[lbo-talk] what government spending?

[Wojtek S]

Doug, I do not disagree with you - all I am trying to say is that
lumping transfers with government consumption expenditures is not the
best strategy for someone who is advocating increase in government
spending (which I do.)  Transfers, such as social security, are a
direct benefit to households, so they would not constitute "government
waste" by any stretch of imagination, as the right wing trolls try to
argue.  Nor do they stimulate the economy during the recession, so
excluding them makes sense if you want to show that government does
not spend enough.  That is it.

Wojtek

On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 12, 2010, at 2:19 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
>
>> How did you get 42%?  5/14=.357 which is close to what Krugman
>> reports.  Governmetn current expenditures are in table 3.16 (currently
>> unavailable, but I downloaded it some time ago).  GDP, including
>> government consumption expenditure is table 1.1.15.
>
> Transfers do not count as part of GDP, since they're not an exchange of money for good or service, but it's disingenuous not to take account of them when measuring government spending. Using GDP as a kind of numeraire for all manner of things over time is pretty conventional. You often see stock market capitalization as a percent of GDP, for example, even though stocks have next to nothing to do with GDP.
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