Billion was a big number when I was growing up, now the trillion is the new big number. It’s hard for me to think that the NEW “Big” number is 1000 times bigger than the OLD “Big” number – in a short 30 years span. Freakonomics?
Hearing government spending a billion here and couple billions there and 500 billion on special programs – I don’t know whether our government spending is out of control.
Here is my way of thinking of number factors
► Population growth – Spending $1 on every American costs $226 millions in 1980, Spending $1 on every American today, it costs $307 millions (I don’t know whether 307 millions include illegal or not)
▼ Most of the budgets growth is proportion to the size of general population. The budget for school, roads, police grow as number of people depends on the service increases.
▼ Some of them shouldn’t grow, in theory. Budget to run the White House and congress should stays the same, the number senators and representatives don’t change. The military budget and PBS stations should stay about the same – the US
In 1980 – $100 million program is about $200 million in 2009. If this $100 million was spent on population consumption programs (i.e. policing), then it’s about $280 million programs.
When I hear a 1 trillion dollar program on prescription drug program, I should think it is same as a
$700 billons in 2000 or
$500 billons in 1990 or
$350 billons in 1980.
$700 billons in 2000 or
$500 billons in 1990 or
$350 billons in 1980.
# # #
There are so many nearly trillion dollar programs today, but I rarely recall any spending programs over $100 billions mark in 1980’s. I would argue that our government has a spending problem. If all conditions are the same as before, we need to cut what ever the budget we have by at least 2/3, by making the budget spending level like we had in the 80’s.
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