Source: The Economist
How Countries Spend Their Money
September 17, 2015 9:00pm by Barry Ritholtz
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This chart shows how much compared to the rest of the world we spend on health care. And get less quality overall than all other advance counties and many third world countries. If we can get this cost in line with other countries we could finance Social Security at a higher benefit level, better fund education and also pay off the national debt. It would also make our companies much more competitive in the world market place as their competitors do not have the heavy burden of outrageous health care cost. This would make our companies more profitable. It is a very big deal. This is why this fiscally conservative is very much at odds with one of our major political parties right now.
Where the hell is military-defense spending. Needs to be reflected somehow in the chart otherwise, its an incomplete picture. In the US, military-defense spending sucks away too many dollars leaving too little to adequately fund vital public needs such as education, health and transportation.
This is household spending, if you want US government spending see, among others:
http://www.timeplots.com/collections/catalog/products/death-and-taxes-2016
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/
Congressional Budget Office http://www.co.gov
Most recently
https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/50808-MBR.pdf
And comparison to other countries see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
and
http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/milex_database
US health care is basically a money making machine that exerts a great deal of influence over politics and much of the time they get their way. If we reduced our healthcare costs and got them inline with what other first would countries pay we would solve our budget problems far into the future.
I can’t believe everyone looked at this list and saw negatives!
We were below average in about everything which means we live
much better than everyone else, have the satisfaction of helping
people around the world. We are on a run of successes that will end
some day and when it does, you people that only see the negative
side will have something real to complain about,