History of spending growth.

[Arkady]

Just for historical context, here's the annualized real per capita total government spending growth by presidential era, since WWII (using each president's last budget year as his fiscal year end point):

Johnson 5.29
Ford 3.65
GW Bush 3.23
Nixon 2.56
Eisenhower 2.05
Reagan 1.73
Carter 1.55
Kennedy 0.71
GHW Bush 0.63
Clinton 0.59
Obama -0.21
Truman -7.22

The top and bottom of that list aren't surprising -- Johnson's Great Society and Vietnam expansion took their toll in high spending growth, while the end of WWII set the nation up to find lots of savings in the Truman years. But the middle of that list is, perhaps, unexpected. Notwithstanding the Republicans talking a good game about reining in spending, generally spending growth is high when they're in power (as it's expected to be high in the Trump years, judging by the spending plan).

Some of that is simply because Republicans support military overspend -- notably, the only Republican-led era without high spending growth was GHW Bush's, when the end of the Cold War resulted in military spending actually declining significantly over four years. However, part of it is also because conservatives push for spending to be devolved to states and localities, where you lose economies of scale and have a lot of redundancy expenses. There's also the fact that the economy tends to be worse when Republicans are in the White House, which would be expected to raise expenses that are connected to dealing with economic problems. Can anyone think of other possible explanations for that pattern?

https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/total_1929USdt_19ds5n
http://www.usinflationcalculator.co...and-annual-percent-changes-from-1913-to-2008/

 

[Bugsy McGurk]

Look at that Obama number. The most disciplined president in the modern era when it comes to spending. Betcha 90% of brainwashed wingers think it’s the opposite.

 

[SW48]

Just for historical context, here's the annualized real per capita total government spending growth by presidential era, since WWII (using each president's last budget year as his fiscal year end point):

Johnson 5.29
Ford 3.65
GW Bush 3.23
Nixon 2.56
Eisenhower 2.05
Reagan 1.73
Carter 1.55
Kennedy 0.71
GHW Bush 0.63
Clinton 0.59
Obama -0.21
Truman -7.22

The top and bottom of that list aren't surprising -- Johnson's Great Society and Vietnam expansion took their toll in high spending growth, while the end of WWII set the nation up to find lots of savings in the Truman years. But the middle of that list is, perhaps, unexpected. Notwithstanding the Republicans talking a good game about reining in spending, generally spending growth is high when they're in power (as it's expected to be high in the Trump years, judging by the spending plan).

Some of that is simply because Republicans support military overspend -- notably, the only Republican-led era without high spending growth was GHW Bush's, when the end of the Cold War resulted in military spending actually declining significantly over four years. However, part of it is also because conservatives push for spending to be devolved to states and localities, where you lose economies of scale and have a lot of redundancy expenses. There's also the fact that the economy tends to be worse when Republicans are in the White House, which would be expected to raise expenses that are connected to dealing with economic problems. Can anyone think of other possible explanations for that pattern?

https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/total_1929USdt_19ds5n
http://www.usinflationcalculator.co...and-annual-percent-changes-from-1913-to-2008/

Republicans and politicians suck at Federal budgets.

But there are supposedly rich, healthy, blue states to pay for it...

 

[Arkady]

Republicans and politicians suck at Federal budgets.

A couple points. First, I'm using total government spending there, not just federal spending. I did so because of the point I was making about the cost of devolving spending obligations to the states.

Imagine if Amazon, instead of running one cutting-edge e-commerce site, set up a different web page for each state, and tried to maintain all of them separately. Imagine if they set up different pages for each county. It would be much more expensive and certainly would result in worse performance. That's similar to what often happens when you devolve government services from the state or local level.

Second, note that it's not all the eras that have seen a big increase in spending. Real per capita spending actually fell under Truman and Obama, and grew only very modestly under Clinton, GHW Bush and Kennedy. If a person is genuinely concerned about government spending growth being too high, it would make sense to dig into what's different between those eras, rather than just being content with sweeping attacks on politicians generally.

But there are supposedly rich, healthy, blue states to pay for it...

Certainly the blue states do an excellent job hauling the dead weight. But we can do a better job reducing that dead weight -- for example, we could cut our military budget by 2/3 and still outspending all our adversaries combined. That would save us several hundred billion dollars every year.

 

[Arkady]

Look at that Obama number. The most disciplined president in the modern era when it comes to spending. Betcha 90% of brainwashed wingers think it’s the opposite.

It's amazing how little the conservatives heard about what was actually going on in the Obama era. It was an era of radical austerity -- the only time in the last century, other than the military deescalation right after WWII, that we went an extended time when the government was actually shrinking in inflation- and population-adjusted terms. And the figures are even more eye-opening when you look at actual government employment... it was a period when government payrolls dropped dramatically. Yet conservatives were told it was a period of out-of-control government growth, and they never thought to check the numbers.

 

[SW48]

A couple points. First, I'm using total government spending there, not just federal spending. I did so because of the point I was making about the cost of devolving spending obligations to the states.

Imagine if Amazon, instead of running one cutting-edge e-commerce site, set up a different web page for each state, and tried to maintain all of them separately. Imagine if they set up different pages for each county. It would be much more expensive and certainly would result in worse performance. That's similar to what often happens when you devolve government services from the state or local level.

Second, note that it's not all the eras that have seen a big increase in spending. Real per capita spending actually fell under Truman and Obama, and grew only very modestly under Clinton, GHW Bush and Kennedy. If a person is genuinely concerned about government spending growth being too high, it would make sense to dig into what's different between those eras, rather than just being content with sweeping attacks on politicians generally.



Certainly the blue states do an excellent job hauling the dead weight. But we can do a better job reducing that dead weight -- for example, we could cut our military budget by 2/3 and still outspending all our adversaries combined. That would save us several hundred billion dollars every year.

I agree, cut military spending by 2/3rds and force the federal government to have a balanced budget except in times of country vs country war (example world war 2).

I love the military but we should not be putting money on the credit card when there is no true war.

Get it done!

 

[Arkady]

I agree, cut military spending by 2/3rds and force the federal government to have a balanced budget except in times of country vs country war (example world war 2).

I'd modify that. In addition to a declared war, I'd also allow the budget to run into deficits for purposes of stimulating the economy during tough times.

Picture a system where the budget deficit/surplus is set based on the unemployment rate , along these lines (first number, the unemployment rate, second number the deficit/surplus as a share of GDP):

10, -10
9, -7
8, -5
7, -3
6, -1
5.5, 0
5, +1
4, +3
3, +5
2, +7
1, +10


Obviously, that's just a back-of-the-envelope outline of the concept, rather than the numbers we'd use. But the idea would be to have automatic fiscal stimulus during tough times, then automatic debt-repayment in good times, with a tilting point somewhere around 5.5% unemployment.

Since 1948, the average unemployment has been 5.8%, and the average fiscal balance has been a deficit of 2.1% of GDP. So my system, where a 5.8% unemployment rate would mean a 0.6% deficit would be appreciably closer to balance than our historical record. That would be sustainable. And it would tend to mean short recessions, strong recoveries, and little need for higher interest rates to keep the economy from overheating.

 

[SW48]

I'd modify that. In addition to a declared war, I'd also allow the budget to run into deficits for purposes of stimulating the economy during tough times.

Picture a system where the budget deficit/surplus is set based on the unemployment rate , along these lines (first number, the unemployment rate, second number the deficit/surplus as a share of GDP):

10, -10
9, -7
8, -5
7, -3
6, -1
5.5, 0
5, +1
4, +3
3, +5
2, +7
1, +10


Obviously, that's just a back-of-the-envelope outline of the concept, rather than the numbers we'd use. But the idea would be to have automatic fiscal stimulus during tough times, then automatic debt-repayment in good times, with a tilting point somewhere around 5.5% unemployment.

Since 1948, the average unemployment has been 5.8%, and the average fiscal balance has been a deficit of 2.1% of GDP. So my system, where a 5.8% unemployment rate would mean a 0.6% deficit would be appreciably closer to balance than our historical record. That would be sustainable. And it would tend to mean short recessions, strong recoveries, and little need for higher interest rates to keep the economy from overheating.

Sounds logical to me.