[lbo-talk] European Welfare State

[Max Sawicky]

My numbers and cite were for social spending. One problem with comparisons
is they do not include tax expenditures. While you can dislike the
distributive impact in terms of income class, some of them in the U.S.
arguably could be classified as social spending (e.g., exclusion from
taxable income of employer-paid health insurance).

On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 1:00 PM, Somebody Somebody <philos_case at yahoo.com>wrote:


> Is that government *social* spending Wojtek, or just total government
> spending as percent of GDP?
>
>
>
> 15.9% probably greatly overestimates the extent of the American welfare
> state - notice the number for Canada is just 0.6% higher. Consider the
> grossly inefficient American health care system. Because of lack of cost
> controls on medical procedures and equipment, Medicare and Medicaid spending
> is vastly inflated despite the fact that neither is a universal system.
>
>
>
> I suspect the inefficiency and redundancy of much U.S. government spending
> (caused in part by our constitutional division of labor between local,
> state, and federal authorities), along with the military budget, causes a
> higher figure for government spending in the U.S. than is warranted by the
> level of public services. This in turn, engenders a belief in the lack of
> efficiency of government and antagonism towards paying taxes.
>
>
>
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