An article at the Christian Science Monitor points out that slightly over half of all Americans now receive income from government programs:

Slightly over half of all Americans – 52.6 percent – now receive significant income from government programs, according to an analysis by Gary Shilling, an economist in Springfield, N.J. That’s up from 49.4 percent in 2000 and far above the 28.3 percent of Americans in 1950. If the trend continues, the percentage could rise within ten years to pass 55 percent, where it stood in 1980 on the eve of President’s Reagan’s move to scale back the size of government.

Also courtesy of the Christian Science Monitor (notably, this article about the AMT):

Graphic detailing tax spending per capita

The big item to note from that graphic is that, even if you trim out the “other” that might be defined as pork, we’re still running a deficit. Plus, the big item on that pie chart is none other than Social Security/Medicare. What this means is that shrinking government spending isn’t going to be as easy as telling politicians to spend less on entitlements and line items - if anybody is going to be serious about smaller government, it will mean cuts from existing social programs, and, as Baby Boomers grow older, those existing social programs will only take up more and more money.

So, what do we trim? Defense? It’s also a big money hog, and not the most efficient organization in the world. We currently spend almost as much on defense as the rest of the world combined, or, if you prefer, almost 804,000 times the defense spending of Sao Tome and Principe - this might be a bit overkill. That said, funding is a bit messy at the moment due to our current foreign policy engagements; consequently, cutting the defense budget at the moment is almost certainly out of the picture.

Unfortunately, what’s going to have to happen is people will either need to realize that we need to increase taxes, cut spending, or probably both.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS