Comments on: 2011 Death and Taxes Poster Now Available

By: Andrew Stevens

Andrew Stevens — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:58:12 +0000

Well, I never thought a human did it. (Why on earth would anyone leave the comment, but remove the link? Makes no sense.)

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By: J.D. Roth

J.D. Roth — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 06:30:56 +0000

@Andrew Stevens (#20)
I don’t remove HTML tags in comments. Here’s an example. If the HTML is missing, it’s because you made a typo, not because I’m censoring you.

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By: Andrew Stevens

Andrew Stevens — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 05:38:30 +0000

Apparently this blog simply removes html tags in comments. My link was simply to Wikipedia’s page “Government spending” under section 1) United States which aggregates all federal, state, and local spending.

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By: Sophomore

Sophomore — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 21:41:18 +0000

I have to agree with Andrew Stevens on the slant of this representation. Any graphic designer who has read Edward Tufte understands multiple points. First, English speaking peoples traverse information left to right and top to bottom. Placing the total budget at lower right obfuscates. Second proportion matters when working with visual presentation. If the total budget is roughly 3X the discretionary budget, it should be represented visually as such. The rationalization provided is indicative of either an agenda or lack of creativity. Is there really no detail to say about 2/3rds of the annual budget being transfer payments?

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By: Andrew Stevens

Andrew Stevens — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 04:43:43 +0000

This link details where money actually goes. First is education, then health care, then pensions, then defense, and finally welfare and interest. (If the left has an out-of-touch with reality belief that the U.S. spends most of its government dollars on defense, don’t get me started on the members of the right I meet who insist that we spend a fortune on foreign aid, a truly trivial amount of government spending.)

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By: Andrew Stevens

Andrew Stevens — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 04:24:52 +0000

I now see that backliteyes made the same point. Hopefully I added something with my comment.

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By: Andrew Stevens

Andrew Stevens — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 04:23:31 +0000

I don’t know. This is one of my pet peeves – concentrating on the discretionary budget of the federal government as if this is actually representative of government spending. I hear people say things like “63% of the budget is spent on defense!” all the time and it’s just not true. Defense is big, but Social Security and Medicare are far bigger and, if you include state and local government spending which spends trivial amounts of money on defense, but large amounts of money on education, Medicaid, and other social programs, you get a much better idea of exactly where government dollars go.

I’m not trying to make a political point here. It’s certainly reasonable to argue that we spend too much money on defense, but posters like this one are designed to push a particular political agenda and are lying to accomplish it. (And, yes, I read their reasons why they didn’t include Social Security and Medicare and I am unconvinced.)

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By: Stephen

Stephen — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 01:06:10 +0000

Prediction: Draw a big circle for healthcare…..and bailouts.

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By: Geek

Geek — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 00:18:10 +0000

@Dave I agree we need some but…! That much!

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By: Jess

Jess — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:07:53 +0000

Thanks for the comements, i Will get the typos fixed before it goes to print on Monday. And the entitlements are depicted in the bottom right corner.

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By: backliteyes

backliteyes — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:08:39 +0000

I dislike that this poster only shows discretionary spending. Without including entitlements in the picture, you can’t really have an accurate understanding of government spending.

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By: partgypsy

partgypsy — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:06:16 +0000

I think it’s a very cool poster, in that it may foster more relevant discussion on what we spend our tax dollars on. HAve to pass on getting one right now as I just bought got a big poster of the evolutionary “tree”.

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By: partgypsy

partgypsy — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:01:27 +0000

Also it’s proportionate, not porportionate.

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By: Kris at GRS

Kris at GRS — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:58:01 +0000

@Rich #7,
You’re right about the apostrophe, but I believe the 2001 date is correct. The second %value is describing the change over the entire decade from 2001-2011. If they can’t find the 2001 budget, they can’t calculate this %.

I love this graph. Although I understand the need for a defense budget, I think our country as a whole would be stronger and more secure if we emphasized strength from within. Strength of an educated populace, a strong research and development sector, safe, clean & reliable energy sources and localized programs that enable our people to better their own lives. I’d love to see our priorities shift in these directions.

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By: trb

trb — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:25:51 +0000

I have this on my cube wall at my goverment office, and people love it. Highly recommended.

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By: Rich

Rich — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:09:22 +0000

It would be even more awesome if someone had edited the poster. There are two typos just in the “How to read the data” section: there’s no apostrophe in “its” and the second percentage refers to 2010, not 2001.

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By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:48:51 +0000

63% Defense, well without defense we are not here, that is one of the few things the federal government should be spending money on, that it is $895 Billion, thats something to argue. The states, counties, and towns should be doing more, and the federal government should be doing less. Why am I being taxed by four levels for the same thing? The federal government is to unify the states, then the state run themself,

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By: London student

London student — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 22:51:53 +0000

I wish they did this for England.

Does anyone know if this exists in England or UK?

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By: Geek

Geek — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 22:11:26 +0000

63% on military/security.
Egad!

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By: Frankerson P

Frankerson P — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 21:35:10 +0000

Gotta love that government!

But seriously, good job on the poster. I’d buy it if I didn’t just pay $980 in taxes last week.

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By: Nicole

Nicole — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 21:27:46 +0000

eeee! I SO WANT ONE. Maybe two…

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By: chacha1

chacha1 — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 20:56:07 +0000

re: “It’s not art”:

Actually, I think the design is quite beautiful. If I had an appropriate space, I would certainly put this on the wall! It’s got a great sense of movement, like a fractal pattern.

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