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How Everyone's Tax Dollars Were Spent in 2014 by %

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  • YellowSubmarine
    2015-04-22 11:14:59 PM
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    Ever wonder exactly how your tax dollars are spent? I know I do, all the time. So I got my google on, and found this. What's great about this National Priorities Project graphic and article is that it is breaking down the most current iteration of how the government spends all of our collective taxes. It's pretty enlightening.

    Break down goes like this for 2014:

    27% Military
    26.5% Medicare and Health
    15.3% Interest on Federal Debt
    8.4% Social Security, Unemployment and Labor
    5.8% Veterans Benefits
    5% Food and Agriculture
    3.4% Government
    2.5% Education
    1.9% Transportation
    1.6% Energy and Environment
    1.5% International Affairs
    1.1% Science
    0.1% Housing and Community

    Some %s that stick out to me are how little we actually spent on Housing and Community and Education. For all the talk and debate over cutting or expanding these various programs and all that envelope, to me its a shockingly small percentage of our total tax bill's current agenda.

    What sticks out to you? Does this line up with the way you figured the government currently allocates tax funds, or are you surprised at all?
  • JaredS
    2015-04-24 10:46:24 AM
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    Politics aside--I have a really hard time accepting that we only spend 1.1% on science and 2.5% on education. Those ones are hard to swallow.
  • J.K.Logic
    2015-04-25 09:10:15 AM
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    I never thought 'Interest on Federal Debt' would wind up as high as third on the spending list. Pretty incredible stat to consider. As much as we hear about official spending on the military and defense in this country, it's amazing to hear that over half of that budget amount goes to just paying of govt debt.

    No doubt everyone can look at this list and think and wish that percentages should allocate differently. And I'm definitely in that camp. For my money (pun intended) I would like to see a much more evenly distributed spending % across the board, with all of these important areas of concern. Of course defense and healthcare should likely be the clear top two, but again I think not by this much of a margin.

    The bottom six all make up what I think is fair to call as a group 'investments into the future of this country'. Like said above already, political finger pointing aside, either way these six should garner more than a combined 8.7% of the collective tax allocation.
  • justin412
    2015-04-25 01:58:03 PM
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    J.K.Logic Wrote: I never thought 'Interest on Federal Debt' would wind up as high as third on the spending list. Pretty incredible stat to consider. As much as we hear about official spending on the military and defense in this country, it's amazing to hear that over half of that budget amount goes to just paying of govt debt.
    It is hard to swallow that over fifteen percent of the budget is just paying interest on debt. That is an insane amount of money, but it does show that the debt the country owes isn't play money.

    I also agree that everyone can look at the list and have different opinions of where our money should go, but a combined 8.7% for things like education, science and technology, and housing is just not right.
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