Pet Peeve

[rowyn]

Reporting on the US federal gov't's deficit always talks about the raw numbers: ($1.35 trillion!) Sometimes it mentions percentage of GDP (9.2%!)

It hardly ever talks about government income.

I get the feeling that government income generally goes up and down in a way that has very little to do with raising or lowering taxes, and a great deal to do with whether or not the economy is booming. But I don't really know, because 'how much money does the government receive?' isn't a question reporters are interested in answering. v.v Maybe I'll dig through the CBO's website and see if they can tell me.

Comments

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Well, what I meant was if they're talking about the GDP it's a useful proxy for talking about revenue. Although (as someone else mentioned) it does wiggle a little in addition and in sync which acts as a magnifying factor. But the wiggle seems pretty small.

And since 'GDP' is the figure people keep tossing around, noting that revenue is historically low as a percentage of GDP is also worth talking about, maybe?

Still, when the deficit triples year to year -- that's not caused or even significantly affected by revenue or GDP or the economy. Unless you count the government programs enacted in response to the state of the economy.

[rowyn]

The thing that really bugs me is that last year's 900 billion dollar stimulus package was supposed to be a one-time thing, and TARP -- another 700 billion from 2008 -- was also supposed to be a one-time thing (most of which has been paid back). So why the heck is the budget projected to be just as large in 2010 as it was in 2009? O_o

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

It is? The charts I was looking at might be out of date, then, they showed it dropping by at least 500 billion. Assuming budget = revenue + deficit.

Is it possible that the stimulus package was 900 billion total over X years?