Tax Lawyer's Blog

Yesterday, in response to a post written by Jim Maule of Mauled Again, I wrote:

If we were honest with ourselves, we would admit that we are all socialists. We all believe that there should be at least some communal pooling of resources to achieve certain national aims that cannot or should not be left to the private sector. Professor Maule identifies several of these: national defense, police protection, fire-fighting services, etc.

In the end, then, the debate is not about whether we should have government, but rather, how much government we should have.

Today, Orin Kerr of The Volokh Conspiracy published three interesting statistics on the size of the federal government:

Overall Gross Domestic Product of the United States: $14.2 trillion (2008 figure).
Size of the Budget of the United States Government: $3.5 trillion (2009 figure).
Expected Federal Budget Deficit in 2010: $1.5 trillion (Congressional Budget Office estimate).

Kerr says that in percentage terms,

[T]he federal budget is about 25% of the GDP of the United States, and the projected 2010 federal deficit is about 10% of the GDP. Given the United States population of about 307 million, that amounts to about $46,000 per person GDP; $11,400 per person in federal spending; and $4,900 per person added to the federal debt.

Let the debate continue. 

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