Comments on: Where Did Your 2013 Tax Dollars Go?

By: Yrro Simyarin

Yrro Simyarin — Fri, 18 Apr 2014 18:57:00 +0000

Graphs like this are next to useless when they exclude so much. This is how you get questions like “how do we spend so much on military and so little on education?” Because education is primarily funded by state and local taxes, is how.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/

Has much more useful graphs.

When you combine all levels of US government, the more accurate percentages are:

20% on health (this does ignore the massive tax deductions for health insurance)
19% on pensions (social security and government workers)
16% on education
13% on defense
8% on welfare
5% on interest
5% on transportation.
4% on protection (police, fire, etc)

By: RMP

RMP — Fri, 18 Apr 2014 18:28:00 +0000

And the use of the word “sans,” which undergrad readers mostly won’t know, suggests that the point is to deceive readers.

By: RMP

RMP — Fri, 18 Apr 2014 18:26:00 +0000

What’s the point of a chart that shows where taxes goes, that omits 50% of where taxes go (Social Security and Medicare)? This is extremely misleading. You lower the quality of your blog dramatically when you post obvious propaganda. At least be honest!

By: 12 Awesome Links to Make Your Friday Better | Foreign Holidays

12 Awesome Links to Make Your Friday Better | Foreign Holidays — Fri, 18 Apr 2014 11:29:18 +0000

[…] in where your tax dollars from 2013 went? Here’s how they were split up. Hmmm…Education doesn’t get such a large slice of the dollar […]

By: deceptive diagram

deceptive diagram — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 05:01:00 +0000

“sans medicare and social security taxes” means this includes less than 50% of federal spending…

By: Bill R

Bill R — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 09:40:00 +0000

Got that right. If we could REALLY reduce health care costs and give the Pentagon what they actually want instead of what the politicians want them to have made in their states, we’d be golden.

By: James McRitchie

James McRitchie — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 00:22:00 +0000

Its an insurance company with an army.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 15:23:00 +0000

It should be noted, for readers outside of the US, that this chart only reflects the distribution of the federal income tax.

For most American households, this is only one of several layers of taxation; there are also state taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, etc., each appropriated in very different ways. With that in mind, the chart supports a discussion not so much of what the state is “for,” but rather of how some spending priorities (and, therefore, powers) are centralized while others are localized. No two democracies are quite alike in how they negotiate those factors.