Since I’ve been thinking about taxes, I checked to see how the US currently spends its money. From here: 51% goes to current and past military expenses.
War and taxes are more intimately linked than people may realize. The first time the US tried to impose an income tax? During the war of 1812. The first time the US succeeded? The Civil War. That tax expired a few years after the war. When did the income tax return? 1913, just in time for the US to enter World War I. The early income taxes only affected the rich, but they were quickly expanded so everyone could help fund the US military industrial complex.
Well, there is also finance on the debt, and we wouldn’t have so much debt if we didn’t spend so much on war.
Meh, that’s if you accept their analysis. I can’t comment on the debt numbers, but excluding Social Security seems rather questionable to me. For a lot of people, most of the federal taxes they pay *are* Social Security and Medicare, and likewise those will be a lot of the benefits they ever get from the federal government. Writing it off as “trust fund” or “non-discretionary” (which only means that Congress has successfully restrained itself from fiddling with it) obscures a huge function of government. Krugman calls the US gov’t a pension plan with an army.
Damien, I understand why you want to put it in the pie, but that’s not the way it was supposed to be. Yes, the government plays games with the accounting, but that’s the gov’s fault, not Social Security’s. I don’t mind paying Social Security because I know what I and everyone else is supposed to get from it. The problems with bloated government lie elsewhere, IMHO.
Good Krugman line!