Quote Originally Posted by Lemur
]. To the socialists in the Backroom: Isn't having the state control a large swath of spending, I don't know, bad?
It depends on how much the state and it's citizens gains on that spending. Like a company invests it's money, the goverment does it too, only that the cost/benefit ratio gets wierder and more complicated .

For example, building a huge bridge out in nowere won't give the infrastructural gain (and this already isn't the easiest to calculate) needed to refund the bridge, but as you needed to pay a contractor and a bunch of workers, thier gain is larger and as they pay income tax and VAT a part of that money will go back to the goverments treassure chest in non-conventional way.

But atleast you can say that it's generally better to not be forced to loan to cover your expenses, and that spiraling costs isn't that great either, unless the income follows.

Quote Originally Posted by IRONxMortlock
So govt. spending is $22,000/household in total but without defense spending factored in it's $4,000/hh?

That means defence spending is $18,000/household in the US? More than 4 times what is spent on all other things? Am I reading that right?
No, the second diagram only shows non-manditory costs in the budget, aka those costs that are negotiated about every year.

I think Xiahou prefers this diagram:
http://www.heritage.org/research/fea...harts_S/s6.cfm
Notice that it still lacks the manditory costs (like Medicare and Medicaid and probably manditory military projects too.)