Quote:
Originally Posted by Willravel
You have to measure it as budget compared to GDP or per capita in order to compare us to other countries. As of 2009, tax collections were only 15% of the GDP, which is frighteningly low, in fact it's the lowest in half a century. We can compare that the the rapid inflation of debt, which is of course relevant, but please don't pretend that somehow the government was small under Bush and suddenly massive under Obama. That simply isn't so. It was small-medium under Bush and now it's slightly more medium but still small under Obama.
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Comparing the budget to GDP or per capita has absolutely nothing to do with the percentage increase in the federal budget year to year, where Obama is doing a fine job of increasing the budget much faster than Bush did.
I also really don't care what the comparison is to budgets in other countries. First you need to be comparing total tax burdens in each country from local entity up thru national entity to get the entire story and to also properly account for federal mandates that affect state and local taxes.
Second, circumstances and political agendas are different from country to country. Just because socialism is more prevalent in Europe does not justify it's expansion here. If I wanted to live under the European social and political model, I would move to Europe. I tend to not look at Europe as an example of outstanding success in economic or political matters.