

The US government spent $6.1 TRILLION dollars in 2023. I don't think raising taxes is the solution to the government offering a more competitive wage.

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Is your entire argument that it's a really big number? Are we afraid of big numbers? How much do you think it should spend? It's the federal government, they do a lot of stuff. Stuff costs money. We can complain about how they spend the money, or that the money is being wasted or stolen, but pointing out that it's a big number isn't a very convincing argument.

That number is meaningless without also considering US GDP (even if you write trillion in caps). The US averages about 14% government spending as a fraction of GDP, placing it at ~90/140. For the size of the US economy, spending should be significantly higher.

You are ignoring state government expenditures.

>...The US government's Bureau of Economic Analysis as of Q3 2023 estimates $10,007.7 billion in annual total government expenditure and $27,610.1 billion annual total GDP which is 36.2%.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_Uni...

>For the size of the US economy, spending should be significantly higher.

The percentage shot up during the Covid spending and is still slightly above the historical average.

Is this actual spending, or are you rolling pass-through savings programs into this? Cause the caveat there is people always seem to want to count the outflow but not the associated inflow…

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