The graph below is where the U.S. government gets its income:
The main problem with the above chart is that corporations only contribute 13% of the tax revenue, and yet they get to buy all the political influence; while working individuals contribute most of the 46%, and get very little in comparison.
Here is the breakdown of U.S. government total spending:
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, along with parts of the budgets for the Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense, Department of Education, and Department of Veterans Affairs are mandatory spending items.
Mandatory spending cannot be changed without an Act of Congress. The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and Obamacare (ACA) are new forms of parasitism in mandatory spending; while Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, Education, etc. are being systematically de-funded. This is intended to push these programs into bankruptcy, allowing equity capital to raid its coffers through privatization.
Here is the breakdown of U.S. government discretionary spending:
The U.S. military eats 55% of the discretionary budget, and it’s hard to believe that essentials such as housing, education, health, environment, etc… each receive no more than 6% of the discretionary pie.
Food & agriculture gets only 1% of discretionary spending.
The pie graph below is mandatory spending (65%), discretionary spending (29%), and interest on national debt (6%), with the actual figures listed below:
Total revenue $3.34 trillion
Total expenditures $3.90 trillion
Deficit $564 billion (3.1% of GDP)
Debt $18.69 trillion
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Note: Close to $4 trillion will be spent by the U.S. government in fiscal year 2015 (October 1, 2014 — September 30, 2015), while virtually nothing is done to improve the lives of working people in terms of job creation, housing, education, health care, urban renewal, environmental clean-up, or any other issue that matters to them.
No bourgeois politician– Democrat, Republican or “Independent”– will honesty explain any of this to the working people or the kids, much less take any serious action.
The only answer is for workers & students to unite and replace this corrupt capitalist system with a worker’s government, armed with a socialist program in order to rationally allocate resources for the maximum benefit of society.