There’s been an argument in the comments of this post that I want to comment on, but it’s more than a little off-topic so I’m starting a new thread.
It all began when Alsis complained that our social support system is “starving, looted, privatized.” Robert responded with a genuinely stunning display of economic ignorance and misrepresentation:
We spend 23.4% of our gargantuan GDP on the “social system”. (#11 in the world in absolute percentage terms; around the top of the world in per cap terms.)
For a starving, looted, privatized system, it sure has a lot of dollars sloshing around in it.
As far as your reverse Panglossian view of thirty years of decline goes, it’s about as accurate as every other economic opinion I’ve seen you utter. In 1980, we spent less of a percentage of GDP on the entire Federal government than we spend today just on social spending. Our social programs today are bigger than the entire government was then.
How many ways is this wrong?
1) As I said at the time, that 23.4% number obviously includes more than just federal social expenditures to be that high. In fact, it includes federal, and state, and private expenditures.
2) Robert talks about “the entire Federal government” in one sentence and then “the entire government” in the next as if they were the same thing.
3) If we eliminate private expenditures from Robert’s figure, total government social spending is about 17% of GDP. In 1980, the Federal government cost about 22% of GDP, and the entire government cost about 31% of GDP. So unless private spending is included, Robert is dead wrong.
4) It appears that Robert intended to say either that the entire government’s social spending in 2001 is greater than the entire government’s spending in 1980; or that the federal government’s social spending in 2001 is greater than the size of the entire federal government in 1980.
In either case, Robert is wrong in a way that shows ignorance of basic economic matters. In the thread, I initially responded to Robert without looking up any numbers, which isn’t at all like me. But in this case, I didn’t have to look anything up – because like anyone who knows anything about US government spending, I could tell at a glance that Robert’s claims were impossible.
5) Although Alsis said the system is “starved,” she also said that the system is corrupt and privatized. So even if Robert hadn’t hopelessly bungled his statistics, his response – which boiled down to “we spend a lot” – doesn’t logically refute any of Alsis’ claim except the “starved” bit. Besides, relative to many other countries, we don’t spend a lot, so Alsis’ “starved” comment is certainly within the bounds of reasonable discourse.
Brandon then wrote:
Government spending at all levels has been trending slightly upwards as a percentage of GDP (31% in 2004, up from 23% in 1959 and 28% in 1970, but down from a peak of nearly 34% in 1993).
That’s inaccurate. Government spending at all levels trended up from 1948 (16.7%) to 1968 (28.4%), but has been flat since then, staying at 30% of GDP give or take two percentage points. (Source – scroll down to the table labled “Appendix Two”).
Robert, attempting to recover ground, admitted error (to me, not to Alsis) but wrote:
Thanks for the correction; you’re right, it was apples to oranges. Nonetheless, as Brandon notes, the trend is up up up.
No, the trend isn’t “up up up.” The statistic Brandon notes – government spending at all levels – has been flat as long as Robert or I have been alive.
Robert’s counterfactual belief that spending is “up up up” is pretty much the norm for the conservative movement. I suspect that what’s going on here is too much listening to the echo chamber, and too little reading of basic economic statistics.
Amazingly, Robert then had the chutzpah to tell Alsis off:
I made an (honest) error regarding the magnitude of how far off your base your statement was. Instead of being wildly and ludicrously off base, your statement is only really quite amazingly off base.
Where’s the distortion in that? It’s an error – like saying that Alpha Centauri is 6 light years instead of 4 light years from Earth – but if the proposition being advanced was “Alpha Centauri is a fuck of a long way from here, not just around the corner”, then I’m right, even if I got the numbers a bit mixed up.
I was stunned by the above post. I don’t doubt that Robert’s error was honest – but it was also a demonstration of rank ignorance, not a simple typo. I didn’t expect that Robert would change his mind, but I thought he would stop condescending to others about their supposed economic ignorance, on a thread where his own ignorance had been so amply displayed. Clearly, I was wrong.
Contrary to Robert’s rant, Alsis’ claims were all reasonable. Relative to other countries, we don’t spend much on social services (as a percentage of GDP). And our system – especially in the area of health care, which is Alsis’ primary focus – is incredibly expensive per capita, and many experts have argued that a significant portion of the problem is the amount of money skimmed off by private insurance companies.
Alsis didn’t get any objective facts wrong in the dispute between her and Robert; she just stated opinions that, while within bounds of reasonable discourse, are considered ridiculous by the right-wing echo chamber. In contrast, Robert’s statements actually were “wildly and ludicrously off base.” No competent economist, right or left, could agree with what Robert’s “1980 vs 2001” claim.
Alsis wrote:
You just have a very different opinion than I of what constitutes a sufficient percentage of spending on social problems.
Robert replied:
Apparently “more than any group of people in the history of the universe has ever spent under any circumstances” is apparently nowhere close to good enough. […] Post something on-topic instead of trying to defend your ludicrous opinion.
How many times does Robert have to be dead wrong before he’ll stop condescending to Alsis?
Alsis’ opinion is not at all ludicrous. As Robert’s own link upthread shows, the US spends a significantly smaller percentage of its GDP on “social expenditure” than many other countries do. It’s not unreasonable to think that the US could benefit from spending more. Robert may not approve of how other countries spend their money, but it’s not “ludicrous” to think that many Americans would benefit if our health care system was more like France’s.
In that same thread, Brandon wrote:
It was Alsis, not Ampersand, who complained that social spending is less than a quarter of what we spend in this country. Heck if I know what her perception is, but the reality is that social spending (by government) is 23.4% of GDP…
Like Robert, Brandon rushes to correct Alsis but displays ignorance of the statistics he’s throwing around. The 23.4% figure doesn’t refer to “social spending by government”; it refers to the net of both private and public spending on social expenditures. Social spending by government is actually 17% of GPD. (See table six of this excel file. This is the same data source Robert cited, except I’m citing it directly instead of indirectly). Note that of the countries listed, all but three governments (Mexico, Ireland, and Korea) spend more on social expenditures as a percentage of GDP than the U.S. does.
By now it’s hard not to note a consistent pattern:
1) Alsis states an opinion.
2) Male conservatives rush in to correct Alsis, usually in an incredibly condesending manner.
3) Said male conservatives demonstrate that they in fact don’t know what they’re talking about and are incapable of citing even their own chosen statistics correctly.
4) Repeat.
In the thread I’m discussing, Alsis – despite being far more modest about her economic knowledge – displayed a more accurate understanding of the economic statistics under discussion than either Robert or Brandon. (Admittedly, a low bar). And in return, she’s been treated with nothing but condescension.
I consider Robert a friend, and writing this post doesn’t give me any joy. But frankly, the whole exchange stinks of sexism to me. And considering how much they got wrong, I think Brandon and especially Robert both need to buy some fucking humility – and they both owe Alsis an apology for their condescending ways.
Pingback: Catallarchy
Pingback: Northern Exposure
Pingback: Walter In Denver
Pingback: Preemptive Karma: everything that goes around comes around
Pingback: feminist blogs
Impressively researched, and flattering. I’ll be out of the house most of the day but this evening I’ll try to post a comprehensive response.
Hope you had/are having a nice Passover.
I don’t doubt that Robert’s error was honest
I do. Robert is much more gracious about admitting error when he is genuinely wrong. He’s snotty when he gets caught trying to pull a fast one.
Amp, I also found your research extraordinary. During my time in D.C. as a reporter come federal budget time the routine comments from virtually every department and agency head testifying before Congress was how incredibly strapped for money they are, that they’re having to cut this and that program etc. to stay within the budgets. Members of Congress and the White House always pointed out that the budget is X percent *higher* than it was last year, and that all the whining is that the rate of growth in the budget isn’t as high as all these agency and department heads would like, but that it’s still growing nevertheless. In real dollars, it is.
However, even in D.C. where you’ve got economists galore, virtually no one comes out showing how in terms of GDP the budget has been flat. Agency and Department heads argued that the increase in the budget’s growth didn’t keep pace with cost-of-living adjustments, for example — and let’s say you’re overseeing the IRS, which has some 100,000-plus employees and the bulk of its budget goes to pay for this workforce alone. When the increase in the budget in terms of real dollars doesn’t keep pace with even cost-of-living adjustments on an annual basis we’re talking mega-dollars the IRS is falling short each year in just paying its workforce, which it has to do, thus the IRS for example elminates free tax services around the nation near tax day, or take your pick. Agencies and departments also complain that their workforce is aging and that within the next five-ten years huge percentages of the workforce will be eligible for retirement but because of the current situation where they’re already struggling they’re not hiring in new employees who would be five years into knowing their complicated jobs by the time all these folks retire. But I’m digressing.
In short I guess you could truthfully say the budget is going up up up, because every year the president proposes and Congress allocates literally more real dollars to the budget than it did the year before. But again. This doesn’t take into account cost-of-living adjustments or the rate of inflation or what percentage of GDP the president and Congress are approving. And I always thought it was interesting that, under Bush, it was always Bush-appointed agency and department heads who begged for their supper with violins playing behind them. I mean come on! We’re talking about GOP Bush-appointed Treasury and State and everything else secretaries and agency heads begging for more money.
Laylalola –
First- great screen name. Really rolls off the tongue when you say it fast.
Second, I’m not sure that that is a digression, it brings up the point that in any budgetary talk, it seems never pointed out that government payroll is a huge part. Couple with that the ballooning Defense budget, and the growing federal debt, which cuts a significant portion of the budget due to paying off interest, and a flat budget leaves the social programs to rot.
In short I guess you could truthfully say the budget is going up up up, because every year the president proposes and Congress allocates literally more real dollars to the budget than it did the year before. But again. This doesn’t take into account cost-of-living adjustments or the rate of inflation
So “real dollars” means nominal, unreal dollars?
I consider Robert a friend, and writing this post doesn’t give me any joy. But frankly, the whole exchange stinks of sexism to me.
Immensely enjoyable read…but I do take a small issue with the section I highlighted above.
After reading this post and the offending commentary thread in question, I don’t think the condescension is about sexism at all. I believe its conservatism.
Conservatives have become so steeped in their own rightness and its justification at all costs–that their arrogance permeates everything. In my view, that’s the only way they could remain conservative after watching their leaders practice such inept governance.
Had Alsis been a man, its my opinion that the disdainful treatment would have been just as offensive.
I’m not good at economic-speak, forgive me (I was better at covering the politics and legalese of these things). Take for example Treasury Secretary Snow’s testimony at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on April 7 — ten days ago. He was talking about the proposed Treasury budget request. The Bush administration in February requested $11.6 billion for the Treasury Department, which would amount to a 0.2 percent increase compared with fiscal 2006’s enacted appropriation.
The largest component of Treasury’s appropriation request was a $10.59 billion request for the IRS — that also would be a 0.2 percent increase compared to the current fiscal year.
So what I’m saying is the money requested and what will be allocated is literally more than what it was last year — up from say $11.5 billion to $11.6 billion. But the increase is not even a 1 percent increase in spending — it is a 0.2 percent increase in spending. Unless the costs of everything the Treasury department does and administers and the transportation costs (oil) and employee costs all of it, across the board, is the same or less than it was last year, this kind of “increase” could easily translate not into flat funding for Treasury and the IRS but actual, real decreases in the money flow, meaning it is not enough to pay for only maintaining the status quo. Am I making sense?
Carla:
You think that Robert and his idelogical pals would have tried their little game-bordering-on-gangpile if I’d been male ?
I don’t. Nice of you to notice what they were up to, Amp.
Robert, you can issue that apology any time you’re ready. You, too, Brandon.
I’m perfectly willing to take Amp’s research into the various spending levels at face value; I’ve never seen him distort researchable facts. Here’s the crux of the matter to me:
the US spends a significantly smaller percentage of its GDP on “social expenditure” than many other countries do. It’s not unreasonable to think that the US could benefit from spending more.
Should the government spend more on social services? What would be the point? Should the government even be in the business of funding social services, or should government spending in that area be limited and should people be encouraged to become more self-sufficient? Are there ways to improve social services delivery without increasing spending (i.e., can it be made more efficient)? What effects have previous social services spending programs had on our society?
I once worked for a hospital run by a not-for-profit corporation (NFP) (a medical school). At one point, they were bought up by a for-profit corporation. They came in, talked big about how they were going to cut out the fat and improve services, and proceeded to fail miserably. After that, they were bought out by a not-for-profit (the Sisters of St. Joseph). As an aside, I remember that during the initial NFP –> FP deal, the question came up of how the FP would account for all the donations and tax breaks that the NFP had been the beneficiary of from people and governments presuming that their money would not got to benefit a FP. It was pretty tricky. In any case, it left a bad taste in my mouth when I observed the changes that the FP put in to “improve” services at the hospital. But let’s say that the government passed laws that required that hospitals and health care insurance companies could not be operated on a for-profit basis. Would that reduce health care costs? What other effects might it have?
I must say that my personal philosophy regarding government includes (but is not fixed on) “that government governs best which governs least”. I mistrust government involvement in just about anything, and that includes healthcare. I think that the great genius of the philosophy on which American was founded is that the American public is supposed to turn to their own resources and to their neighbors for help, not to the government, unless the circumstances are absolutely overwhelming and there are no other resources to be had.
George Galloway commented after the Katrina disaster that he despaired of ever establishing a socialist government in America. He based it on the fact that so many people (and he gave one example he had observed) were looking to their own resources to rebuild instead of assuming that it was the government’s job to provide for them. That’s America.
Difficult to say whether there’s sexism involved; I try not to think of Alsis as having any gender at all when we get involved in our little reindeer games. But it’s certainly possible.
Haven’t had a chance to seriously review Amp’s analysis, so I don’t know if an apology is in order. But if it’ll make you feel better, Alsis, I’ll apologize pre-emptively. Sorry.
I just wanted to be precise. The Bush administration has requested $11.605 billion in appropriations for Treasury for fiscal 2007. As I said above, this is a 0.2 percent increase over the fiscal 2006 enacted budget of $11.581 billion.
In real dollars we’re talking about a $24 million increase in Treasury’s budget over last year’s — which sounds like a lot. Except that Treasury asked for $9.4 million of that for its overseas presence “providing the U.S. government with unique access to economic ministries in foreign capitals, enhancing our ability to assess and mitigate financial risks, and furthering Treasury’s work on the ground to counter the financing of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.” Another $12.5 million is going to Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which is critical in regard to following the money in the War on Terror, and another $7.8 million is specifically to enhance Treasury’s “abilities to identify, disrupt, and dismantle the financial infrastructure of terrorists, proliferators of weapons of mass destruction, narco-traffickers, criminals and other threats.” That huge $24 million increase to continue operating the status quo of U.S. tax administration is already eaten up and eaten into.
I have very little time to blog today – or tomorrow – because I’m going to Florida for the next week. But I wanted to comment on this:
Laylalola, I think the confusion was caused by your use of the word “real.” In econ-speak, “real dollars” is a term that means “dollars mathematically adjusted to account for the effects of inflation.” Amounts of money that haven’t been adjusted for inflation are referred to as “nominal dollars.”
You’re absolutely correct to say that a low increase in spending can actually be a decrease when the effects of inflation (and, I’d add, the effects of population growth) are accounted for. In econ-speak, that would be “there was a nominal increase in spending, but in real dollars spending was cut.” :-P
Something I think is key in thinking about this issue:
3) If we eliminate private expenditures from Robert’s figure, total government social spending is about 17% of GDP. In 1980, the Federal government cost about 22% of GDP, and the entire government cost about 31% of GDP. So unless private spending is included, Robert is dead wrong.
Regarding the issue who’s right and wrong (or who may have misrepresented figures with intent or not) is one thing. But let’s look at the overall issue. It seems that about 23% or 24% of our entire GDP is spent on social services. The argument is what proportion of that is private spending, and what proportion of that is government spending. Apparently about 75% of that 23+% is government spending and the rest is private.
People seem concerned that the government’s share is going down. Why? Why is that bad? Why not shift MORE social spending away from the government and into private sources? Note that I’m not talking about Bush’s “faith-based initiative” where the government takes our money, filters it though it’s bureaucracy, and then decides where the money goes. I’m talking about changing the tax laws to give people a direct tax credit (not a tax deduction) for a certain level of charitable contributions and then letting people decide directly where their charitable money should go. Why would this not be preferable to the government raising it’s spending levels?
Sorry if I’m hijacking this thread. But it seems that people here are concerned about establishing how much money the government is spending on social services, so it might be a receptive audience.
Robert, trust me, you owe an apology. Amp’s numbers are correct.
I ran into the same wrong numbers at a thread at Pharyngula together with the claim that $10,000 was used in welfare per capita in the US. The number is closer to $1,000. And while the riches quatile of the states uses close to $10,000 per poor person, the poorest quatile uses only around $4,500.
Seems like these numbers came from Charles Murray, who used them in an interview. Robert, did you get the numbers from the same source?
This is why such things are often looked at as $ per capita, and even real dollars per capita. If you have a 1% inflation, a 5% increase in spending, but a 10% increase in the population, the spending per capita in real dollars will decrease, even though both the sum of both nominal and real dollar have increased.
Because private sources are usually less efficient, and quite selective? The US system does need an overhaul – for example is US health care the most expensive in the Western world (in other words: you get the least for the money), so if the cause of this could be found, and removed, it would be possible to either save money or help more people.
Ampersand:
Sorry for not responding sooner—I’ve been busy with taxy stuff.
Regarding total government spending, I graphed it out, and it was in a distinct, if gentle, uptrend until 1993 (which is basically what I said before). It’s now in a short-term uptrend and a medium-term downtrend. The long-term trend still appears to be upwards, but only time will tell. I also graphed the components of Federal spending as a percentage of the total budget—there’s no question that social spending is up and things like military spending are down.
Regarding social spending, I wasn’t just pulling numbers out of thin air. I looked at the statistics, and I’m absolutely sure that I’m right on most of this, if not all. Which is not to say that I’m sure you’re wrong. Could be we’re just talking about different things. Can you define precisely what you mean when you say “social spending?” I’m talking about things like education, health care, cash transfers to individuals, food stamps, housing subsidies, libraries, parks, etc. I guarantee you that the 23.4% figure does not include private spending—when you factor in private spending, health care alone accounts for something like 14% of GDP. Throw in education (including tuition), and you’re already up to that figure, without even including cash transfers.
Once you clarify that, I’ll write up a detailed response, and post it over at Catallarchy, with the charts, once you’re back from vacation.
By the way, do you know what types of spending the OECD figures you cited include? Could it be that they exclude cash transfers, and count only direct government spending, or maybe that they exclude education?
Well, I’ve looked it over and Amp is basically right and I’m basically wrong. I’ll plead haste and sloppiness; my bad. Alsis, I apologize.
Kristjan, my figures came from the website I linked to. I’m not aware of any Charles Murray connection to the data. The numbers in your second paragraph don’t add up; if the lowest quartile of states averages $4500 per cap in spending, there’s no way the overall average can be $1000.
The $1000 is per capita, while the other amounts ($10,000 and $4,500) were per poor person in the states.
Brandon and Robert,
You weren’t asked to apologize for being wrong, you were asked to apologize for obnoxious condescension. No amount of research is required to check whether you were obnoxiously condescending.
Also, Robert, you are misreading Kristjan’s figures: the lowest quartile of states averages $4500 per poor person (definition unspecified), not $4500 per capita, so it can’t be trivially translated into national per capita spending. Also, we don’t know off hand what portion of US population resides in the lowest quartile states, so the extrapolation is also stymied from the side as well.
Kristjan, are you only calculating the portion of social spending which is targetted to poor people in calculating expenditure per poor person? If not, it seems you are probably significantly overstating the state expenditure on poor people, since much social spending (education, social security and medicare) is universal, and not targetted at poor people.
Cross-posted with Kristjan.
Charles, I got the numbers from here (Exhibit 4) – which is a report “ Spending on Social Welfare Programs
in Rich and Poor States” made for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Interesting study, although I don’t have time to read it at the moment. Note that the exclusion of Federal subsidies makes a huge difference, so total government spending per poor person is going to be much higher (and would also decrease the degree of difference between states) than the amount that study shows.
I also graphed the components of Federal spending as a percentage of the total budget…there’s no question that social spending is up and things like military spending are down.
Really? I look forward to learning more.
But I would caution against drawing spending conclusions based on budget figures. The Executive Branch’s budget is a notoriously political document often bearing little relationship to spending. It is customary, for example, for the Executive to conceal the size of the White House staff by having their salaries paid out of the budgets of other agencies. And when the same party controls the Executive and Legislative Branches, the budget should be regarded with even greater skepticism than usual. On paper and in speeches the President can make a pronouncement about cutting spending on X or increasing spending on Y, with the secret understanding that chairmen will kill these proposals in appropriations or conference committees. It’s costless publicity.
And, most significantly, much spending is “off-budget.” Once upon a time Congress tried to exert spending discipline by requiring spending increases or tax cuts to be revenue neutral (“pay as you go”) except during an emergency. Congress then declared the cost of conducting a census to be an emergency. The Constitution requires us to conduct a census every 10 years; hell, George Washington could foresee that we’d conduct a census in 2000. Nevertheless, it was politically expedient to declare the census an emergency, and Congress did so.
That sort of bare-faced abuse of government process used to break my little good-government heart. Then we cut taxes, started a war, and declared the whole thing off-budget. Year. After Year. AFTER YEAR. Needless to say, I’ve developed a much more calloused heart.
So it is hard to know what conclusions could fairly be drawn regarding budget data. But it is even hard to know what conclusions could be draws from spending data, because of the way government counts (and doesn’t count) spending. I’ll elaborate below.
I understand Amp started this discussion to rebut factual assertions raised by others. I do not fault the rebuttal, or the general object lesson in civility.
But I wonder about the importance of the assertions generally. Specifically, who cares how the percentage of GDP spent on social services changes over time? I can understand analyzing how spending changes in real terms, or per capita, or both. But as a fraction of GDP?
Moreover, what conclusions can we draw from changes in how much government spends on social services? And from comparing government spending in one nation to government spending in another?
Mostly it seems like an apples-to-oranges comparison, because it’s hard to make an “all else being equal” assumption. Arguably, regulation of private actors is a substitute for government spending and should count as spending; conversely, deregulation should count as a reduction in government spending. Arguably the government’s choice to increasing the money supply and provoking inflation should count as taxation, whereas the government’s choice to decreasing the money supply and reducing inflation should count as a tax cut. Arguably we should measure government spending from the time the liability is incurred – when the Medicare prescription drug benefit is adopted, or the decision to go to war is made – not when the checks are written.
Arguably, the best basis for comparison is outcomes. How much would we need to spend (however measured) to achieve the water quality we had in 1988, and how does that compare to what we spent in 1988? How much would we need to spend (however measured) to achieve the infant mortality rate they have in France, and how does that compare to what the French spend? THAT is the apples-to-apples comparison.
Admittedly, those comparisons are hard to do. But I suspect we have better proxies to analyze than spending per $ of GDP.
Needless to say, I’ve developed a much more calloused heart.
That whole Bob-for-King thing just continues to look better and better, doesn’t it? MY numbers would be transparent. “Tax revenue: whatever I took. Overall budget: whatever I spent. Audit process: ask me a question and get a free visit to the Prison Island!”
How much would we need to spend (however measured) to achieve the infant mortality rate they have in France, and how does that compare to what the French spend?
You know, actually this strikes me as a terrific metric.
I have to fudge to come up with figures – NationMaster doesn’t have infant mortality data for the USA. (WTF?) But comparing an apple to a vaguely reddish fruit about 4″ in diameter (IE comparing two different data sources’ report on the same statistic), France is ranked #10 (4.31 deaths before age 1 per 1000 live births) and we’re #29 (around 7).
It would indeed seem we have some room to improve vis a vis France. Quelle humilation!
(Slapping forehead) Links for statistics:
NationMaster for France
USA Today for the USA
USA Today data is from 2004.
I look at the data for Angola and think “that’s so tragic”. It would take so little to knock those numbers down into the cellar.
(Slaps forehead again!)
I realize the numbers I just provided don’t address nobody.really’s proposed metric (spending per performance level in the area of infant mortality). As he noted, his metric is really hard to figure out. I was merely intending to offer a related metric, which (although surprisingly tricky) runs along similar lines and is calculable.
Also, the title of this post is somewhat misleading, if not dead wrong. In real per capita terms, government spending (all levels) is up, up, up—by some 50% in the last quarter century. In fact, in real per capita terms, Robert was basically correct—government social spending today is roughly equal to what total government spending was in 1980 after adjusting for inflation and population growth.
The percent-of-GDP metric has its uses, but I disagree with the idea that it’s valid to say that government spending isn’t increasing just because it’s not swallowing up an ever-increasing share of the economy.
Also, the chart to which Robert linked (on “23.4%”), explicitly says that the 23.4% figure refers only to public spending.
As for the accusation of sexism…this is an example of why I find it so hard to take you guys seriously when you talk about pervasive sexism and racism and such. Is that really the best explanation you can come up with?
Nobody:
I’m talking about actual outlays, not just budgeted ones. And yes, I suppose it’s possible that the government is just lying about spending, but what else do we have to go on? I don’t see any evidence to support Alsis’s claim that the social system is either “starved” or “looted” (“corrupt” was a misquote)—in fact, all the evidence I have points to it having more funding now than it ever has in the past. I’m also very skeptical of her claim that it’s “privatized” more than it was in the past to any great degree, but I’m not sure how to go about proving or disproving it.
How much would we need to spend (however measured) to achieve the infant mortality rate they have in France, and how does that compare to what the French spend? THAT is the apples-to-apples comparison.
I don’t think that’s a very good metric. There are too many confounding factors: demographic differences, differences in diet and other cultural factors, differences in birth rates and maternal ages, differences in how infant mortality is mesaured, differences in climate, etc. Epidemiology is dicy at best.
Brandon wrote:
Having been shown to be wrong on the first attempt, you’re now switching the target.
Increased government spending per capita is the expected – and, arguably, the inevitable – result of the country getting wealthier. I’m not sure, therefore, that it qualifies as a problem.
By the way, could you please start linking directly to the sources for your various statistical claims? The first paragraph of the post I’m responding to has a lot of claims that you should provide evidence for, rather than requiring me to have to search and verify.
The chart Robert linked isn’t a primary source; it’s just quoting someone else’s data. And yes it says that, but it’s wrong. I guess Nationmaster.com isn’t that reliable a source.
Robert’s chart has a citation at the bottom of it, which says that the data on Robert’s chart comes from “SOURCE: Willem Adema, Net Social Expenditure (2nd edn, OECD Labour Market and Social Policy Occasional Paper 52, 2001).”
You can read that paper here (pdf link). Skip to page 28 of the .pdf file, and you can clearly see where the 23.4% figure was taken from, and you can see that it includes both private and public spending. (The reason for the slight discrepancy between this chart and the excel chart my post linked to is that the excel chart reflects more recent data).
The 23.4% definitely, without any doubt, refers to both private and public spending.
You’re correct, however, to say that it doesn’t include schools. Here’s what it refers to:
I speculated earlier that the stat might include schools, before I looked up the source and found out it included private spending.
I can’t make you take the possibility that you have issues with sexism that you should examine seriously. But that you don’t take it seriously is more your problem then mine.
Maybe it wasn’t at all sexist. I can’t know for sure what’s going on in your mind. But I know that when you wrote this:
That you were being condesending as hell. And that you were doing so when you had no right to be condesending, because it’s obvious that you didn’t actually know what the 23.4% stat referred to.
And I also know that you still haven’t apologized. Which is pretty lame.
Increased government spending per capita is the expected – and, arguably, the inevitable – result of the country getting wealthier. I’m not sure, therefore, that it qualifies as a problem.
Two thoughts.
1. I understand that richer people tend to spend more on most everything, including compassion. But we can have ever-increasing social spending per capita but have an ever-decreasing social spending per $ of GDP, so long as GDP grows faster than population. And on average, it does, right?
2. Do we want to dedicate an ever-increasing share of GDP to social spending? That is, should our goal be never to dedicate 100% of GDP to social spending, but to move arbitrarily (asymptotically) close to that point? This is a theoretical question, but I think it illustrates a practical question: how should we measure success? I’m not persuaded that increasing social spending/GDP is an appropriate goal.
This is a theoretical question, but I think it illustrates a practical question: how should we measure success?
Well, since I haven’t heard anyone saying we should spend more money regardless of what it does, I assume we define success as actually helping people as much as we can. This seems utterly irrelevant to the post topic, which involved a common but false or misleading claim from conservatives. Robert stated this claim in a demonstrably false way (I don’t mean to pick on you, Robert, I just want to remind people why Amp wrote the post.)
Nobody: while there’s certainly a little fudging from the White House (more famously by overstating the projected budget deficit so that they can announce a happy surprise mid-term), things like white house salaries are far too small to make any difference in the overall distribution of income between categories; it’s like saying that IBM’s purchasing figures are all wrong because the purchasing manager charges his chewing gum to the corporate food service bill.
Ampersand:
I haven’t been proven wrong. When you factor in spending on education, you get something pretty damned close to 23.4%. And I wasn’t just going by the numbers Robert posted—you saw me add up the numbers and get 20% of GDP plus about 10% of GDP for unspecified “other” spending at the state level, which “Includes expenditures for libraries, hospitals, health, employment security administration, veterans’ services, air transportation, water transport and terminals, parking facilities, transit subsidies, police protection, fire protection, correction, protective inspection and regulation, sewerage, natural resources, parks and recreation, housing and community development, solid waste management, financial administration, judicial and legal, general public buildings, other government administration, interest on general debt, and general expenditures, n.e.c.” (table B-86).
23.4% is too precise, and the website to which Robert linked arrived at it the wrong way, but it is more or less correct. If you want to say education shouldn’t be counted as social spending, that’s fine. But it doesn’t mean I’m “wrong.” It just means we’re talking about different things, and I explicitly said that I was counting education.
And I’m not switching the target. You put up a new target. You could have said that government spending is not growing any faster than the economy as a whole, which is basically true. But instead you said that government spending is not “up, up, up,” which is not true. At the very least, you should have acknowledged in your post that real per-capita spending is way up.
I can’t link directly to the information about real per-capita government spending going up 50% in the last 25 years, because I cobbled it together myself from from some other data. Specifically, I took data from the Economic Report of the President, tables B-34 (population), B-60 (CPI), and B-83 (federal, state, and local expenditures). But it should be fairly obvious that this is true.
The reason I said “heck if I know what her perception is” is that I was seriously entertaining the possibility that Alsis believed that less than a quarter of government spending went to the social system. But, you’re right. I should have been more tactful and said something like “I don’t know what Alsis thinks, but…” I’ll apologize in another comment.
But the fact remains that Alsis’s original claim of “a social system that has already been starved, looted, privatized, and starved some more”“pretty much steadily over the last two or three decades” was dead wrong. Robert was wrong, too, but less severely, and at least he made an effort to provide supporting evidence, even if he did bungle it. Social spending by government is up somewhat over the past 20-30 years as a percentage of GDP (total government spending is flat, but it’s shifted towards social spending), and it’s way up in real per-capita terms.
Now, when will you apologize for referring to my level of economic knowledge as “a low bar?”
Alsis:
As noted above, I shouldn’t have said what I said the way I did. You were wrong, but that was no excuse for me to be rude, so I apologize for that.
Actually, that’s not good enough. I shouldn’t have tried to qualify my apology. So I apologize for that, too.
Little fudging like leaving out the cost for the war in Afghanistan? The US budgets are really bad, and should never been taken at face value.
Brandon, you include some pretty interesting things in the “social system”. Fire and police protection is not usually considered part of that, nor is a number of the other things you mention. Also, a lot of the those 20% are trust funds, so it gives a false impression to call it “government spending”.
Private sources are less efficient than government? In the United States? Everyone I know that I’ve discussed the matter with holds exactly the opposite opinion. My personal experiences in getting services from the private sector vs. from the government would certainly support the opposite opinion. On what do you base your opinion?
As far as being quite selective – how is that a bad thing? Provision of social services would be a function of what social services the people providing the money for them think should have priority. They would vote with their dollars. If we went to an extreme where the government didn’t fund any social services (which I’m not arguing for right this moment) the result would be pure democracy. If people don’t think a given social service should be provided, they don’t have to worry about lobbying their representatives and chewing up legislative cycles and costs; they can just not give the organizations providing those services any money.
“Private sources are less efficient than government? In the United States? Everyone I know that I’ve discussed the matter with holds exactly the opposite opinion.”
I would say that neither is true for every type of service, or every type of government.
If we went to an extreme where the government didn’t fund any social services (which I’m not arguing for right this moment) the result would be pure democracy.
Just like it was circa 1800. No thanks, I’ll stick with governmentally funded social services.
In particular, market or political pressure on a given administrative organization (whether company or bureaucracy) can interact in lots of different ways depending on the purpose of the organization. Almost always, those pressures fail to lead to an ideal orginazation. But market pressure is different from political pressure, and so for some types of services, the market pressure will lead to vast inefficiencies where political pressure would not.
What is your opinion of the efficiency of the American insurance industry, Robert?
I’m sorry. I meant to address RonF. I sometimes confuse you two.
That’s OK, I have an opinion anyway.
I agree that the private sector can have gross inefficiencies and that market pressures can seriously distort their performance.
It’s just that private enterprise can’t usually persist in inefficiency over the long term the way the government can. A private charity that is generating terrible return for its donor’s gifts is subject to competition from new charities, whose managers sense an opportunity to easily steal donors from the old, bad charity (“all we have to do is demonstrate that we’re spending the money on feeding the homeless instead of office perks!”). Governments don’t compete with one another in that fashion.
Anything that isn’t required to compete tends to go to shit.
Also, if you get a vote for each dollar, then it isn’t a democracy, more of a plutocracy. 1 person 1 vote is pretty central to the idea of democracy. 1 dollar 1 vote is a little different.
That’s a fair point, Charles. Maybe we can compromise. Everybody gets a vote on whether the government out to support a particular charitable endeavour or not, on a program by program basis. Programs that don’t get a majority of the vote, don’t get funded.
That’s an interesting concept. What programs don’t you think would get funded?
In terms of social spending, I can’t think of one program that wouldn’t win in a vote (although I’m sure that I’m not thinking of all of them) & I suspect that a few that don’t currently exist would also win a vote.
I suppose that it’s possible that the “faith-based” program would fail based on its poor performance – but even that is questionable. But Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid – those all pass. Food stamps would have its 5-year lifetime max rolled back. AFDC passes, disability passes. College loans, headstart, Job Corps all pass. People both love these programs and love to complain about paying for these programs. But when push comes to shove, they don’t want to eliminate them.
Or so I think. I’d love to see research & the resulting numbers on this.
Having worked in both the public and private sectors, I really don’t know what to make of #48. For several reasons, not the least of which is the assumption that all private, for-profit businesses have meaningful competition vs. the assumption that the public sector has none.
Well, that assumption isn’t being made by me, so if throwing it out makes it easier for you to process it, go right ahead.
I also have worked in both the private and public sectors.
Also, social service charities have some severe economic perversities, since the people paying for the service are not the people receiving the service. This means that there are huge incentives to increase the aspect of the service which meet the desires of the person paying for it, rather than the person receiving it. For instance, when the city of Portland recently set out a plan to massively reduce homelessness in the city by providing hugely subsidized permanent housing for homeless people, it was met with opposition from some of the religious organizations that run much of the city’s homeless shelters, not because it wouldn’t work or would be too expensive or would lead to an influx of homeless people hoping to get into the nearly free housing, but because it would interfere in their ability to provide charity. No homeless people means no homeless shelters, means financial supporters of the homeless shelters will no longer be able to give to the poor. Apparently, these organizations understand that the important service they provide is the one they provide to the people who pay, not the incidental one they provide to the people they serve.
While government social service agencies are also largely insulated from the people they serve, the people being served are at least the voters who elect the government which controls the social service agencies. While this is another sort of feed back loop than competition, it is actually the feed back loop that is more important than the competition.
Also, private social service organizations are competitors for government social service agencies. While it is rare that private social service agencies provide good enough services to impact the public social services, there are places where they do. For instance, Utah has exceptionally good private social services through the LDS, and therefore has lousy state social services. The majority of the population get their social services through the church, and therefore have no need to support government social services. Which is unfortunate if you are poor in Utah and not a Mormon.
Yep, mostly everybody responds to the real incentives set before them, not the intentions of the people who set things into motion. Tragicomic, but at least it gives rational people a basis from which to predict consequences.
The reason why public welfare systems usually work better than private welfare systems is the simple fact that there only have to be one set of administration, while each private welfare organizations have to have their own.
Here of course I am refering to countries where there is some kind proper administratin in place, which I would presume to be the cae in teh US.
Another reason why public systems are usually better is that there are no religious or other agenda that gets in the way of the actual service provided. People can look at the rules and figure out what they are entitled to, instead of having to live up to some abitary rule – like having to pray before receiving food, which is the case at some US religious charities.
Kristjan:
I’m not including fire and police protection. See comment 74 in the original thread. Twenty percent of the US GDP goes towards government spending on health, income security, education, and public welfare. Then an additional 10% goes to the things in that big list I mentioned above. I’m not saying that it’s all social spending. But some of it is, which makes 23% a plausible figure.
I’m not sure what you mean by “trust funds.” Are you talking about contributions to the so-called Social Security trust fund? It doesn’t exist. It’s just the SSA lending money to the Treasury, and it’s not double-counted.
Look—I’ve made my case, and I’ve provided solid documentation so that you can verify the truth of everything I’ve said. If you think I’m wrong, I’m willing to consider any credible evidence you can show me. But I’m not going to spend my time chasing after vague claims about trust funds and government payroll (I realize that was someone else, not you). Let me know when you have the numbers.
Ampersand:
Increased government spending per capita is the expected – and, arguably, the inevitable – result of the country getting wealthier. I’m not sure, therefore, that it qualifies as a problem.
That’s fine. I disagree, but there’s an argument to be made for your position. But as per-capita GDP increases, you should be able to maintain a constant level of government services while spending a smaller portion of GDP to do so. If government continues to take up a constant percentage of an ever-increasing GDP, then that strongly implies that we’re getting more government services for that money (or maybe just gross incompetence).
Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is a question on which reasonable and informed people can disagree. All I’m saying is that government spending is increasing in a real and meaningful way, a fact that your post didn’t really acknowledge.
Kristjan, I feel your faith in the agenda-less-ness and rational probity of governmental welfare bureaucracies is perhaps slightly optimistic.
Charles, that is bizarre. You guys actually had charities complaining that the government was taking the beneficiaries of their charity away from them?
No, Robert ? Well, given the generality of your statements, it’s an easy enough assumption for another person to make.
I remain skeptical of your conclusions.
I’ve decided to respond in a series of posts on Catallarchy. Here’s the first installment.
The second installment is up. Raznor, you in particular might want to take a look at this, since it was prompted by your reference to a “ballooning defense budget.”