Tuesday, February 15, 2011
2012 Budget Proposal
I found this 2012 proposal for our budget coming up next year. This is a shocking way to see how exactly $3.7 trillion is spent in a year. Much of the money spent is mandatory, but as you can see, a decent amount is discretionary. This obviously means those numbers are just averages and can change as the government sees fit. The side bar also lets you isolate certain categories, so you can exactly see what is mandatory and what is discretionary. We have been talking a lot about Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security in class and, again, both are increasing from 2010 totals. Yet, there seems to be (at least now) a lot of red boxes that indicate possible or certain drops in funding to certain areas. What are your thoughts on how our budget in 2012 will be allocated? Would you like to see some areas with more funding and others with less? It is strange how little $10 million dollars is when you look at how small the slice is on the graph. You can't even see a $10 million box at the bottom.
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True, some discretionary spending exists, but the majority of it its in public programs that liberals love and i think society needs... education, labor, housing, the corporation for public broadcasting. I do like the graphic of seeing how everything lines up.
ReplyDeleteThe graphic is really cool, however it is sad to see things like environmental developments, employee training, coast guard and customs and border security get cut. Social security is spending is up, which is pretty expected. Unfortunately so is military and defense spending. By not touching these factors, I think there is a lot of lost efficiency.
ReplyDeleteDefense spending is increasing and I see this as unnecessary. Not only does the US have world dominance in terms of strategic military prowess but, as said in class today, most Americans in today's society are against war related expenditure (which I'm guessing comes within defense spending). This shows the inefficiency with regard to the social welfare function since it goes against what people, in general, want. It seems like inefficiency's in general are rising since I also remember reading somewhere that a majority supports international aid programs decreasing but they are also rising. Glad to see that expenditure on public programs are rising since this goes along with the social welfare function and is, I think, an efficient and equitable allocation compared to some of the other things up there.
ReplyDeleteThe graphic layout is a really great way to see the proposed budget. As already mentioned, it's expected that social security will increase seeing that the baby boomers are beginning to retire. Also, like JJ argued, I disagree with the increase in defense spending. We are already spending a huge portion of our budget on defense spending, and like the surveys from class revealed, most Americans don't even want war related expenditures anyway. Also, I was surprised to see how large the box of the interest on the public debt was. $475 billion in interest alone..that just shows how astronomical our country's debt is.
ReplyDeleteReally interesting article, this graph makes it a lot easier to see how everything is laid out. After already spending over a trillion dollars on the war in Iraq and Afhanistan, I can't believe that we are continuing to increase military spending. I do not agree with this at all. As the people have mentioned, it is almost expected that social security is going to increase due to the baby boomer generation beginning to retire, but I'm not sure the extent to which we should be increasing this spending. I say this because there clearly needs to be some structural changes in the social security program for it to continue on in the long run.
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