Show HN: Exploring the US Budget, 1962-2019 | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Exploring the US Budget, 1962-2019

learnforeverlearn.com

69 pointsnni38 comments

The government really is an insurance company with an army.

My impulsive response would be that no insurance company would be stupid enough to sign up for such a certain loss. But then again, AIG.

When you think about it, that's not a bad definition of government in < 140 chars.

It's not my line: http://underbelly-buce.blogspot.com/2013/01/more-on-holland-...

I like this.

First response: I'd prefer the total spending was more clearly highlighted (larger font and/or to the side).

Inflation-adjusted or percent of total GDP would also be useful.

The detail pop-ups are pretty sweet. A little hard to navigate (somewhat a property of space available). Maybe give them more of the window -- if someone's looking at the detail show them the detail and allocate display space to it.

How does the national debt increase from $5,656,270,901,633.43 to $5,674,178,209,886.86 during a year with a $200,000,000,000 surplus?

I assume you are referring to 2000. I am very much a newbie in this stuff, but think that the "story" from the OMB outlays/receipts data (which is what this is based on) is only part of the story. For example, I read somewhere that some were arguing that this "surplus" in that period was not a good thing in some respects. There's a lot to learn.

It wasn't a real on-budget surplus. It was only a surplus if you took the revenue from Social Security tax and ignored the obligation to later pay Social Security with it.

Hey dripton - curious what your thoughts are on this: http://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-budget-and-deficit-unde...

I think that this gets into what the deal might have been with respect to whether you count the social security tax or not. I think that they conclude there is a "surplus" either way, although it is of course smaller. However, you might be referring to something else.

That seems to be saying that accounting for social security would eliminate ~99% of the surplus. But what about medicare and the like?

SS benefits are paid from current taxes. There is no Social Security Lock Box, its was a metaphor.

This would be more helpful is it was indexed to inflation, the numbers are quite misleading otherwise.

Did some math for fun:

DoD 2000-2014 = $282 billion to $587 billion = 2.08x increase over 14 years.

Total 2000-2004 = $1.79 trillion to $3.65 trillion = 2.03x increase.

So since 9/11 DoD seems to be expanding at the rate of total government expansion, which is pretty rapid. Compared to the 14 years before that from 1985-1999.

DoD 1985-1999 = $246 billion to $262 billion = 1.065x increase over 14 years

Total 1985-1999 = $946 billion to $1.7 trillion = 1.7x increase

So the total government is growing at a similar rate, but DoD exploded in size in the last 14 years.

It all depends on the time period you measure across.

1985 was near the peak of the Reagan cold war build up. No surprise the budget didn't grow between then and 1999.

Unfortunatly the US budget is intentionally misleading in a wide number of ways.

For example there is a lot of DoD spending that's not included in those numbers. Such as veterains affairs. Also, those numbers don't take into account inflation or the current GDP.

They split it up by discretionary and mandatory.

Supporting veterans or paying government employees' promised pensions is considered mandatory. Buying 12 new aircraft carriers is not mandatory.

> They split it up by discretionary and mandatory.

Which has always been a bit of a lie for political expediency. Most of the "mandatory" expenditures aren't actually fixed amounts. For example, changing the retirement age or what benefits government health plans provide will directly impact "mandatory" spending.

Beautiful visualization! I really like it.

Only semi-related, but something I've always wondered: Like a lot of other sources, this graph shows us running surplus in '98 & '99.

At the same time, the federal debt increased in those years:

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histd...

Can anyone explain why?

Without looking at the issue, I can say that the "deficit" and "surplus" are for the budget. Actual spending may differ, which may explain the rise of the debt.

"Debt" includes the Treasury securities held by Social Security and Medicare trust funds, I believe.

The projections show the deficit being almost equal to the debt service payments in 2017-2019. There's a lesson about debt in there somewhere.

Inflation-adjusted version would be useful.

But would also be difficult, and introduce a political element to it

Uhm, no. Inflation is a given; these numbers aren't very useful without adjusting for inflation and population and/or GDP growth.

Inflation itself is a fact. The exact amount of inflation in any given time period is subject to differing points of view.

The choice of "which inflation measure" can be viewed as a political choice because it could be carefully chosen to tell the story you prefer. (choice A might yield "Look how much worse measure X was during party Y's tenure" which choice B could tell an even-handed or even opposing story)

We have had and do have independent agencies to measure inflation. But if you wish, we also measure GDP which is an absolute number. Here is the budget with respect to GDP:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_Revenues_and_Outlays...

We start out with outlays at under 16% GDP in 1970, and go all the way up to 20% in 2014, with a spike up to 24% during the last crisis. Not surprising, shocking, or daramatic at all. This is better than even the inflation adjusted numbers; e.g.

http://www.glencoe.com/sec/socialstudies/economics/econprinc...

Well, W2, we spent a lot of money then, but even still, federal spending by 2000 was 8X that of spending in 1940. Why is that? Well, population growth obviously, higher expectations as another.

By going with ABSOLUTE numbers with no context on population, inflation, and GDP...that's very biased.

Edit: the charts are still useful, if you look at them only for relatively distribution of spending. They don't convey how spending compares to the overall economy, however.

> But if you wish, we also measure GDP which is an absolute number.

Of course, using GDP rather than inflation is also a political choice because GDP has on average increased more than inflation.

Also, comparing the government budget with GDP will never show more than a modest increase because a "large" increase (e.g. quadrupling the government budget as a percentage of GDP) would require the government to be consuming in excess of 100% of GDP.

On the other hand, if compared with inflation there is an exponential increase in the federal budget over time. For example, the 1962 budget of $107B would be $884B in 2014 dollars (using CPI) but the 2014 budget is $3650B, which exceeds the real 1962 GDP.

It definitely does show large increases during the depression (when the economy shrank) and during WII, when we went all out into war. Fluctuations since then have been quite boring.

The standard choice is the CPI or core CPI data compiled by the BLS. You can also use the billion price index for the more conspiracy oriented but they give you essentially the same number. I don't know of any measures of inflation that are wildly off the standard official estimates of CPI or core CPI. Choosing to not index has just as many political ramification as choosing to index it.

Yes. Or (as suggested below) spending as percentage of GDP.

Really nice visualization - helps to put things in perspective. Interesting how 2009 shows a US deficit in the trillions.

Over time comparisons should be inflation adjusted, and optionally adjusted by total population or gdb.

Good job, great visuals make it easy to understand the numbers.

Is this on github/bitbucket/google code or am I going to have to dig around the JS to mess around with it?

Regardless, pretty cool.

Your possibilities aren't mutually exclusive: There are many unminified javascript files floating around that are not OSS.

> Is this OSS

Unless the author releases it under an open source license, the answer is no

> am I going to have to dig around minified JS to mess around with it?

The unminified source is available at http://learnforeverlearn.com/usbudget/dist/usbudget.js

The source data is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/supplemental (note that XLS files are the normative versions)

Edited comment to change tone and clarify what I was asking

Sigh, another fancy site that doesn't work on mobile, but could be presented with simple divs/tables or even ASCII art.

judk - not sure if you're checking back, but wondering what device you are using. It has some responsive design stuff that should let it be usable on an iPhone in portrait (it just shows the two main bars). Small screen landscape is another issue.

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