100 years of government spending

Posted on January 16, 2008 by davenate

gov-spending.jpg

Data has been compiled from two separate government sources. The spending comes from http://origin.www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy08/sheets/hist01z1.xls and the CPI adjustment for inflation was made from data available at http://stats.bls.gov/cpi/cpid0712.pdf   I chose 1913 as my starting year because CPI information is more difficult to acquire prior to then.

A couple of statistics that I would like to share from this data.
 - Population growth averages 1.17% a year.
 - Spending has grown 5.69% a year.
 - The cost per person increased over this time period from an average of $150 to $9500 a person!

Kudos to President Clinton for the only visible attempt at holding the line on spending.

Filed under: Economics, History, Politics

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3 Responses to “100 years of government spending”

  1. Danny, on January 16th, 2008 at 3:36 pm Said:

    It’s a damn good thing Clinton did too. Imagine if he had increased it, and THEN we had Bush. We’d be in an even worse situation that the looming economic disaster we have right now!

  2. Lance, on January 17th, 2008 at 7:20 pm Said:

    Insane.

    Clinton cared about his legacy, and I guess with the exception of a couple of things he managed to pull it off–this being one of “his” accomplishments.

  3. dave nate, on January 20th, 2008 at 6:46 pm Said:

    Maybe Clinton doesn’t deserve all the credit but his term was the only one in a long time that had budget surpluses and we brought down the debt.

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