In You Are Now Free To Spend Your Own Money, AS covers a chart that looks misleading, purporting to show the "cost of government" as a measure of working-days.
Debt is like a topping on the GOP trickle-down sundae
The first problem appears to be that a large part of government "spending" are, in fact, transfer payments back to the taxpayers, for things like the Veteran's Administration. (Budget table, here).So, deducting transfer payments from the 2006 total, you find out that, that American taxmasters collected 49% of the budget for ... National Defense. Of course, this is the area of the budget that Romney, for one, excludes from ALL his sweeping claims to fiscal discipline. He wants 100,000 more troops, so the number of working-days to feel "GOP-safe" is going up, up, up!
It gets even more interesting (pun intended).
To pay off the debt that was largely run-up to fund the Reagan Devolution's "buy-the-American-Dream-on-credit" routine and the Republican King George's cut-and-spend orthodoxy, American taxmasters collected 18% of the budget to pay interest on debt. Debt is like a topping on the GOP trickle-down sundae, no doubt.
Sadly, Americans spent just 2% on things like healthcare research grants. (Notice separately that the new budget has a line item for "biodefense", not listed along with the military, and $5.6 billion in 2006 for a 'health emergency fund', which I assume is bird-flu related).
So, when is the last good day of the year, I don't know, but Liam has one of the best voices:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uQJ2uFhurM
[embedding disabled by request]
