| | Back to the Orwellian point I brought up earlier in the thread. If federal spending is depicted as always being high, then that justifies more federal spending (or at least keeping spending where it is). The argument runs like this:
***************
In such-and-such years, federal spending was 35-45% of GDP -- and we experienced an economic boom. Therefore, we do not need to cut federal spending down below 40% of GDP, because history shows that that level of federal spending isn't a problem.
***************
Now, I offer 2 contradictory sources of information on federal spending as a % of GDP:
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/tassava.WWII
... and ...
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.html
In the first link, the spending is explicitly "federal" spending. In the second link, the spending is only implicitly "federal" -- and may include state and local spending.
In the first link, US "federal spending" for the early 1940s is reported to have been this:
1940 -- 9.34% of GDP
1941 -- 10.77% of GDP
1942 -- 21.70% of GDP
1943 -- 46.59% of GDP
1944 -- 41.54% of GDP
1945 -- 41.56% of GDP
... but in the second link, federal (?) spending for those years was reported to have been this:
1940 -- 20.14% of GDP
1941 -- 19.22% of GDP
1942 -- 28.15% of GDP
1943 -- 46.68% of GDP
1944 -- 50.02% of GDP
1945 -- 52.99% of GDP
The year that stands out is 1943, where the numbers are approximately equal. If the second link was meant to show federal, state, and local spending, then the conclusion to draw is that there was essentially no state and local spending during the year 1943.
This is because the first link is explicitly federal spending. This appears to prove the point that the second link was for just federal spending, because the idea of having no state and local spending for a year is absurd.
If my analysis is correct, then which source should be trusted?
Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 8/02, 5:19pm)
|
|
