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03/29/2015

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John Mara

All Canadian bills used to have Elizabeth II's portrait. Now she is only on the $20 bill. The other bills have portraits of former Prime Ministers who are all men.

I like the way Elizabeth has aged with each new series of bills.

John Mara

Here's an idea. According to Wikipedia Australian bills have a portrait of a man on one side and a portrait of a woman on the other.

gezorkin

The old joke is that women don't care about getting their face on money. They want to get their hands on some.

Oh, and veterans benefits belong as part of the defense budget.

RRD

Love the pie chart cartoon - proof that you can always make up facts if you don't like reality. By the way, defense spending is 18%, Social Security is 24%, Medicare (et al) is 24%, Safety Net Programs at 11%, and interest on the debt is 7%.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258

Mike Peterson

It's problematic -- you can play with definitions of "defense spending" to make it larger or smaller depending on whether you include retirement and benefits, for example -- and the fact remains that we spend a lot more there than anyone else by a huge, huge amount. On the other hand, it certainly isn't 57%, particularly with benefits broken out separately.

I don't think you can lower it to 18 without some gymnastics, either. Here's a relatively recent breakdown that looks interesting: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/07/everything-chuck-hagel-needs-to-know-about-the-defense-budget-in-charts/

Mike Peterson

Was looking for a more recent breakdown and came across this (you have to scroll down), which looks a lot like Horsey's graph but is proposed discretionary spending in the President's budget. If that's his source, it's an error because it's not "how he wants to spend" but "how he wants to spend what he has a choice of" and doesn't include mandatory spending.

So he's wrong, but at least there's a theory as to where he messed up, which is better than no explanation.

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/

Meanwhile, that previous one was before massive cuts, so forget I offered it.

Mike Peterson

Okay, last attempt -- here's a good looking chart, not too old, that does list Defense spending at 18, but then has Veterans Health Benefits, Veterans Education and Federal and Military Retirement separately, which adds another 5 or 6 percent.

It also shows Social Security as an expense, which is accurate but SS is a self-sustaining system -- at least currently -- which makes that 18 percent look a lot better.

It's like saying that I spend X percent on food and Y percent on education without admitting I have a full scholarship -- true but not helpful if we're figuring out a budget based on income, given that the income/spending on education is a pass-through. Yes, it's income, but if anyone assumes it's "earned" income, well ... lies, damn lies and statistics.

Here's the chart:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/16/1292380/-Federal-Spending-In-One-Beautiful-Pie-Chart#

RRD

Thank you for the links.

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