Government Spending and Statistics

Dean Esmay has begun another of his usual quality discussions, this time regarding the matter of an article by Stephen Moore and what Dean calls his fundamental errors.

I read the article by Mr. Moore and was not impressed. Dean is correct in that Mr. Moore appears (but it is not clarified) to be talking mainly about the rise in absolute spending since 1940. Further, Moore never acknowledges the population boom that has occurred since 1940 and how that would, in fact, lead to a substantial increase in the absolute level of spending.

But while Dean rants and rails, he also misses a fundamental point. Government spending is about to hit it's highest levels since the end of WWII. Look at this release from the Heritage Foundation.

In 2003, inflation-adjusted spending topped $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II.

Mr. Moore's premise is correct. Government spending is reaching its highest levels since the 1940s. His argument was flawed and poorly supported, but in the end, it was accurate.

But this is not to say that Dean is wrong either. There is, even in the per household number, a significant component of spending tied to the population boom. Baby boomers are coming of retirement age now. As they start to collect Social Security, they are also contributing to the rise in government spending. So the expansion of population does have some significant effect now.

The biggest concern that I have about the rise in per capita government spending is that at the end of WWII, we were spending the majority of our money on defense. Now we are spending on social programs - bread and circus, if you will. Great nations do not survive on the basis of a strong welfare state, they survive based on a strong national defense. Many of the Greek city-states proved it. Rome proved it held true on a large scale. And the lesson has been repeated many times in the intervening 1600 years since the fall of Rome.

60 years ago, we were the Arsenal of Democracy, not because of Social Security spending, but because of our commitment to defense. We won the Cold War, not because of welfare or the Great Society, but because of Reagan's 600 ship Navy, the B-52, the B-1B, the Ohios, the Army and a whole host of other defense related spending.

Spending money on social programs is not a bad thing in and of itself. But to really restrict the government's ability to adapt its spending to meet new threats (or to take advantage of new opportunities) is dangerous. $20,000 of government spending per household in a time of relative peace is simply too much. The last time we were at this spending level, we were fighting against two formidible, organzied, and powerful advesaries. This time we're fighting terrorists - a difficult and expensive task indeed - along with such threats to our society as a lack of golfing awareness in St. Augustine.

Our priorities are getting out of whack. The longer we keep spending like drunken sailors on payday, the more we put our long term security at risk.

And that is a tradeoff I don't like.